Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Part 70

Soon after Monsieur de Granville had left, anxious to go to see Monsieur de Serizy, Ma.s.sol came and found his ally Chargeboeuf in the public prosecutor's Court.

"My dear fellow," said the young secretary, "if you will do me a great favor, you will put what I dictate to you in your _Gazette_ to-morrow under the heading of Law Reports; you can compose the heading. Write now."

And he dictated as follows:--

"It has been ascertained that the Demoiselle Esther Gobseck killed herself of her own free will.

"Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre satisfactorily proved an alibi, and his innocence leaves his arrest to be regretted, all the more because just as the examining judge had given the order for his release the young gentleman died suddenly."

"I need not point out to you," said the young lawyer to Ma.s.sol, "how necessary it is to preserve absolute silence as to the little service requested of you."

"Since it is you who do me the honor of so much confidence," replied Ma.s.sol, "allow me to make one observation. This paragraph will give rise to odious comments on the course of justice----"

"Justice is strong enough to bear them," said the young attache to the Courts, with the pride of a coming magistrate trained by Monsieur de Granville.

"Allow me, my dear sir; with two sentences this difficulty may be avoided."

And the journalist-lawyer wrote as follows:--

"The forms of the law have nothing to do with this sad event. The post-mortem examination, which was at once made, proved that sudden death was due to the rupture of an aneurism in its last stage. If Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre had been upset by his arrest, death must have ensued sooner. But we are in a position to state that, far from being distressed at being taken into custody, the young man, whom all must lament, only laughed at it, and told those who escorted him from Fontainebleau to Paris that as soon as he was brought before a magistrate his innocence would be acknowledged."

"That saves it, I think?" said Ma.s.sol.

"You are perfectly right."

"The public prosecutor will thank you for it to-morrow," said Ma.s.sol slyly.

Now to the great majority, as to the more choice reader, it will perhaps seem that this Study is not completed by the death of Esther and of Lucien; Jacques Collin and Asie, Europe and Paccard, in spite of their villainous lives, may have been interesting enough to make their fate a matter of curiosity.

The last act of the drama will also complete the picture of life which this Study is intended to present, and give the issue of various interests which Lucien's career had strangely tangled by bringing some ign.o.ble personages from the hulks into contact with those of the highest rank.

Thus, as may be seen, the greatest events of life find their expression in the more or less veracious gossip of the Paris papers. And this is the case with many things of greater importance than are here recorded.

VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR

"What is it, Madeleine?" asked Madame Camusot, seeing her maid come into the room with the particular air that servants a.s.sume in critical moments.

"Madame," said Madeleine, "monsieur has just come in from Court; but he looks so upset, and is in such a state, that I think perhaps it would be well for you to go to his room."

"Did he say anything?" asked Madame Camusot.

"No, madame; but we never have seen monsieur look like that; he looks as if he were going to be ill, his face is yellow--he seems all to pieces----"

Madame Camusot waited for no more; she rushed out of her room and flew to her husband's study. She found the lawyer sitting in an armchair, pale and dazed, his legs stretched out, his head against the back of it, his hands hanging limp, exactly as if he were sinking into idiotcy.

"What is the matter, my dear?" said the young woman in alarm.

"Oh! my poor Amelie, the most dreadful thing has happened--I am still trembling. Imagine, the public prosecutor--no, Madame de Serizy--that is--I do not know where to begin."

"Begin at the end," said Madame Camusot.

"Well, just as Monsieur Popinot, in the council room of the first Court, had put the last signature to the ruling of 'insufficient cause' for the apprehension of Lucien de Rubempre on the ground of my report, setting him at liberty--in fact, the whole thing was done, the clerk was going off with the minute book, and I was quit of the whole business--the President of the Court came in and took up the papers. 'You are releasing a dead man,' said he, with chilly irony; 'the young man is gone, as Monsieur de Bonald says, to appear before his natural Judge. He died of apoplexy----'

"I breathed again, thinking it was sudden illness.

"'As I understand you, Monsieur le President,' said Monsieur Popinot, 'it is a case of apoplexy like Pichegru's.'

"'Gentlemen,' said the President then, very gravely, 'you must please to understand that for the outside world Lucien de Rubempre died of an aneurism.'

