By nine in the evening three medical men were called in to perform an autopsy on poor Esther, and inquiries were set on foot.
Trompe-la-Mort, warned by Asie, exclaimed:
“No one knows that I am here; I may take an airing.”
He pulled himself up by the skylight of his garret, and with marvelous agility was standing in an instant on the roof, whence he surveyed the surroundings with the coolness of a tiler.
“Good!” said he, discerning a garden five houses off in the Rue de Provence, “that will just do for me.”
“You are paid out, Trompe-la-Mort,” said Contenson, suddenly emerging from behind a stack of chimneys. “You may explain to Monsieur Camusot what mass you were performing on the roof, Monsieur l’Abbe, and, above all, why you were escaping ——”
“I have enemies in Spain,” said Carlos Herrera.
“We can go there by way of your attic,” said Contenson.
The sham Spaniard pretended to yield; but, having set his back and feet across the opening of the skylight, he gripped Contenson and flung him off with such violence that the spy fell in the gutter of the Rue Saint–Georges.
Contenson was dead on his field of honor; Jacques Collin quietly dropped into the room again and went to bed.
“Give me something that will make me very sick without killing me,” said he to Asie; “for I must be at death’s door, to avoid answering inquisitive persons. I have just got rid of a man in the most natural way, who might have unmasked me.”
At seven o’clock on the previous evening Lucien had set out in his own chaise to post to Fontainebleau with a passport he had procured in the morning; he slept in the nearest inn on the Nemours side.
At six in the morning he went alone, and on foot, through the forest as far as Bouron.
“This,” said he to himself, as he sat down on one of the rocks that command the fine landscape of Bouron, “is the fatal spot where Napoleon dreamed of making a final tremendous effort on the eve of his abdication.”
At daybreak he heard the approach of post-horses and saw a britska drive past, in which sat the servants of the Duchesse de Lenoncourt–Chaulieu and Clotilde de Grandlieu’s maid.
“Here they are!” thought Lucien. “Now, to play the farce well, and I shall be saved! — the Duc de Grandlieu’s son-in-law in spite of him!”
It was an hour later when he heard the peculiar sound made by a superior traveling carriage, as the berline came near in which two ladies were sitting.
They had given orders that the drag should be put on for the hill down to Bouron, and the man-servant behind the carriage had it stopped.
At this instant Lucien came forward.
“Clotilde!” said he, tapping on the window.
“No,” said the young Duchess to her friend, “he shall not get into the carriage, and we will not be alone with him, my dear.
Speak to him for the last time — to that I consent; but on the road, where we will walk on, and where Baptiste can escort us. — The morning is fine, we are well wrapped up, and have no fear of the cold.
The carriage can follow.”
The two women got out.
“Baptiste,” said the Duchess, “the post-boy can follow slowly; we want to walk a little way. You must keep near us.”
Madeleine de Mortsauf took Clotilde by the arm and allowed Lucien to talk.
They thus walked on as far as the village of Grez.
It was now eight o’clock, and there Clotilde dismissed Lucien.
“Well, my friend,” said she, closing this long interview with much dignity, “I never shall marry any one but you.
I would rather believe in you than in other men, in my father and mother — no woman ever gave greater proof of attachment surely?
— Now, try to counteract the fatal prejudices which militate against you.”
Just then the tramp of galloping horses was heard, and, to the great amazement of the ladies, a force of gendarmes surrounded the little party.
“What do you want?” said Lucien, with the arrogance of a dandy.
“Are you Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre?” asked the public prosecutor of Fontainebleau.
“Yes, monsieur.”
“You will spend to-night in La Force,” said he. “I have a warrant for the detention of your person.”
“Who are these ladies?” asked the sergeant.
“To be sure.
— Excuse me, ladies — your passports?
For Monsieur Lucien, as I am instructed, had acquaintances among the fair sex, who for him would ——”
“Do you take the Duchesse de Lenoncourt–Chaulieu for a prostitute?” said Madeleine, with a magnificent flash at the public prosecutor.
“You are handsome enough to excuse the error,” the magistrate very cleverly retorted.
“Baptiste, produce the passports,” said the young Duchess with a smile.
“And with what crime is Monsieur de Rubempre charged?” asked Clotilde, whom the Duchess wished to see safe in the carriage.
“Of being accessory to a robbery and murder,” replied the sergeant of gendarmes.
Baptiste lifted Mademoiselle de Grandlieu into the chaise in a dead faint.
By midnight Lucien was entering La Force, a prison situated between the Rue Payenne and the Rue des Ballets, where he was placed in solitary confinement.
The Abbe Carlos Herrera was also there, having been arrested that evening.
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life, by Honore de Balzac
The End of Evil Ways