Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

“These are the thoughts that make death beautiful. So do not lament, my dear. Say often to yourself, ‘There were two good creatures, two beautiful creatures, who both died for me ungrudgingly, and who adored me.’ Keep a memory in your heart of Coralie and Esther, and go your way and prosper. Do you recollect the day when you pointed out to me a shriveled old woman, in a melon-green bonnet and a puce wrapper, all over black grease-spots, the mistress of a poet before the Revolution, hardly thawed by the sun though she was sitting against the wall of the Tuileries and fussing over a pug – the vilest of pugs? She had had footmen and carriages, you know, and a fine house! And I said to you then, ‘How much better to be dead at thirty!’ – Well, you thought I was melancholy, and you played all sorts of pranks to amuse me, and between two kisses I said, ‘Every day some pretty woman leaves the play before it is over!’ – And I do not want to see the last piece; that is all.

“You must think me a great chatterbox; but this is my last effusion. I write as if I were talking to you, and I like to talk cheerfully. I have always had a horror of a dressmaker pitying herself. You know I knew how to die decently once before, on my return from that fatal opera-ball where the men said I had been a prostitute.

“No, no, my dear love, never give this portrait to any one! If you could know with what a gush of love I have sat losing myself in your eyes, looking at them with rapture during a pause I allowed myself, you would feel as you gathered up the affection with which I have tried to overlay the ivory, that the soul of your little pet is indeed there.

“A dead woman craving alms! That is a funny idea. – Come, I must learn to lie quiet in my grave.

“You have no idea how heroic my death would seem to some fools if they could know Nucingen last night offered me two millions of francs if I would love him as I love you. He will be handsomely robbed when he hears that I have kept my word and died of him. I tried all I could still to breathe the air you breathe. I said to the fat scoundrel, ‘Do you want me to love you as you wish? To promise even that I will never see Lucien again?’ – ‘What must I do?’ he asked. – ‘Give me the two millions for him.’ – You should have seen his face! I could have laughed, if it had not been so tragical for me.

“‘Spare yourself the trouble of refusing,’ said I; ‘I see you care more for your two millions than for me. A woman is always glad to know at what she is valued!’ and I turned my back on him.

“In a few hours the old rascal will know that I was not in jest.

“Who will part your hair as nicely as I do? Pooh! – I will think no more of anything in life; I have but five minutes, I give them to God. Do not be jealous of Him, dear heart; I shall speak to Him of you, beseeching Him for your happiness as the price of my death, and my punishment in the next world. I am vexed enough at having to go to hell. I should have liked to see the angels, to know if they are like you.

“Good-bye, my darling, good-bye! I give you all the blessing of my woes. Even in the grave I am your Esther.

“It is striking eleven. I have said my last prayers. I am going to bed to die. Once more, farewell! I wish that the warmth of my hand could leave my soul there where I press a last kiss – and once more I must call you my dearest love, though you are the cause of the death of your Esther.”

A vague feeling of jealousy tightened on the magistrate’s heart as he read this letter, the only letter from a suicide he had ever found written with such lightness, though it was a feverish lightness, and the last effort of a blind affection.

“What is there in the man that he should be loved so well?” thought he, saying what every man says who has not the gift of attracting women.

“If you can prove not merely that you are not Jacques Collin and an escaped convict, but that you are in fact Don Carlos Herrera, canon of Toledo, and secret envoy of this Majesty Ferdinand VII.,” said he, addressing the prisoner “you will be released; for the impartiality demanded by my office requires me to tell you that I have this moment received a letter, written by Mademoiselle Esther Gobseck, in which she declares her intention of killing herself, and expresses suspicions as to her servants, which would seem to point to them as the thieves who have made off with the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs.”

As he spoke Monsieur Camusot was comparing the writing of the letter with that of the will; and it seemed to him self-evident that the same person had written both.

“Monsieur, you were in too great a hurry to believe in a murder; do not be too hasty in believing in a theft.”

“Heh!” said Camusot, scrutinizing the prisoner with a piercing eye.

