Scenes from a Courtesan's Life - Honoré de Balzac (philippa perry book .txt) 📗

superintends her shop."

"Nothing will be found there but rags, costumes, diamonds, uniforms----However, it will be as well to check Monsieur Camusot's zeal."

Monsieur de Granville rang, and sent an office messenger to desire Monsieur Camusot to come and speak with him.

"Now," said he to Jacques Collin, "an end to all this! I want to know your recipe for curing the Countess."

"Monsieur le Comte," said the convict very gravely, "I was, as you know, sentenced to five years' penal servitude for forgery. But I love my liberty.--This passion, like every other, had defeated its own end, for lovers who insist on adoring each other too fondly end by quarreling. By dint of escaping and being recaptured alternately, I have served seven years on the hulks. So you have nothing to remit but the added terms I earned in quod--I beg pardon, in prison. I have, in fact, served my time, and till some ugly job can be proved against me,--which I defy Justice to do, or even Corentin--I ought to be reinstated in my rights as a French citizen.

"What is life if I am banned from Paris and subject to the eye of the police? Where can I go, what can I do? You know my capabilities. You have seen Corentin, that storehouse of treachery and wile, turn ghastly pale before me, and doing justice to my powers.--That man has bereft me of everything; for it was he, and he alone, who overthrew the edifice of Lucien's fortunes, by what means and in whose interest I know not.--Corentin and Camusot did it all----"

"No recriminations," said Monsieur de Granville; "give me the facts."

"Well, then, these are the facts. Last night, as I held in my hand the icy hand of that dead youth, I vowed to myself that I would give up the mad contest I have kept up for twenty years past against society at large.

"You will not believe me capable of religious sentimentality after what I have said of my religious opinions. Still, in these twenty years I have seen a great deal of the seamy side of the world. I have known its back-stairs, and I have discerned, in the march of events, a Power which you call Providence and I call Chance, and which my companions call Luck. Every evil deed, however quickly it may hide its traces, is overtaken by some retribution. In this struggle for existence, when the game is going well--when you have quint and quartorze in your hand and the lead--the candle tumbles over and the cards are burned, or the player has a fit of apoplexy!--That is Lucien's story. That boy, that angel, had not committed the shadow of a crime; he let himself be led, he let things go! He was to marry Mademoiselle de Grandlieu, to be made marquis; he had a fine fortune;--well, a prostitute poisons herself, she hides the price of a certificate of stock, and the whole structure so laboriously built up crumbles in an instant.

"And who is the first man to deal a blow? A man loaded with secret infamy, a monster who, in the world of finance, has committed such crimes that every coin of his vast fortune has been dipped in the tears of a whole family [see _la Maison Nucingen_]--by Nucingen, who has been a legalized Jacques Collin in the world of money. However, you know as well as I do all the bankruptcies and tricks for which that man deserves hanging. My fetters will leave a mark on all my actions, however virtuous. To be a shuttlecock between two racquets--one called the hulks, and the other the police--is a life in which success means never-ending toil, and peace and quiet seem quite impossible.

"At this moment, Monsieur de Granville, Jacques Collin is buried with Lucien, who is being now sprinkled with holy water and carried away to Pere-Lachaise. What I want is a place not to live in, but to die in. As things are, you, representing Justice, have never cared to make the released convict's social status a concern of any interest. Though the law may be satisfied, society is not; society is still suspicious, and does all it can to justify its suspicions; it regards a released convict as an impossible creature; it ought to restore him to his full rights, but, in fact, it prohibits his living in certain circles. Society says to the poor wretch, 'Paris, which is the only place you can be hidden in; Paris and its suburbs for so many miles round is the forbidden land, you shall not live there!' and it subjects the convict to the watchfulness of the police. Do you think that life is possible under such conditions? To live, the convict must work, for he does not come out of prison with a fortune.

"You arrange matters so that he is plainly ticketed, recognized, hedged round, and then you fancy that his fellow-citizens will trust him, when society and justice and the world around him do not. You condemn him to starvation or crime. He cannot get work, and is inevitably dragged into his old ways, which lead to the scaffold.

"Thus, while earnestly wishing to give up this struggle with the law, I could find no place for myself under the sun. One course alone is open to me, that is to become the servant of the power that crushes us; and as soon as this idea dawned on me, the Power of which I spoke was shown in the clearest light. Three great families are at my mercy. Do not suppose I am thinking of blackmail--blackmail is the meanest form of murder. In my eyes it is baser villainy than murder. The murderer needs, at any rate, atrocious courage. And I practise what I preach; for the letters which are my safe-conduct, which allow me to address you thus, and for the moment place me on an equality with you--I, Crime, and you, Justice--those letters are in your power. Your messenger may fetch them, and they will be given up to him.

