I love her!” said Leontine.
“Yes — now!” said Asie, with freezing irony.
“She was a real beauty; but now, my angel, you are better looking than she is. — And Lucien’s marriage is so effectually broken off, that nothing can mend it,” said the Duchess in a whisper to Leontine.
The effect of this revelation and forecast was so great on the Countess that she was well again. She passed her hand over her brow; she was young once more.
“Now, my lady, hot foot, and make haste!” said Asie, seeing the change, and guessing what had caused it.
“But,” said Madame de Maufrigneuse, “if the first thing is to prevent Lucien’s being examined by Monsieur Camusot, we can do that by writing two words to the judge and sending your man with it to the Palais, Leontine.”
“Then come into my room,” said Madame de Serizy.
This is what was taking place at the Palais while Lucien’s protectresses were obeying the orders issued by Jacques Collin.
The gendarmes placed the moribund prisoner on a chair facing the window in Monsieur Camusot’s room; he was sitting in his place in front of his table.
Coquart, pen in hand, had a little table to himself a few yards off.
The aspect of a magistrate’s chambers is not a matter of indifference; and if this room had not been chosen intentionally, it must be owned that chance had favored justice.
An examining judge, like a painter, requires the clear equable light of a north window, for the criminal’s face is a picture which he must constantly study.
Hence most magistrates place their table, as this of Camusot’s was arranged, so as to sit with their back to the window and leave the face of the examinee in broad daylight.
Not one of them all but, by the end of six months, has assumed an absent-minded and indifferent expression, if he does not wear spectacles, and maintains it throughout the examination.
It was a sudden change of expression in the prisoner’s face, detected by these means, and caused by a sudden point-blank question, that led to the discovery of the crime committed by Castaing at the very moment when, after a long consultation with the public prosecutor, the magistrate was about to let the criminal loose on society for lack of evidence.
This detail will show the least intelligent person how living, interesting, curious, and dramatically terrible is the conflict of an examination — a conflict without witnesses, but always recorded.
God knows what remains on the paper of the scenes at white heat in which a look, a tone, a quiver of the features, the faintest touch of color lent by some emotion, has been fraught with danger, as though the adversaries were savages watching each other to plant a fatal stroke.
A report is no more than the ashes of the fire.
“What is your real name?” Camusot asked Jacques Collin.
“Don Carlos Herrera, canon of the Royal Chapter of Toledo, and secret envoy of His Majesty Ferdinand VII.”
It must here be observed that Jacques Collin spoke French like a Spanish trollop, blundering over it in such a way as to make his answers almost unintelligible, and to require them to be repeated.
But Monsieur de Nucingen’s German barbarisms have already weighted this Scene too much to allow of the introduction of other sentences no less difficult to read, and hindering the rapid progress of the tale.
“Then you have papers to prove your right to the dignities of which you speak?” asked Camusot.
“Yes, monsieur — my passport, a letter from his Catholic Majesty authorizing my mission. — In short, if you will but send at once to the Spanish Embassy two lines, which I will write in your presence, I shall be identified.
Then, if you wish for further evidence, I will write to His Eminence the High Almoner of France, and he will immediately send his private secretary.”
“And do you still pretend that you are dying?” asked the magistrate. “If you have really gone through all the sufferings you have complained of since your arrest, you ought to be dead by this time,” said Camusot ironically.
“You are simply trying the courage of an innocent man and the strength of his constitution,” said the prisoner mildly.
“Coquart, ring.
Send for the prison doctor and an infirmary attendant.
— We shall be obliged to remove your coat and proceed to verify the marks on your shoulder,” Camusot went on.
“I am in your hands, monsieur.”
The prisoner then inquired whether the magistrate would be kind enough to explain to him what he meant by “the marks,” and why they should be sought on his shoulder.
The judge was prepared for this question.
“You are suspected of being Jacques Collin, an escaped convict, whose daring shrinks at nothing, not even at sacrilege!” said Camusot promptly, his eyes fixed on those of the prisoner.
Jacques Collin gave no sign, and did not color; he remained quite calm, and assumed an air of guileless curiosity as he gazed at Camusot.
“I, monsieur?
A convict?
May the Order I belong to and God above forgive you for such an error.
Tell me what I can do to prevent your continuing to offer such an insult to the rights of free men, to the Church, and to the King my master.”
The judge made no reply to this, but explained to the Abbe that if he had been branded, a penalty at that time inflicted by law on all convicts sent to the hulks, the letters could be made to show by giving him a slap on the shoulder.
“Oh, monsieur,” said Jacques Collin, “it would indeed be unfortunate if my devotion to the Royal cause should prove fatal to me.”
“Explain yourself,” said the judge, “that is what you are here for.”
“Well, monsieur, I must have a great many scars on my back, for I was shot in the back as a traitor to my country while I was faithful to my King, by constitutionalists who left me for dead.”
“You were shot, and you are alive!” said Camusot.
“I had made friends with some of the soldiers, to whom certain pious persons had sent money, so they placed me so far off that only spent balls reached me, and the men aimed at my back.
This is a fact that His Excellency the Ambassador can bear witness to ——”
“This devil of a man has an answer for everything!
However, so much the better,” thought Camusot, who assumed so much severity only to satisfy the demands of justice and of the police.
“How is it that a man of your character,” he went on, addressing the convict, “should have been found in the house of the Baron de Nucingen’s mistress — and such a mistress, a girl who had been a common prostitute!”
“This is why I was found in a courtesan’s house, monsieur,” replied Jacques Collin. “But before telling you the reasons for my being there, I ought to mention that at the moment when I was just going upstairs I was seized with the first attack of my illness, and I had no time to speak to the girl.