Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

“You have your hand on some letters from the Comtesse de Serizy,” said Carlos Herrera. “But I cannot imagine why you should have almost all Lucien’s papers,” he added, with a smile of overwhelming irony at the judge.

Camusot, as he saw the smile, understood the bearing of the word “almost.”

“Lucien de Rubempre is in custody under suspicion of being your accomplice,” said he, watching to see the effect of this news on his examinee.

“You have brought about a great misfortune, for he is as innocent as I am,” replied the sham Spaniard, without betraying the smallest agitation.

“We shall see. We have not as yet established your identity,” Camusot observed, surprised at the prisoner’s indifference. “If you are really Don Carlos Herrera, the position of Lucien Chardon will at once be completely altered.”

“To be sure, she became Madame Chardon – Mademoiselle de Rubempre!” murmured Carlos. “Ah! that was one of the greatest sins of my life.”

He raised his eyes to heaven, and by the movement of his lips seemed to be uttering a fervent prayer.

“But if you are Jacques Collin, and if he was, and knew that he was, the companion of an escaped convict, a sacrilegious wretch, all the crimes of which he is suspected by the law are more than probably true.”

Carlos Herrera sat like bronze as he heard this speech, very cleverly delivered by the judge, and his only reply to the words “knew that he was” and “escaped convict” was to lift his hands to heaven with a gesture of noble and dignified sorrow.

“Monsieur l’Abbe,” Camusot went on, with the greatest politeness, “if you are Don Carlos Herrera, you will forgive us for what we are obliged to do in the interests of justice and truth.”

Jacques Collin detected a snare in the lawyer’s very voice as he spoke the words “Monsieur l’Abbe.” The man’s face never changed; Camusot had looked for a gleam of joy, which might have been the first indication of his being a convict, betraying the exquisite satisfaction of a criminal deceiving his judge; but this hero of the hulks was strong in Machiavellian dissimulation.

“I am accustomed to diplomacy, and I belong to an Order of very austere discipline,” replied Jacques Collin, with apostolic mildness. “I understand everything, and am inured to suffering. I should be free by this time if you had discovered in my room the hiding-place where I keep my papers – for I see you have none but unimportant documents.”

This was a finishing stroke to Camusot: Jacques Collin by his air of ease and simplicity had counteracted all the suspicions to which his appearance, unwigged, had given rise.

“Where are these papers?”

“I will tell you exactly if you will get a secretary from the Spanish Embassy to accompany your messenger. He will take them and be answerable to you for the documents, for it is to me a matter of confidential duty – diplomatic secrets which would compromise his late Majesty Louis XVIII – Indeed, monsieur, it would be better – However, you are a magistrate – and, after all, the Ambassador, to whom I refer the whole question, must decide.”

At this juncture the usher announced the arrival of the doctor and the infirmary attendant, who came in.

“Good-morning, Monsieur Lebrun,” said Camusot to the doctor. “I have sent for you to examine the state of health of this prisoner under suspicion. He says he had been poisoned and at the point of death since the day before yesterday; see if there is any risk in undressing him to look for the brand.”

Doctor Lebrun took Jacques Collin’s hand, felt his pulse, asked to look at his tongue, and scrutinized him steadily. This inspection lasted about ten minutes.

“The prisoner has been suffering severely,” said the medical officer, “but at this moment he is amazingly strong – ”

“That spurious energy, monsieur, is due to nervous excitement caused by my strange position,” said Jacques Collin, with the dignity of a bishop.

“That is possible,” said Monsieur Lebrun.

At a sign from Camusot the prisoner was stripped of everything but his trousers, even of his shirt, and the spectators might admire the hairy torso of a Cyclops. It was that of the Farnese Hercules at Naples in its colossal exaggeration.

“For what does nature intend a man of this build?” said Lebrun to the judge.

The usher brought in the ebony staff, which from time immemorial has been the insignia of his office, and is called his rod; he struck it several times over the place where the executioner had branded the fatal letters. Seventeen spots appeared, irregularly distributed, but the most careful scrutiny could not recognize the shape of any letters. The usher indeed pointed out that the top bar of the letter T was shown by two spots, with an interval between of the length of that bar between the two points at each end of it, and there was another spot where the bottom of the T should be.

