Such men, cruel only from the necessity for suppressive evidence, for they murder only to get rid of witnesses (and this is one of the arguments adduced by those who desire the abrogation of capital punishment) — these giants of dexterity and skill, whose sleight of hand, whose rapid sight, whose every sense is as alert as that of a savage, are heroes of evil only on the stage of their exploits.
Not only do their difficulties begin as soon as the crime is committed, for they are as much bewildered by the need for concealing the stolen goods as they were depressed by necessity — but they are as weak as a woman in childbed.
The vehemence of their schemes is terrific; in success they become like children.
In a word, their nature is that of the wild beast — easy to kill when it is full fed.
In prison these strange beings are men in dissimulation and in secretiveness, which never yields till the last moment, when they are crushed and broken by the tedium of imprisonment.
It may hence be understood how it was that the three convicts, instead of betraying their chief, were eager to serve him; and as they suspected he was now the owner of the stolen seven hundred and fifty thousand francs, they admired him for his calm resignation, under bolt and bar of the Conciergerie, believing him capable of protecting them all.
When Monsieur Gault left the sham priest, he returned through the parlor to his office, and went in search of Bibi–Lupin, who for twenty minutes, since Jacques Collin had gone downstairs, had been on the watch with his eye at a peephole in a window looking out on the prison-yard.
“Not one of them recognized him,” said Monsieur Gault, “and Napolitas, who is on duty, did not hear a word.
The poor priest all through the night, in his deep distress, did not say a word which could imply that his gown covers Jacques Collin.”
“That shows that he is used to prison life,” said the police agent.
Napolitas, Bibi–Lupin’s secretary, being unknown to the criminals then in the Conciergerie, was playing the part of the young gentlemen imprisoned for forgery.
“Well, but he wishes to be allowed to hear the confession of the young fellow who is sentenced to death,” said the governor.
“To be sure! That is our last chance,” cried Bibi–Lupin. “I had forgotten that.
Theodore Calvi, the young Corsican, was the man chained to Jacques Collin; they say that on the hulks Jacques Collin made him famous pads ——”
The convicts on the galleys contrive a kind of pad to slip between their skin and the fetters to deaden the pressure of the iron ring on their ankles and instep; these pads, made of tow and rags, are known as patarasses.
“Who is warder over the man?” asked Bibi–Lupin.
“Coeur la Virole.”
“Very well, I will go and make up as a gendarme, and be on the watch; I shall hear what they say. I will be even with them.”
“But if it should be Jacques Collin are you not afraid of his recognizing you and throttling you?” said the governor to Bibi–Lupin.
“As a gendarme I shall have my sword,” replied the other; “and, besides, if he is Jacques Collin, he will never do anything that will risk his neck; and if he is a priest, I shall be safe.”
“Then you have no time to lose,” said Monsieur Gault; “it is half-past eight.
Father Sauteloup has just read the reply to his appeal, and Monsieur Sanson is waiting in the order room.”
“Yes, it is to-day’s job, the ‘widow’s huzzars’” (les hussards de la veuve, another horrible name for the functionaries of the guillotine) “are ordered out,” replied Bibi–Lupin. “Still, I cannot wonder that the prosecutor-general should hesitate; the boy has always declared that he is innocent, and there is, in my opinion, no conclusive evidence against him.”
“He is a thorough Corsican,” said Monsieur Gault; “he has not said a word, and has held firm all through.”
The last words of the governor of the prison summed up the dismal tale of a man condemned to die.
A man cut off from among the living by law belongs to the Bench.
The Bench is paramount; it is answerable to nobody, it obeys its own conscience.
The prison belongs to the Bench, which controls it absolutely.
Poetry has taken possession of this social theme, “the man condemned to death”— a subject truly apt to strike the imagination!
And poetry has been sublime on it. Prose has no resource but fact; still, the fact is appalling enough to hold its own against verse.
The existence of a condemned man who has not confessed his crime, or betrayed his accomplices, is one of fearful torment.
This is no case of iron boots, of water poured into the stomach, or of limbs racked by hideous machinery; it is hidden and, so to speak, negative torture.
The condemned wretch is given over to himself with a companion whom he cannot but trust.
The amiability of modern philanthropy fancies it has understood the dreadful torment of isolation, but this is a mistake.
Since the abolition of torture, the Bench, in a natural anxiety to reassure the too sensitive consciences of the jury, had guessed what a terrible auxiliary isolation would prove to justice in seconding remorse.
Solitude is void; and nature has as great a horror of a moral void as she has of a physical vacuum.
Solitude is habitable only to a man of genius who can people it with ideas, the children of the spiritual world; or to one who contemplates the works of the Creator, to whom it is bright with the light of heaven, alive with the breath and voice of God.
Excepting for these two beings — so near to Paradise — solitude is to the mind what torture is to the body.
Between solitude and the torture-chamber there is all the difference that there is between a nervous malady and a surgical disease.
It is suffering multiplied by infinitude.
The body borders on the infinite through its nerves, as the spirit does through thought.
And, in fact, in the annals of the Paris law courts the criminals who do not confess can be easily counted.
This terrible situation, which in some cases assumes appalling importance — in politics, for instance, when a dynasty or a state is involved — will find a place in the HUMAN COMEDY.
But here a description of the stone box in which after the Restoration, the law shut up a man condemned to death in Paris, may serve to give an idea of the terrors of a felon’s last day on earth.
Before the Revolution of July there was in the Conciergerie, and indeed there still is, a condemned cell.
This room, backing on the governor’s office, is divided from it by a thick wall in strong masonry, and the other side of it is formed by a wall seven or eight feet thick, which supports one end of the immense Salle des Pas–Perdus.
It is entered through the first door in the long dark passage in which the eye loses itself when looking from the middle of the vaulted gateway.
This ill-omened room is lighted by a funnel, barred by a formidable grating, and hardly perceptible on going into the Conciergerie yard, for it has been pierced in the narrow space between the office window close to the railing of the gateway, and the place where the office clerk sits — a den like a cupboard contrived by the architect at the end of the entrance court.
This position accounts for the fact that the room thus enclosed between four immensely thick walls should have been devoted, when the Conciergerie was reconstituted, to this terrible and funereal service.
Escape is impossible.