“Do not suppose that I am compromising myself by telling you that the sum may possibly be recovered,” said Jacques Collin, making the judge understand that he saw his suspicions. “That poor girl was much loved by those about her; and if I were free, I would undertake to search for this money, which no doubt belongs to the being I love best in the world – to Lucien! – Will you allow me to read that letter; it will not take long? It is evidence of my dear boy’s innocence – you cannot fear that I shall destroy it – nor that I shall talk about it; I am in solitary confinement.”

“In confinement! You will be so no longer,” cried the magistrate. “It is I who must beg you to get well as soon as possible. Refer to your ambassador if you choose – ”

And he handed the letter to Jacques Collin. Camusot was glad to be out of a difficulty, to be able to satisfy the public prosecutor, Mesdames de Maufrigneuse and de Serizy. Nevertheless, he studied his prisoner’s face with cold curiosity while Collin read Esther’s letter; in spite of the apparent genuineness of the feelings it expressed, he said to himself:

“But it is a face worthy of the hulks, all the same!”

“That is the way to love!” said Jacques Collin, returning the letter. And he showed Camusot a face bathed in tears.

“If only you knew him,” he went on, “so youthful, so innocent a soul, so splendidly handsome, a child, a poet! – The impulse to sacrifice oneself to him is irresistible, to satisfy his lightest wish. That dear boy is so fascinating when he chooses – ”

“And so,” said the magistrate, making a final effort to discover the truth, “you cannot possibly be Jacques Collin – ”

“No, monsieur,” replied the convict.

And Jacques Collin was more entirely Don Carlos Herrera than ever. In his anxiety to complete his work he went up to the judge, led him to the window, and gave himself the airs of a prince of the Church, assuming a confidential tone:

“I am so fond of that boy, monsieur, that if it were needful, to spare that idol of my heart a mere discomfort even, that I should be the criminal you take me for, I would surrender,” said he in an undertone. “I would follow the example of the poor girl who has killed herself for his benefit. And I beg you, monsieur, to grant me a favor – namely, to set Lucien at liberty forthwith.”

“My duty forbids it,” said Camusot very good-naturedly; “but if a sinner may make a compromise with heaven, justice too has its softer side, and if you can give me sufficient reasons – speak; your words will not be taken down.”

“Well, then,” Jacques Collin went on, taken in by Camusot’s apparent goodwill, “I know what that poor boy is suffering at this moment; he is capable of trying to kill himself when he finds himself a prisoner – ”

“Oh! as to that!” said Camusot with a shrug.

“You do not know whom you will oblige by obliging me,” added Jacques Collin, trying to harp on another string. “You will be doing a service to others more powerful than any Comtesse de Serizy or Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, who will never forgive you for having had their letters in your chambers – ” and he pointed to two packets of perfumed papers. “My Order has a good memory.”

“Monsieur,” said Camusot, “that is enough. You must find better reasons to give me. I am as much interested in the prisoner as in public vengeance.”

“Believe me, then, I know Lucien; he has a soul of a woman, of a poet, and a southerner, without persistency or will,” said Jacques Collin, who fancied that he saw that he had won the judge over. “You are convinced of the young man’s innocence, do not torture him, do not question him. Give him that letter, tell him that he is Esther’s heir, and restore him to freedom. If you act otherwise, you will bring despair on yourself; whereas, if you simply release him, I will explain to you – keep me still in solitary confinement – to-morrow or this evening, everything that may strike you as mysterious in the case, and the reasons for the persecution of which I am the object. But it will be at the risk of my life, a price has been set on my head these six years past… Lucien free, rich, and married to Clotilde de Grandlieu, and my task on earth will be done; I shall no longer try to save my skin. – My persecutor was a spy under your late King.”

“What, Corentin?”

“Ah! Is his name Corentin? Thank you, monsieur. Well, will you promise to do as I ask you?”

“A magistrate can make no promises. – Coquart, tell the usher and the gendarmes to take the prisoner back to the Conciergerie. – I will give orders that you are to have a private room,” he added pleasantly, with a slight nod to the convict.

Struck by Jacques Collin’s request, and remembering how he had insisted that he wished to be examined first as a privilege to his state of health, Camusot’s suspicions were aroused once more. Allowing his vague doubts to make themselves heard, he noticed that the self-styled dying man was walking off with the strength of a Hercules, having abandoned all the tricks he had aped so well on appearing before the magistrate.