“Still that is quite uncertain,” said Camusot, seeing doubt in the expression of the prison doctor’s countenance.

Carlos begged them to make the same experiment on the other shoulder and the middle of his back. About fifteen more such scars appeared, which, at the Spaniard’s request, the doctor made a note of; and he pronounced that the man’s back had been so extensively seamed by wounds that the brand would not show even if it had been made by the executioner.

An office-clerk now came in from the Prefecture, and handed a note to Monsieur Camusot, requesting an answer. After reading it the lawyer went to speak to Coquart, but in such a low voice that no one could catch a word. Only, by a glance from Camusot, Jacques Collin could guess that some information concerning him had been sent by the Prefet of Police.

“That friend of Peyrade’s is still at my heels,” thought Jacques Collin. “If only I knew him, I would get rid of him as I did of Contenson. If only I could see Asie once more!”

After signing a paper written by Coquart, the judge put it into an envelope and handed it to the clerk of the Delegate’s office.

This is an indispensable auxiliary to justice. It is under the direction of a police commissioner, and consists of peace-officers who, with the assistance of the police commissioners of each district, carry into effect orders for searching the houses or apprehending the persons of those who are suspected of complicity in crimes and felonies. These functionaries in authority save the examining magistrates a great deal of very precious time.

At a sign from the judge the prisoner was dressed by Monsieur Lebrun and the attendant, who then withdrew with the usher. Camusot sat down at his table and played with his pen.

“You have an aunt,” he suddenly said to Jacques Collin.

“An aunt?” echoed Don Carlos Herrera with amazement. “Why, monsieur, I have no relations. I am the unacknowledged son of the late Duke of Ossuna.”

But to himself he said, “They are burning” – an allusion to the game of hot cockles, which is indeed a childlike symbol of the dreadful struggle between justice and the criminal.

“Pooh!” said Camusot. “You still have an aunt living, Mademoiselle Jacqueline Collin, whom you placed in Esther’s service under the eccentric name of Asie.”

Jacques Collin shrugged his shoulders with an indifference that was in perfect harmony with the cool curiosity he gave throughout to the judge’s words, while Camusot studied him with cunning attention.

“Take care,” said Camusot; “listen to me.”

“I am listening, sir.”

“You aunt is a wardrobe dealer at the Temple; her business is managed by a demoiselle Paccard, the sister of a convict – herself a very good girl, known as la Romette. Justice is on the traces of your aunt, and in a few hours we shall have decisive evidence. The woman is wholly devoted to you – ”

“Pray go on, Monsieur le Juge,” said Collin coolly, in answer to a pause; “I am listening to you.”

“Your aunt, who is about five years older than you are, was formerly Marat’s mistress – of odious memory. From that blood-stained source she derived the little fortune she possesses.

“From information I have received she must be a very clever receiver of stolen goods, for no proofs have yet been found to commit her on. After Marat’s death she seems, from the notes I have here, to have lived with a chemist who was condemned to death in the year XII. for issuing false coin. She was called as witness in the case. It was from this intimacy that she derived her knowledge of poisons.

“In 1812 and in 1816 she spent two years in prison for placing girls under age upon the streets.

“You were already convicted of forgery; you had left the banking house where your aunt had been able to place you as clerk, thanks to the education you had had, and the favor enjoyed by your aunt with certain persons for whose debaucheries she supplied victims.

“All this, prisoner, is not much like the dignity of the Dukes d’Ossuna.

“Do you persist in your denial?”

Jacques Collin sat listening to Monsieur Camusot, and thinking of his happy childhood at the College of the Oratorians, where he had been brought up, a meditation which lent him a truly amazed look. And in spite of his skill as a practised examiner, Camusot could bring no sort of expression to those placid features.

“If you have accurately recorded the account of myself I gave you at first,” said Jacques Collin, “you can read it through again. I cannot alter the facts. I never went to the woman’s house; how should I know who her cook was? The persons of whom you speak are utterly unknown to me.”

“Notwithstanding your denial, we shall proceed to confront you with persons who may succeed in diminishing your assurance”

“A man who has been three times shot is used to anything,” replied Jacques Collin meekly.

