“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.