“Monsieur!”

Jacques Collin turned round.

“Notwithstanding your refusal to sign the document, my clerk will read you the minutes of your examination.”

The prisoner was evidently in excellent health; the readiness with which he came back, and sat down by the clerk, was a fresh light to the magistrate’s mind.

“You have got well very suddenly!” said Camusot.

“Caught!” thought Jacques Collin; and he replied:

“Joy, monsieur, is the only panacea. – That letter, the proof of innocence of which I had no doubt – these are the grand remedy.”

The judge kept a meditative eye on the prisoner when the usher and the gendarmes again took him in charge. Then, with a start like a waking man, he tossed Esther’s letter across to the table where his clerk sat, saying:

“Coquart, copy that letter.”

If it is natural to man to be suspicious as to some favor required of him when it is antagonistic to his interests or his duty, and sometimes even when it is a matter of indifference, this feeling is law to an examining magistrate. The more this prisoner – whose identity was not yet ascertained – pointed to clouds on the horizon in the event of Lucien’s being examined, the more necessary did the interrogatory seem to Camusot. Even if this formality had not been required by the Code and by common practice, it was indispensable as bearing on the identification of the Abbe Carlos. There is in every walk of life the business conscience. In default of curiosity Camusot would have examined Lucien as he had examined Jacques Collin, with all the cunning which the most honest magistrate allows himself to use in such cases. The services he might render and his own promotion were secondary in Camusot’s mind to his anxiety to know or guess the truth, even if he should never tell it.

He stood drumming on the window-pane while following the river-like current of his conjectures, for in these moods thought is like a stream flowing through many countries. Magistrates, in love with truth, are like jealous women; they give way to a thousand hypotheses, and probe them with the dagger-point of suspicion, as the sacrificing priest of old eviscerated his victims; thus they arrive, not perhaps at truth, but at probability, and at last see the truth beyond. A woman cross-questions the man she loves as the judge cross-questions a criminal. In such a frame of mind, a glance, a word, a tone of voice, the slightest hesitation is enough to certify the hidden fact – treason or crime.

“The style in which he depicted his devotion to his son – if he is his son – is enough to make me think that he was in the girl’s house to keep an eye on the plunder; and never suspecting that the dead woman’s pillow covered a will, he no doubt annexed, for his son, the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs as a precaution. That is why he can promise to recover the money.

“M. de Rubempre owes it to himself and to justice to account for his father’s position in the world —

“And he offers me the protection of his Order – His Order! – if I do not examine Lucien – ”

As has been seen, a magistrate conducts an examination exactly as he thinks proper. He is at liberty to display his acumen or be absolutely blunt. An examination may be everything or nothing. Therein lies the favor.

Camusot rang. The usher had returned. He was sent to fetch Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre with an injunction to prohibit his speaking to anybody on his way up. It was by this time two in the afternoon.

“There is some secret,” said the judge to himself, “and that secret must be very important. My amphibious friend – since he is neither priest, nor secular, nor convict, nor Spaniard, though he wants to hinder his protege from letting out something dreadful – argues thus: ‘The poet is weak and effeminate; he is not like me, a Hercules in diplomacy, and you will easily wring our secret from him.’ – Well, we will get everything out of this innocent.”

And he sat tapping the edge of his table with the ivory paper-knife, while Coquart copied Esther’s letter.

How whimsical is the action of our faculties! Camusot conceived of every crime as possible, and overlooked the only one that the prisoner had now committed – the forgery of the will for Lucien’s advantage. Let those whose envy vents itself on magistrates think for a moment of their life spent in perpetual suspicion, of the torments these men must inflict on their minds, for civil cases are not less tortuous than criminal examinations, and it will occur to them perhaps that the priest and the lawyer wear an equally heavy coat of mail, equally furnished with spikes in the lining. However, every profession has its hair shirt and its Chinese puzzles.