Camusot proceeded to examine the seized papers while awaiting the return of the famous Bibi-Lupin, whose expedition was amazing; for at half-past eleven, the inquiry having begun at ten o’clock, the usher came in to inform the judge in an undertone of Bibi-Lupin’s arrival.

“Show him in,” replied M. Camusot.

Bibi-Lupin, who had been expected to exclaim, “It is he,” as he came in, stood puzzled. He did not recognize his man in a face pitted with smallpox. This hesitancy startled the magistrate.

“It is his build, his height,” said the agent. “Oh! yes, it is you, Jacques Collin!” he went on, as he examined his eyes, forehead, and ears. “There are some things which no disguise can alter… Certainly it is he, Monsieur Camusot. Jacques has the scar of a cut on his left arm. Take off his coat, and you will see…”

Jacques Collin was again obliged to take off his coat; Bibi-Lupin turned up his sleeve and showed the scar he had spoken of.

“It is the scar of a bullet,” replied Don Carlos Herrera. “Here are several more.”

“Ah! It is certainly his voice,” cried Bibi-Lupin.

“Your certainty,” said Camusot, “is merely an opinion; it is not proof.”

“I know that,” said Bibi-Lupin with deference. “But I will bring witnesses. One of the boarders from the Maison Vauquer is here already,” said he, with an eye on Collin.

But the prisoner’s set, calm face did not move a muscle.

“Show the person in,” said Camusot roughly, his dissatisfaction betraying itself in spite of his seeming indifference.

This irritation was not lost on Jacques Collin, who had not counted on the judge’s sympathy, and sat lost in apathy, produced by his deep meditations in the effort to guess what the cause could be.

The usher now showed in Madame Poiret. At this unexpected appearance the prisoner had a slight shiver, but his trepidation was not remarked by Camusot, who seemed to have made up his mind.

“What is your name?” asked he, proceeding to carry out the formalities introductory to all depositions and examinations.

Madame Poiret, a little old woman as white and wrinkled as a sweetbread, dressed in a dark-blue silk gown, gave her name as Christine Michelle Michonneau, wife of one Poiret, and her age as fifty-one years, said that she was born in Paris, lived in the Rue des Poules at the corner of the Rue des Postes, and that her business was that of lodging-house keeper.

“In 1818 and 1819,” said the judge, “you lived, madame, in a boarding-house kept by a Madame Vauquer?”

“Yes, monsieur; it was there that I met Monsieur Poiret, a retired official, who became my husband, and whom I have nursed in his bed this twelvemonth past. Poor man! he is very bad; and I cannot be long away from him.”

“There was a certain Vautrin in the house at the time?” asked Camusot.

“Oh, monsieur, that is quite a long story; he was a horrible man, from the galleys – ”

“You helped to get him arrested?”

“That is not true sir.”

“You are in the presence of the Law; be careful,” said Monsieur Camusot severely.

Madame Poiret was silent.

“Try to remember,” Camusot went on. “Do you recollect the man? Would you know him again?”

“I think so.”

“Is this the man?”

Madame Poiret put on her “eye-preservers,” and looked at the Abbe Carlos Herrera.

“It is his build, his height; and yet – no – if – Monsieur le Juge,” she said, “if I could see his chest I should recognize him at once.”

The magistrate and his clerk could not help laughing, notwithstanding the gravity of their office; Jacques Collin joined in their hilarity, but discreetly. The prisoner had not put on his coat after Bibi-Lupin had removed it, and at a sign from the judge he obligingly opened his shirt.

“Yes, that is his fur trimming, sure enough! – But it has worn gray, Monsieur Vautrin,” cried Madame Poiret.

“What have you to say to that?” asked the judge of the prisoner.

“That she is mad,” replied Jacques Collin.

“Bless me! If I had a doubt – for his face is altered – that voice would be enough. He is the man who threatened me. Ah! and those are his eyes!”

“The police agent and this woman,” said Camusot, speaking to Jacques Collin, “cannot possibly have conspired to say the same thing, for neither of them had seen you till now. How do you account for that?”

“Justice has blundered more conspicuously even than it does now in accepting the evidence of a woman who recognizes a man by the hair on his chest and the suspicions of a police agent,” replied Jacques Collin. “I am said to resemble a great criminal in voice, eyes, and build; that seems a little vague. As to the memory which would prove certain relations between Madame and my Sosie – which she does not blush to own – you yourself laughed at. Allow me, monsieur, in the interests of truth, which I am far more anxious to establish for my own sake than you can be for the sake of justice, to ask this lady – Madame Foiret – ”

“Poiret.”

