“And the price of the bargain is, I suppose, the surrender of those three packets of letters?” said Jacques Collin.
“I did not think it would be necessary to say so to you ——”
“My dear Monsieur Corentin,” said Trompe-la-Mort, with irony worthy of that which made the fame of Talma in the part of Nicomede, “I beg to decline. I am indebted to you for the knowledge of what I am worth, and of the importance you attach to seeing me deprived of my weapons — I will never forget it. “At all times and for ever I shall be at your service, but instead of saying with Robert Macaire,
‘Let us embrace!’ I embrace you.”
He seized Corentin round the middle so suddenly that the other could not avoid the hug; he clutched him to his heart like a doll, kissed him on both cheeks, carried him like a feather with one hand, while with the other he opened the door, and then set him down outside, quite battered by this rough treatment.
“Good-bye, my dear fellow,” said Jacques Collin in a low voice, and in Corentin’s ear: “the length of three corpses parts you from me; we have measured swords, they are of the same temper and the same length. Let us treat each other with due respect; but I mean to be your equal, not your subordinate.
Armed as you would be, it strikes me you would be too dangerous a general for your lieutenant.
We will place a grave between us.
Woe to you if you come over on to my territory!
“You call yourself the State, as footmen call themselves by their master’s names. For my part, I will call myself Justice. We shall often meet; let us treat each other with dignity and propriety — all the more because we shall always remain — atrocious blackguards,” he added in a whisper. “I set you the example by embracing you ——”
Corentin stood nonplussed for the first time in his life, and allowed his terrible antagonist to wring his hand.
“If so,” said he, “I think it will be to our interest on both sides to remain chums.”
“We shall be stronger each on our own side, but at the same time more dangerous,” added Jacques Collin in an undertone. “And you will allow me to call on you to-morrow to ask for some pledge of our agreement.”
“Well, well,” said Corentin amiably, “you are taking the case out of my hands to place it in those of the public prosecutor. You will help him to promotion; but I cannot but own to you that you are acting wisely. — Bibi–Lupin is too well known; he has served his turn; if you get his place, you will have the only situation that suits you. I am delighted to see you in it — on my honor ——”
“Till our next meeting, very soon,” said Jacques Collin.
On turning round, Trompe-la-Mort saw the public prosecutor sitting at his table, his head resting on his hands.
“Do you mean that you can save the Comtesse de Serizy from going mad?” asked Monsieur de Granville.
“In five minutes,” said Jacques Collin.
“And you can give me all those ladies’ letters?”
“Have you read the three?”
“Yes,” said the magistrate vehemently, “and I blush for the women who wrote them.”
“Well, we are now alone; admit no one, and let us come to terms,” said Jacques Collin.
“Excuse me, Justice must first take its course. Monsieur Camusot has instructions to seize your aunt.”
“He will never find her,” said Jacques Collin.
“Search is to be made at the Temple, in the shop of a demoiselle Paccard who superintends her shop.”
“Nothing will be found there but rags, costumes, diamonds, uniforms —— However, it will be as well to check Monsieur Camusot’s zeal.”
Monsieur de Granville rang, and sent an office messenger to desire Monsieur Camusot to come and speak with him.
“Now,” said he to Jacques Collin, “an end to all this!
I want to know your recipe for curing the Countess.”
“Monsieur le Comte,” said the convict very gravely, “I was, as you know, sentenced to five years’ penal servitude for forgery.
But I love my liberty.
— This passion, like every other, had defeated its own end, for lovers who insist on adoring each other too fondly end by quarreling.
By dint of escaping and being recaptured alternately, I have served seven years on the hulks.
So you have nothing to remit but the added terms I earned in quod — I beg pardon, in prison.
I have, in fact, served my time, and till some ugly job can be proved against me — which I defy Justice to do, or even Corentin — I ought to be reinstated in my rights as a French citizen.
“What is life if I am banned from Paris and subject to the eye of the police?
Where can I go, what can I do?
You know my capabilities. You have seen Corentin, that storehouse of treachery and wile, turn ghastly pale before me, and doing justice to my powers. — That man has bereft me of everything; for it was he, and he alone, who overthrew the edifice of Lucien’s fortunes, by what means and in whose interest I know not. — Corentin and Camusot did it all ——”
“No recriminations,” said Monsieur de Granville; “give me the facts.”
“Well, then, these are the facts.
Last night, as I held in my hand the icy hand of that dead youth, I vowed to myself that I would give up the mad contest I have kept up for twenty years past against society at large.
“You will not believe me capable of religious sentimentality after what I have said of my religious opinions. Still, in these twenty years I have seen a great deal of the seamy side of the world. I have known its back-stairs, and I have discerned, in the march of events, a Power which you call Providence and I call Chance, and which my companions call Luck.
Every evil deed, however quickly it may hide its traces, is overtaken by some retribution.
In this struggle for existence, when the game is going well — when you have quint and quartorze in your hand and the lead — the candle tumbles over and the cards are burned, or the player has a fit of apoplexy!
— That is Lucien’s story.
That boy, that angel, had not committed the shadow of a crime; he let himself be led, he let things go!
He was to marry Mademoiselle de Grandlieu, to be made marquis; he had a fine fortune — well, a prostitute poisons herself, she hides the price of a certificate of stock, and the whole structure so laboriously built up crumbles in an instant.
“And who is the first man to deal a blow?
A man loaded with secret infamy, a monster who, in the world of finance, has committed such crimes that every coin of his vast fortune has been dipped in the tears of a whole family [see la Maison Nucingen]— by Nucingen, who has been a legalized Jacques Collin in the world of money.
However, you know as well as I do all the bankruptcies and tricks for which that man deserves hanging.