It was about two o’clock when Monsieur Camusot saw Lucien de Rubempre come in, pale, worn, his eyes red and swollen, in short, in a state of dejection which enabled the magistrate to compare nature with art, the really dying man with the stage performance. His walk from the Conciergerie to the judge’s chambers, between two gendarmes, and preceded by the usher, had put the crowning touch to Lucien’s despair. It is the poet’s nature to prefer execution to condemnation.

As he saw this being, so completely bereft of the moral courage which is the essence of a judge, and which the last prisoner had so strongly manifested, Monsieur Camusot disdained the easy victory; and this scorn enabled him to strike a decisive blow, since it left him, on the ground, that horrible clearness of mind which the marksman feels when he is firing at a puppet.

“Collect yourself, Monsieur de Rubempre; you are in the presence of a magistrate who is eager to repair the mischief done involuntarily by the law when a man is taken into custody on suspicion that has no foundation. I believe you to be innocent, and you will soon be at liberty. – Here is the evidence of your innocence; it is a letter kept for you during your absence by your porter’s wife; she has just brought it here. In the commotion caused by the visitation of justice and the news of your arrest at Fontainebleau, the woman forgot the letter which was written by Mademoiselle Esther Gobseck. – Read it!”

Lucien took the letter, read it, and melted into tears. He sobbed, and could not say a single word. At the end of a quarter of an hour, during which Lucien with great difficulty recovered his self-command, the clerk laid before him the copy of the letter and begged him to sign a footnote certifying that the copy was faithful to the original, and might be used in its stead “on all occasions in the course of this preliminary inquiry,” giving him the option of comparing the two; but Lucien, of course, took Coquart’s word for its accuracy.

“Monsieur,” said the lawyer, with friendly good nature, “it is nevertheless impossible that I should release you without carrying out the legal formalities, and asking you some questions. – It is almost as a witness that I require you to answer. To such a man as you I think it is almost unnecessary to point out that the oath to tell the whole truth is not in this case a mere appeal to your conscience, but a necessity for your own sake, your position having been for a time somewhat ambiguous. The truth can do you no harm, be it what it may; falsehood will send you to trial, and compel me to send you back to the Conciergerie; whereas if you answer fully to my questions, you will sleep to-night in your own house, and be rehabilitated by this paragraph in the papers: ‘Monsieur de Rubempre, who was arrested yesterday at Fontainebleau, was set at liberty after a very brief examination.’”

This speech made a deep impression on Lucien; and the judge, seeing the temper of his prisoner, added:

“I may repeat to you that you were suspected of being accessory to the murder by poison of this Demoiselle Esther. Her suicide is clearly proved, and there is an end of that; but a sum of seven hundred and fifty thousand francs has been stolen, which she had disposed of by will, and you are the legatee. This is a felony. The crime was perpetrated before the discovery of the will.

“Now there is reason to suppose that a person who loves you as much as you loved Mademoiselle Esther committed the theft for your benefit. – Do not interrupt me,” Camusot went on, seeing that Lucien was about to speak, and commanding silence by a gesture; “I am asking you nothing so far. I am anxious to make you understand how deeply your honor is concerned in this question. Give up the false and contemptible notion of the honor binding two accomplices, and tell the whole truth.”

The reader must already have observed the extreme disproportion of the weapons in this conflict between the prisoner under suspicion and the examining judge. Absolute denial when skilfully used has in its favor its positive simplicity, and sufficiently defends the criminal; but it is, in a way, a coat of mail which becomes crushing as soon as the stiletto of cross-examination finds a joint to it. As soon as mere denial is ineffectual in face of certain proven facts, the examinee is entirely at the judge’s mercy.

Now, supposing that a sort of half-criminal, like Lucien, might, if he were saved from the first shipwreck of his honesty, amend his ways, and become a useful member of society, he will be lost in the pitfalls of his examination.

The judge has the driest possible record drawn up of the proceedings, a faithful analysis of the questions and answers; but no trace remains of his insidiously paternal addresses or his captious remonstrances, such as this speech. The judges of the superior courts see the results, but see nothing of the means. Hence, as some experienced persons have thought, it would be a good plan that, as in England, a jury should hear the examination. For a short while France enjoyed the benefit of this system. Under the Code of Brumaire of the year IV., this body was known as the examining jury, as distinguished from the trying jury. As to the final trial, if we should restore the examining jury, it would have to be the function of the superior courts without the aid of a jury.