“Poret – excuse me, I am a Spaniard – whether she remembers the other persons who lived in this – what did you call the house?”

“A boarding-house,” said Madame Poiret.

“I do not know what that is.”

“A house where you can dine and breakfast by subscription.”

“You are right,” said Camusot, with a favorable nod to Jacques Collin, whose apparent good faith in suggesting means to arrive at some conclusion struck him greatly. “Try to remember the boarders who were in the house when Jacques Collin was apprehended.”

“There were Monsieur de Rastignac, Doctor Bianchon, Pere Goriot, Mademoiselle Taillefer – ”

“That will do,” said Camusot, steadily watching Jacques Collin, whose expression did not change. “Well, about this Pere Goriot?”

“He is dead,” said Madame Poiret.

“Monsieur,” said Jacques Collin, “I have several times met Monsieur de Rastignac, a friend, I believe, of Madame de Nucingen’s; and if it is the same, he certainly never supposed me to be the convict with whom these persons try to identify me.”

“Monsieur de Rastignac and Doctor Bianchon,” said the magistrate, “both hold such a social position that their evidence, if it is in your favor, will be enough to procure your release. – Coquart, fill up a summons for each of them.”

The formalities attending Madame Poiret’s examination were over in a few minutes; Coquart read aloud to her the notes he had made of the little scene, and she signed the paper; but the prisoner refused to sign, alleging his ignorance of the forms of French law.

“That is enough for to-day,” said Monsieur Camusot. “You must be wanting food. I will have you taken back to the Conciergerie.”

“Alas! I am suffering too much to be able to eat,” said Jacques Collin.

Camusot was anxious to time Jacques Collin’s return to coincide with the prisoners’ hour of exercise in the prison yard; but he needed a reply from the Governor of the Conciergerie to the order he had given him in the morning, and he rang for the usher. The usher appeared, and told him that the porter’s wife, from the house on the Quai Malaquais, had an important document to communicate with reference to Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre. This was so serious a matter that it put Camusot’s intentions out of his head.

“Show her in,” said he.

“Beg your pardon; pray excuse me, gentlemen all,” said the woman, courtesying to the judge and the Abbe Carlos by turns. “We were so worried by the Law – my husband and me – the twice when it has marched into our house, that we had forgotten a letter that was lying, for Monsieur Lucien, in our chest of drawers, which we paid ten sous for it, though it was posted in Paris, for it is very heavy, sir. Would you please to pay me back the postage? For God knows when we shall see our lodgers again!”

“Was this letter handed to you by the postman?” asked Camusot, after carefully examining the envelope.

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Coquart, write full notes of this deposition. – Go on, my good woman; tell us your name and your business.” Camusot made the woman take the oath, and then he dictated the document.

While these formalities were being carried out, he was scrutinizing the postmark, which showed the hours of posting and delivery, as well at the date of the day. And this letter, left for Lucien the day after Esther’s death, had beyond a doubt been written and posted on the day of the catastrophe. Monsieur Camusot’s amazement may therefore be imagined when he read this letter written and signed by her whom the law believed to have been the victim of a crime: —

“Esther to Lucien“MONDAY, May 13th, 1830.“My last day; ten in the morning

“MY LUCIEN, – I have not an hour to live. At eleven o’clock I shall be dead, and I shall die without a pang. I have paid fifty thousand francs for a neat little black currant, containing a poison that will kill me with the swiftness of lightning. And so, my darling, you may tell yourself, ‘My little Esther had no suffering.’ – and yet I shall suffer in writing these pages.

“The monster who has paid so dear for me, knowing that the day when I should know myself to be his would have no morrow – Nucingen has just left me, as drunk as a bear with his skin full of wind. For the first and last time in my life I have had the opportunity of comparing my old trade as a street hussy with the life of true love, of placing the tenderness which unfolds in the infinite above the horrors of a duty which longs to destroy itself and leave no room even for a kiss. Only such loathing could make death delightful.

