Two men perished on the scaffold.
Neither Gaudissart nor any one else ever suspected that worthy old Canquoelle of having peached.
The waiters were dismissed; for a year they were all on their guard and afraid of the police — as Pere Canquoelle was too; indeed, he talked of retiring from the Cafe David, such horror had he of the police.
Contenson went into the cafe, asked for a glass of brandy, and did not look at Canquoelle, who sat reading the papers; but when he had gulped down the brandy, he took out the Baron’s gold piece, and called the waiter by rapping three short raps on the table.
The lady at the desk and the waiter examined the coin with a minute care that was not flattering to Contenson; but their suspicions were justified by the astonishment produced on all the regular customers by Contenson’s appearance.
“Was that gold got by theft or by murder?” This was the idea that rose to some clear and shrewd minds as they looked at Contenson over their spectacles, while affecting to read the news.
Contenson, who saw everything and never was surprised at anything, scornfully wiped his lips with a bandana, in which there were but three darns, took his change, slipped all the coppers into his side pocket, of which the lining, once white, was now as black as the cloth of the trousers, and did not leave one for the waiter.
“What a gallows-bird!” said Pere Canquoelle to his neighbor Monsieur Pillerault.
“Pshaw!” said Monsieur Camusot to all the company, for he alone had expressed no astonishment, “it is Contenson, Louchard’s right-hand man, the police agent we employ in business.
The rascals want to nab some one who is hanging about perhaps.”
It would seem necessary to explain here the terrible and profoundly cunning man who was hidden under the guise of Pere Canquoelle, as Vautrin was hidden under that of the Abbe Carlos.
Born at Canquoelles, the only possession of his family, which was highly respectable, this Southerner’s name was Peyrade.
He belonged, in fact, to the younger branch of the Peyrade family, an old but impoverished house of Franche Comte, still owning the little estate of la Peyrade.
The seventh child of his father, he had come on foot to Paris in 1772 at the age of seventeen, with two crowns of six francs in his pocket, prompted by the vices of an ardent spirit and the coarse desire to “get on,” which brings so many men to Paris from the south as soon as they understand that their father’s property can never supply them with means to gratify their passions.
It is enough to say of Peyrade’s youth that in 1782 he was in the confidence of chiefs of the police and the hero of the department, highly esteemed by MM.
Lenoir and d’Albert, the last Lieutenant–Generals of Police.
The Revolution had no police; it needed none.
Espionage, though common enough, was called public spirit.
The Directorate, a rather more regular government than that of the Committee of Public Safety, was obliged to reorganize the Police, and the first Consul completed the work by instituting a Prefect of Police and a department of police supervision.
Peyrade, a man knowing the traditions, collected the force with the assistance of a man named Corentin, a far cleverer man than Peyrade, though younger; but he was a genius only in the subterranean ways of police inquiries.
In 1808 the great services Peyrade was able to achieve were rewarded by an appointment to the eminent position of Chief Commissioner of Police at Antwerp.
In Napoleon’s mind this sort of Police Governorship was equivalent to a Minister’s post, with the duty of superintending Holland.
At the end of the campaign of 1809, Peyrade was removed from Antwerp by an order in Council from the Emperor, carried in a chaise to Paris between two gendarmes, and imprisoned in la Force.
Two months later he was let out on bail furnished by his friend Corentin, after having been subjected to three examinations, each lasting six hours, in the office of the head of the Police.
Did Peyrade owe his overthrow to the miraculous energy he displayed in aiding Fouche in the defence of the French coast when threatened by what was known at the time as the Walcheren expedition, when the Duke of Otranto manifested such abilities as alarmed the Emperor?
Fouche thought it probable even then; and now, when everybody knows what went on in the Cabinet Council called together by Cambaceres, it is absolutely certain.
The Ministers, thunderstruck by the news of England’s attempt, a retaliation on Napoleon for the Boulogne expedition, and taken by surprise when the Master was entrenched in the island of Lobau, where all Europe believed him to be lost, had not an idea which way to turn.
The general opinion was in favor of sending post haste to the Emperor; Fouche alone was bold enough to sketch a plan of campaign, which, in fact, he carried into execution.
“Do as you please,” said Cambaceres; “but I, who prefer to keep my head on my shoulders, shall send a report to the Emperor.”
It is well known that the Emperor on his return found an absurd pretext, at a full meeting of the Council of State, for discarding his Minister and punishing him for having saved France without the Sovereign’s help.
From that time forth, Napoleon had doubled the hostility of Prince de Talleyrand and the Duke of Otranto, the only two great politicians formed by the Revolution, who might perhaps have been able to save Napoleon in 1813.
To get rid of Peyrade, he was simply accused of connivance in favoring smuggling and sharing certain profits with the great merchants.
Such an indignity was hard on a man who had earned the Marshal’s baton of the Police Department by the great services he had done.
This man, who had grown old in active business, knew all the secrets of every Government since 1775, when he had entered the service.
The Emperor, who believed himself powerful enough to create men for his own uses, paid no heed to the representations subsequently laid before him in favor of a man who was reckoned as one of the most trustworthy, most capable, and most acute of the unknown genii whose task it is to watch over the safety of a State.
He thought he could put Contenson in Peyrade’s place; but Contenson was at that time employed by Corentin for his own benefit.
Peyrade felt the blow all the more keenly because, being greedy and a libertine, he had found himself, with regard to women, in the position of a pastry-cook who loves sweetmeats.
His habits of vice had become to him a second nature; he could not live without a good dinner, without gambling, in short, without the life of an unpretentious fine gentleman, in which men of powerful faculties so generally indulge when they have allowed excessive dissipation to become a necessity.
Hitherto, he had lived in style without ever being expected to entertain; and living well, for no one ever looked for a return from him, or from his friend Corentin.
He was cynically witty, and he liked his profession; he was a philosopher.
And besides, a spy, whatever grade he may hold in the machinery of the police, can no more return to a profession regarded as honorable or liberal, than a prisoner from the hulks can.
Once branded, once matriculated, spies and convicts, like deacons, have assumed an indelible character.
There are beings on whom social conditions impose an inevitable fate.
Peyrade, for his further woe, was very fond of a pretty little girl whom he knew to be his own child by a celebrated actress to whom he had done a signal service, and who, for three months, had been grateful to him.
Peyrade, who had sent for his child from Antwerp, now found himself without employment in Paris and with no means beyond a pension of twelve hundred francs a year allowed him by the Police Department as Lenoir’s old disciple.
He took lodgings in the Rue des Moineaux on the fourth floor, five little rooms, at a rent of two hundred and fifty francs.
If any man should be aware of the uses and sweets of friendship, is it not the moral leper known to the world as a spy, to the mob as a mouchard, to the department as an “agent”?
Peyrade and Corentin were such friends as Orestes and Pylades.
Peyrade had trained Corentin as Vien trained David; but the pupil soon surpassed his master.
They had carried out more than one undertaking together. Peyrade, happy at having discerned Corentin’s superior abilities, had started him in his career by preparing a success for him.