"I ask no price for them; I do not sell them. Alas! Monsieur le Comte, I was not thinking of myself when I preserved them; I thought that Lucien might some day be in danger! If you cannot agree to my request, my courage is out; I hate life more than enough to make me blow out my own brains and rid you of me!--Or, with a passport, I can go to America and live in the wilderness. I have all the characteristics of a savage.

"These are the thoughts that came to me in the night.--Your clerk, no doubt, carried you a message I sent by him. When I saw what precautions you took to save Lucien's memory from any stain, I dedicated my life to you--a poor offering, for I no longer cared for it; it seemed to me impossible without the star that gave it light, the happiness that glorified it, the thought that gave it meaning, the prosperity of the young poet who was its sun--and I determined to give you the three packets of letters----"

Monsieur de Granville bowed his head.

"I went down into the prison-yard, and there I found the persons guilty of the Nanterre crime, as well as my little chain companion within an inch of the chopper as an involuntary accessory after the fact," Jacques Collin went on. "I discovered that Bibi-Lupin is cheating the authorities, that one of his men murdered the Crottats. Was not this providential, as you say?--So I perceived a remote possibility of doing good, of turning my gifts and the dismal experience I have gained to account for the benefit of society, of being useful instead of mischievous, and I ventured to confide in your judgment, your generosity."

The man's air of candor, of artlessness, of childlike simplicity, as he made his confession, without bitterness, or that philosophy of vice which had hitherto made him so terrible to hear, was like an absolute transformation. He was no longer himself.

"I have such implicit trust in you," he went on, with the humility of a penitent, "that I am wholly at your mercy. You see me with three roads open to me--suicide, America, and the Rue de Jerusalem. Bibi-Lupin is rich; he has served his turn; he is a double-faced rascal. And if you set me to work against him, I would catch him red-handed in some trick within a week. If you will put me in that sneak's shoes, you will do society a real service. I will be honest. I have every quality that is needed in the profession. I am better educated than Bibi-Lupin; I went through my schooling up to rhetoric; I shall not blunder as he does; I have very good manners when I choose. My sole ambition is to become an instrument of order and repression instead of being the incarnation of corruption. I will enlist no more recruits to the army of vice.

"In war, monsieur, when a hostile general is captured, he is not shot, you know; his sword is returned to him, and his prison is a large town; well, I am the general of the hulks, and I have surrendered.--I am beaten, not by the law, but by death. The sphere in which I crave to live and act is the only one that is suited to me, and there I can develop the powers I feel within me.

"Decide."

And Jacques Collin stood in an attitude of diffident submission.

"You place the letters in my hands, then?" said the public prosecutor.

"You have only to send for them; they will be delivered to your messenger."

"But how?"

Jacques Collin read the magistrate's mind, and kept up the game.

"You promised me to commute the capital sentence on Calvi for twenty years' penal servitude. Oh, I am not reminding you of that to drive a bargain," he added eagerly, seeing Monsieur de Granville's expression; "that life should be safe for other reasons, the lad is innocent----"

"How am I to get the letters?" asked the public prosecutor. "It is my right and my business to convince myself that you are the man you say you are. I must have you without conditions."

"Send a man you can trust to the Flower Market on the quay. At the door of a tinman's shop, under the sign of Achilles' shield----"

"That house?"

"Yes," said Jacques Collin, smiling bitterly, "my shield is there.--Your man will see an old woman dressed, as I told you before, like a fish-woman who has saved money--earrings in her ears, and clothes like a rich market-woman's. He must ask for Madame de Saint-Esteve. Do not omit the DE. And he must say, 'I have come from the public prosecutor to fetch you know what.'--You will immediately receive three sealed packets."

"All the letters are there?" said Monsieur de Granville.

"There is no tricking you; you did not get your place for nothing!" said Jacques Collin, with a smile. "I see you still think me capable of testing you and giving you so much blank paper.--No; you do not know me," said he. "I trust you as a son trusts his father."

"You will be taken back to the Conciergerie," said the magistrate, "and there await a decision as to your fate."

Monsieur de Granville rang, and said to the office-boy who answered:

"Beg Monsieur Garnery to come here, if he is in his room."

Besides the forty-eight police commissioners who watch over Paris like forty-eight petty Providences, to say nothing of the guardians of Public Safety--and who have earned the nickname of quart d'oeil, in thieves' slang, a