“I have taken a bath; I should have liked to send for the father confessor of the convent where I was baptized, to have confessed and washed my soul. But I have had enough of prostitution; it would be profaning a sacrament; and besides, I feel myself cleansed in the waters of sincere repentance. God must do what He will with me.

“But enough of all this maudlin; for you I want to be your Esther to the last moment, not to bore you with my death, or the future, or God, who is good, and who would not be good if He were to torture me in the next world when I have endured so much misery in this.

“I have before me your beautiful portrait, painted by Madame de Mirbel. That sheet of ivory used to comfort me in your absence, I look at it with rapture as I write you my last thoughts, and tell you of the last throbbing of my heart. I shall enclose the miniature in this letter, for I cannot bear that it should be stolen or sold. The mere thought that what has been my great joy may lie behind a shop window, mixed up with the ladies and officers of the Empire, or a parcel of Chinese absurdities, is a small death to me. Destroy that picture, my sweetheart, wipe it out, never give it to any one – unless, indeed, the gift might win back the heart of that walking, well-dressed maypole, that Clotilde de Grandlieu, who will make you black and blue in her sleep, her bones are so sharp. – Yes, to that I consent, and then I shall still be of some use to you, as when I was alive. Oh! to give you pleasure, or only to make you laugh, I would have stood over a brazier with an apple in my mouth to cook it for you. – So my death even will be of service to you. – I should have marred your home.

“Oh! that Clotilde! I cannot understand her. – She might have been your wife, have borne your name, have never left you day or night, have belonged to you – and she could make difficulties! Only the Faubourg Saint-Germain can do that! and yet she has not ten pounds of flesh on her bones!

“Poor Lucien! Dear ambitious failure! I am thinking of your future life. Well, well! you will more than once regret your poor faithful dog, the good girl who would fly to serve you, who would have been dragged into a police court to secure your happiness, whose only occupation was to think of your pleasures and invent new ones, who was so full of love for you – in her hair, her feet, her ears – your ballerina, in short, whose every look was a benediction; who for six years has thought of nothing but you, who was so entirely your chattel that I have never been anything but an effluence of your soul, as light is that of the sun. However, for lack of money and of honor, I can never be your wife. I have at any rate provided for your future by giving you all I have.

“Come as soon as you get this letter and take what you find under my pillow, for I do not trust the people about me. Understand that I mean to look beautiful when I am dead. I shall go to bed, and lay myself flat in an attitude – why not? Then I shall break the little pill against the roof of my mouth, and shall not be disfigured by any convulsion or by a ridiculous position.

“Madame de Serizy has quarreled with you, I know, because of me; but when she hears that I am dead, you see, dear pet, she will forgive. Make it up with her, and she will find you a suitable wife if the Grandlieus persist in their refusal.

“My dear, I do not want you to grieve too much when you hear of my death. To begin with, I must tell you that the hour of eleven on Monday morning, the thirteenth of May, is only the end of a long illness, which began on the day when, on the Terrace of Saint-Germain, you threw me back on my former line of life. The soul may be sick, as the body is. But the soul cannot submit stupidly to suffering like the body; the body does not uphold the soul as the soul upholds the body, and the soul sees a means of cure in the reflection which leads to the needlewoman’s resource – the bushel of charcoal. You gave me a whole life the day before yesterday, when you said that if Clotilde still refused you, you would marry me. It would have been a great misfortune for us both; I should have been still more dead, so to speak – for there are more and less bitter deaths. The world would never have recognized us.

“For two months past I have been thinking of many things, I can tell you. A poor girl is in the mire, as I was before I went into the convent; men think her handsome, they make her serve their pleasure without thinking any consideration necessary; they pack her off on foot after fetching her in a carriage; if they do not spit in her face, it is only because her beauty preserves her from such indignity; but, morally speaking they do worse. Well, and if this despised creature were to inherit five or six millions of francs, she would be courted by princes, bowed to with respect as she went past in her carriage, and might choose among the oldest names in France and Navarre. That world which would have cried Raca to us, on seeing two handsome creatures united and happy, always did honor to Madame de Stael, in spite of her ‘romances in real life,’ because she had two hundred thousand francs a year. The world, which grovels before money or glory, will not bow down before happiness or virtue – for I could have done good. Oh! how many tears I would have dried – as many as I have shed – I believe! Yes, I would have lived only for you and for charity.