"We all looked at each other. 'Very great people are concerned in this deplorable business,' said the President. 'G.o.d grant for your sake, Monsieur Camusot, though you did no less than your duty, that Madame de Serizy may not go mad from the shock she has had. She was carried away almost dead. I have just met our public prosecutor in a painful state of despair.'--'You have made a mess of it, my dear Camusot,' he added in my ear.--I a.s.sure you, my dear, as I came away I could hardly stand. My legs shook so that I dared not venture into the street. I went back to my room to rest. Then Coquart, who was putting away the papers of this wretched case, told me that a very handsome woman had taken the Conciergerie by storm, wanting to save Lucien, whom she was quite crazy about, and that she fainted away on seeing him hanging by his necktie to the window-bar of his room. The idea that the way in which I questioned that unhappy young fellow--who, between ourselves, was guilty in many ways--can have led to his committing suicide has haunted me ever since I left the Palais, and I feel constantly on the point of fainting----"

"What next? Are you going to think yourself a murderer because a suspected criminal hangs himself in prison just as you were about to release him?" cried Madame Camusot. "Why, an examining judge in such a case is like a general whose horse is killed under him!--That is all."

"Such a comparison, my dear, is at best but a jest, and jesting is out of place now. In this case the dead man clutches the living. All our hopes are buried in Lucien's coffin."

"Indeed?" said Madame Camusot, with deep irony.

"Yes, my career is closed. I shall be no more than an examining judge all my life. Before this fatal termination Monsieur de Granville was annoyed at the turn the preliminaries had taken; his speech to our President makes me quite certain that so long as Monsieur de Granville is public prosecutor I shall get no promotion."

Promotion! The terrible thought, which in these days makes a judge a mere functionary.

Formerly a magistrate was made at once what he was to remain. The three or four presidents' caps satisfied the ambitions of lawyers in each Parlement. An appointment as councillor was enough for a de Brosses or a Mole, at Dijon as much as in Paris. This office, in itself a fortune, required a fortune brought to it to keep it up.

In Paris, outside the Parlement, men of the long robe could hope only for three supreme appointments: those of Controller-General, Keeper of the Seals, or Chancellor. Below the Parlement, in the lower grades, the president of a lower Court thought himself quite of sufficient importance to be content to fill his chair to the end of his days.

Compare the position of a councillor in the High Court of Justice in Paris, in 1829, who has nothing but his salary, with that of a councillor to the Parlement in 1729. How great is the difference! In these days, when money is the universal social guarantee, magistrates are not required to have--as they used to have--fine private fortunes: hence we see deputies and peers of France heaping office on office, at once magistrates and legislators, borrowing dignity from other positions than those which ought to give them all their importance.

In short, a magistrate tries to distinguish himself for promotion as men do in the army, or in a Government office.

This prevailing thought, even if it does not affect his independence, is so well known and so natural, and its effects are so evident, that the law inevitably loses some of its majesty in the eyes of the public. And, in fact, the salaries paid by the State makes priests and magistrates mere _employes_. Steps to be gained foster ambition, ambition engenders subservience to power, and modern equality places the judge and the person to be judged in the same category at the bar of society. And so the two pillars of social order, Religion and Justice, are lowered in this nineteenth century, which a.s.serts itself as progressive in all things.

"And why should you never be promoted?" said Amelie Camusot.

She looked half-jestingly at her husband, feeling the necessity of reviving the energies of the man who embodied her ambitions, and on whom she could play as on an instrument.

"Why despair?" she went on, with a shrug that sufficiently expressed her indifference as to the prisoner's end. "This suicide will delight Lucien's two enemies, Madame d'Espard and her cousin, the Comtesse du Chatelet. Madame d'Espard is on the best terms with the Keeper of the Seals; through her you can get an audience of His Excellency and tell him all the secrets of this business. Then, if the head of the law is on your side, what have you to fear from the president of your Court or the public prosecutor?"

"But, Monsieur and Madame de Serizy?" cried the poor man. "Madame de Serizy is gone mad, I tell you, and her madness is my doing, they say."

"Well, if she is out of her mind, O judge devoid of judgment," said Madame Camusot, laughing, "she can do you no harm.--Come, tell me all the incidents of the day."

"Bless me!" said Camusot, "just as I had cross-questioned the unhappy youth, and he had deposed that the self-styled Spanish priest is really Jacques Collin, the d.u.c.h.esse de Maufrigneuse and Madame de Serizy sent me a note by a servant begging me not to examine him. It was all over!----"

"But you must have lost your head!" said Amelie. "What was to prevent you, being so sure as you are of your clerk's fidelity, from calling Lucien back, rea.s.suring him cleverly, and revising the examination?"

"Why, you are as bad as Madame de Serizy; you laugh justice to scorn,"