“And now,” said Camusot, after a pause, “what is your name? – Attention, Monsieur Coquart!” said he to the clerk.

“Lucien Chardon de Rubempre.”

“And you were born – ?”

“At Angouleme.” And Lucien named the day, month, and year.

“You inherited no fortune?”

“None whatever.”

“And yet, during your first residence in Paris, you spent a great deal, as compared with your small income?”

“Yes, monsieur; but at that time I had a most devoted friend in Mademoiselle Coralie, and I was so unhappy as to lose her. It was my grief at her death that made me return to my country home.”

“That is right, monsieur,” said Camusot; “I commend your frankness; it will be thoroughly appreciated.”

Lucien, it will be seen, was prepared to make a clean breast of it.

“On your return to Paris you lived even more expensively than before,” Camusot went on. “You lived like a man who might have about sixty thousand francs a year.”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Who supplied you with the money?”

“My protector, the Abbe Carlos Herrera.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“We met when traveling, just as I was about to be quit of life by committing suicide.”

“You never heard him spoken of by your family – by your mother?”

“Never.”

“Can you remember the year and the month when you first became connected with Mademoiselle Esther?”

“Towards the end of 1823, at a small theatre on the Boulevard.”

“At first she was an expense to you?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Lately, in the hope of marrying Mademoiselle de Grandlieu, you purchased the ruins of the Chateau de Rubempre, you added land to the value of a million francs, and you told the family of Grandlieu that your sister and your brother-in-law had just come into a considerable fortune, and that their liberality had supplied you with the money. – Did you tell the Grandlieus this, monsieur?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“You do not know the reason why the marriage was broken off?”

“Not in the least, monsieur.”

“Well, the Grandlieus sent one of the most respectable attorneys in Paris to see your brother-in-law and inquire into the facts. At Angouleme this lawyer, from the statements of your sister and brother-in-law, learned that they not only had hardly lent you any money, but also that their inheritance consisted of land, of some extent no doubt, but that the whole amount of invested capital was not more than about two hundred thousand francs. – Now you cannot wonder that such people as the Grandlieus should reject a fortune of which the source is more than doubtful. This, monsieur, is what a lie has led to – ”

Lucien was petrified by this revelation, and the little presence of mind he had preserved deserted him.

“Remember,” said Camusot, “that the police and the law know all they want to know. – And now,” he went on, recollecting Jacques Collin’s assumed paternity, “do you know who this pretended Carlos Herrera is?”

“Yes, monsieur; but I knew it too late.”

“Too late! How? Explain yourself.”

“He is not a priest, not a Spaniard, he is – ”

“An escaped convict?” said the judge eagerly.

“Yes,” replied Lucien, “when he told me the fatal secret, I was already under obligations to him; I had fancied I was befriended by a respectable priest.”

“Jacques Collin – ” said Monsieur Camusot, beginning a sentence.

“Yes,” said Lucien, “his name is Jacques Collin.”

“Very good. Jacques Collin has just now been identified by another person, and though he denies it, he does so, I believe, in your interest. But I asked whether you knew who the man is in order to prove another of Jacques Collin’s impostures.”

Lucien felt as though he had hot iron in his inside as he heard this alarming statement.

“Do you not know,” Camusot went on, “that in order to give color to the extraordinary affection he has for you, he declares that he is your father?”

“He! My father? – Oh, monsieur, did he tell you that?”

“Have you any suspicion of where the money came from that he used to give you? For, if I am to believe the evidence of the letter you have in your hand, that poor girl, Mademoiselle Esther, must have done you lately the same services as Coralie formerly rendered you. Still, for some years, as you have just admitted, you lived very handsomely without receiving anything from her.”

“It is I who should ask you, monsieur, whence convicts get their money! Jacques Collin my father! – Oh, my poor mother!” and Lucien burst into tears.

“Coquart, read out to the prisoner that part of Carlos Herrera’s examination in which he said that Lucien de Rubempre was his son.”

The poet listened in silence, and with a look that was terrible to behold.