“We can send the scoundrel back to the hulks at once — to Rochefort; he will be dead in six months!
Oh! without committing any crime,” he added, in reply to a gesture on the part of the Duc de Grandlieu. “What do you expect?
A convict cannot hold out more than six months of a hot summer if he is made to work really hard among the marshes of the Charente.
But this is of no use if our man has taken precautions with regard to the letters.
If the villain has been suspicious of his foes, and that is probable, we must find out what steps he has taken.
Then, if the present holder of the letters is poor, he is open to bribery. So, no, we must make Jacques Collin speak.
What a duel!
He will beat me.
The better plan would be to purchase those letters by exchange for another document — a letter of reprieve — and to place the man in my gang.
Jacques Collin is the only man alive who is clever enough to come after me, poor Contenson and dear old Peyrade both being dead!
Jacques Collin killed those two unrivaled spies on purpose, as it were, to make a place for himself.
So, you see, gentlemen, you must give me a free hand.
Jacques Collin is in the Conciergerie.
I will go to see Monsieur de Granville in his Court.
Send some one you can trust to meet me there, for I must have a letter to show to Monsieur de Granville, who knows nothing of me. I will hand the letter to the President of the Council, a very impressive sponsor. You have half an hour before you, for I need half an hour to dress, that is to say, to make myself presentable to the eyes of the public prosecutor.”
“Monsieur,” said the Duc de Chaulieu, “I know your wonderful skill. I only ask you to say Yes or No.
Will you be bound to succeed?”
“Yes, if I have full powers, and your word that I shall never be questioned about the matter.
— My plan is laid.”
This sinister reply made the two fine gentlemen shiver.
“Go on, then, monsieur,” said the Duc de Chaulieu. “You can set down the charges of the case among those you are in the habit of undertaking.”
Corentin bowed and went away.
Henri de Lenoncourt, for whom Ferdinand de Grandlieu had a carriage brought out, went off forthwith to the King, whom he was privileged to see at all times in right of his office.
Thus all the various interests that had got entangled from the highest to the lowest ranks of society were to meet presently in Monsieur de Granville’s room at the Palais, all brought together by necessity embodied in three men — Justice in Monsieur de Granville, and the family in Corentin, face to face with Jacques Collin, the terrible foe who represented social crime in its fiercest energy.
What a duel is that between justice and arbitrary wills on one side and the hulks and cunning on the other!
The hulks — symbolical of that daring which throws off calculation and reflection, which avails itself of any means, which has none of the hyprocrisy of high-handed justice, but is the hideous outcome of the starving stomach — the swift and bloodthirsty pretext of hunger.
Is it not attack as against self-protection, theft as against property?
The terrible quarrel between the social state and the natural man, fought out on the narrowest possible ground!
In short, it is a terrible and vivid image of those compromises, hostile to social interests, which the representatives of authority, when they lack power, submit to with the fiercest rebels.
When Monsieur Camusot was announced, the public prosecutor signed that he should be admitted.
Monsieur de Granville had foreseen this visit, and wished to come to an understanding with the examining judge as to how to wind up this business of Lucien’s death.
The end could no longer be that on which he had decided the day before in agreement with Camusot, before the suicide of the hapless poet.
“Sit down, Monsieur Camusot,” said Monsieur de Granville, dropping into his armchair.
The public prosecutor, alone with the inferior judge, made no secret of his depressed state.
Camusot looked at Monsieur de Granville and observed his almost livid pallor, and such utter fatigue, such complete prostration, as betrayed greater suffering perhaps than that of the condemned man to whom the clerk had announced the rejection of his appeal.
And yet that announcement, in the forms of justice, is a much as to say,
“Prepare to die; your last hour has come.”
“I will return later, Monsieur le Comte,” said Camusot. “Though business is pressing ——”
“No, stay,” replied the public prosecutor with dignity. “A magistrate, monsieur, must accept his anxieties and know how to hide them.
I was in fault if you saw any traces of agitation in me ——”
Camusot bowed apologetically.
“God grant you may never know these crucial perplexities of our life.
A man might sink under less!
I have just spent the night with one of my most intimate friends. — I have but two friends, the Comte Octave de Bauvan and the Comte de Serizy.
— We sat together, Monsieur de Serizy, the Count, and I, from six in the evening till six this morning, taking it in turns to go from the drawing-room to Madame de Serizy’s bedside, fearing each time that we might find her dead or irremediably insane.
Desplein, Bianchon, and Sinard never left the room, and she has two nurses.
The Count worships his wife.
Imagine the night I have spent, between a woman crazy with love and a man crazy with despair.
And a statesman’s despair is not like that of an idiot.
Serizy, as calm as if he were sitting in his place in council, clutched his chair to force himself to show us an unmoved countenance, while sweat stood over the brows bent by so much hard thought.