The thief does not argue out questions of property, of inheritance, and social responsibility, in sophistical books; he absolutely ignores them.
To him theft is appropriating his own.
He does not discuss marriage; he does not complain of it; he does not insist, in printed Utopian dreams, on the mutual consent and bond of souls which can never become general; he pairs with a vehemence of which the bonds are constantly riveted by the hammer of necessity.
Modern innovators write unctuous theories, long drawn, and nebulous or philanthropical romances; but the thief acts.
He is as clear as a fact, as logical as a blow; and then his style!
Another thing worth noting: the world of prostitutes, thieves, and murders of the galleys and the prisons forms a population of about sixty to eighty thousand souls, men and women.
Such a world is not to be disdained in a picture of modern manners and a literary reproduction of the social body.
The law, the gendarmerie, and the police constitute a body almost equal in number; is not that strange?
This antagonism of persons perpetually seeking and avoiding each other, and fighting a vast and highly dramatic duel, are what are sketched in this Study.
It has been the same thing with thieving and public harlotry as with the stage, the police, the priesthood, and the gendarmerie.
In these six walks of life the individual contracts an indelible character.
He can no longer be himself.
The stigmata of ordination are as immutable as those of the soldier are.
And it is the same in other callings which are strongly in opposition, strong contrasts with civilization.
These violent, eccentric, singular signs — sui generis — are what make the harlot, the robber, the murderer, the ticket-of-leave man, so easily recognizable by their foes, the spy and the police, to whom they are as game to the sportsman: they have a gait, a manner, a complexion, a look, a color, a smell — in short, infallible marks about them.
Hence the highly-developed art of disguise which the heroes of the hulks acquire.
One word yet as to the constitution of this world apart, which the abolition of branding, the mitigation of penalties, and the silly leniency of furies are making a threatening evil.
In about twenty years Paris will be beleaguered by an army of forty thousand reprieved criminals; the department of the Seine and its fifteen hundred thousand inhabitants being the only place in France where these poor wretches can be hidden.
To them Paris is what the virgin forest is to beasts of prey.
The swell-mob, or more exactly, the upper class of thieves, which is the Faubourg Saint–Germain, the aristocracy of the tribe, had, in 1816, after the peace which made life hard for so many men, formed an association called les grands fanandels — the Great Pals — consisting of the most noted master-thieves and certain bold spirits at that time bereft of any means of living.
This word pal means brother, friend, and comrade all in one.
And these “Great Pals,” the cream of the thieving fraternity, for more than twenty years were the Court of Appeal, the Institute of Learning, and the Chamber of Peers of this community.
These men all had their private means, with funds in common, and a code of their own.
They knew each other, and were pledged to help and succor each other in difficulties.
And they were all superior to the tricks or snares of the police, had a charter of their own, passwords and signs of recognition.
From 1815 to 1819 these dukes and peers of the prison world had formed the famous association of the Ten-thousand (see le Pere Goriot), so styled by reason of an agreement in virtue of which no job was to be undertaken by which less than ten thousand francs could be got.
At that very time, in 1829–30, some memoirs were brought out in which the collective force of this association and the names of the leaders were published by a famous member of the police-force.
It was terrifying to find there an army of skilled rogues, male and female; so numerous, so clever, so constantly lucky, that such thieves as Pastourel, Collonge, or Chimaux, men of fifty and sixty, were described as outlaws from society from their earliest years!
What a confession of the ineptitude of justice that rogues so old should be at large!
Jacques Collin had been the cashier, not only of the “Ten-thousand,” but also of the “Great Pals,” the heroes of the hulks.
Competent authorities admit that the hulks have always owned large sums.
This curious fact is quite conceivable.
Stolen goods are never recovered but in very singular cases.
The condemned criminal, who can take nothing with him, is obliged to trust somebody’s honesty and capacity, and to deposit his money; as in the world of honest folks, money is placed in a bank.
Long ago Bibi–Lupin, now for ten years a chief of the department of Public Safety, had been a member of the aristocracy of “Pals.”
His treason had resulted from offended pride; he had been constantly set aside in favor of Trompe-la-Mort’s superior intelligence and prodigious strength.
Hence his persistent vindictiveness against Jacques Collin.
Hence, also, certain compromises between Bibi–Lupin and his old companions, which the magistrates were beginning to take seriously.
So in his desire for vengeance, to which the examining judge had given play under the necessity of identifying Jacques Collin, the chief of the “Safety” had very skilfully chosen his allies by setting la Pouraille, Fil-de-Soie, and le Biffon on the sham Spaniard — for la Pouraille and Fil-de-Soie both belonged to the “Ten-thousand,” and le Biffon was a “Great Pal.”
La Biffe, le Biffon’s formidable trip, who to this day evades all the pursuit of the police by her skill in disguising herself as a lady, was at liberty.
This woman, who successfully apes a marquise, a countess, a baroness, keeps a carriage and men-servants.
This Jacques Collin in petticoats is the only woman who can compare with Asie, Jacques Collin’s right hand.
And, in fact, every hero of the hulks is backed up by a devoted woman.
Prison records and the secret papers of the law courts will tell you this; no honest woman’s love, not even that of the bigot for her spiritual director, has ever been greater than the attachment of a mistress who shares the dangers of a great criminal.
With these men a passion is almost always the first cause of their daring enterprises and murders.
The excessive love which — constitutionally, as the doctors say — makes woman irresistible to them, calls every moral and physical force of these powerful natures into action.
Hence the idleness which consumes their days, for excesses of passion necessitate sleep and restorative food.
Hence their loathing of all work, driving these creatures to have recourse to rapid ways of getting money.
And yet, the need of a living, and of high living, violent as it is, is but a trifle in comparison with the extravagance to which these generous Medors are prompted by the mistress to whom they want to give jewels and dress, and who — always greedy — love rich food.
The baggage wants a shawl, the lover steals it, and the woman sees in this a proof of love.