Later on he had abandoned everything, in order to “undertake Paris.”
This was his expression.
Who was Claquesous?
He was night.
He waited until the sky was daubed with black, before he showed himself.
At nightfall he emerged from the hole whither he returned before daylight.
Where was this hole?
No one knew.
He only addressed his accomplices in the most absolute darkness, and with his back turned to them.
Was his name Claquesous?
Certainly not.
If a candle was brought, he put on a mask.
He was a ventriloquist.
Babet said:
“Claquesous is a nocturne for two voices.”
Claquesous was vague, terrible, and a roamer.
No one was sure whether he had a name, Claquesous being a sobriquet; none was sure that he had a voice, as his stomach spoke more frequently than his voice; no one was sure that he had a face, as he was never seen without his mask.
He disappeared as though he had vanished into thin air; when he appeared, it was as though he sprang from the earth.
A lugubrious being was Montparnasse.
Montparnasse was a child; less than twenty years of age, with a handsome face, lips like cherries, charming black hair, the brilliant light of springtime in his eyes; he had all vices and aspired to all crimes.
The digestion of evil aroused in him an appetite for worse.
It was the street boy turned pickpocket, and a pickpocket turned garroter.
He was genteel, effeminate, graceful, robust, sluggish, ferocious.
The rim of his hat was curled up on the left side, in order to make room for a tuft of hair, after the style of 1829.
He lived by robbery with violence. His coat was of the best cut, but threadbare.
Montparnasse was a fashion-plate in misery and given to the commission of murders.
The cause of all this youth’s crimes was the desire to be well-dressed.
The first grisette who had said to him:
“You are handsome!” had cast the stain of darkness into his heart, and had made a Cain of this Abel.
Finding that he was handsome, he desired to be elegant: now, the height of elegance is idleness; idleness in a poor man means crime.
Few prowlers were so dreaded as Montparnasse.
At eighteen, he had already numerous corpses in his past.
More than one passer-by lay with outstretched arms in the presence of this wretch, with his face in a pool of blood.
Curled, pomaded, with laced waist, the hips of a woman, the bust of a Prussian officer, the murmur of admiration from the boulevard wenches surrounding him, his cravat knowingly tied, a bludgeon in his pocket, a flower in his buttonhole; such was this dandy of the sepulchre.
CHAPTER IV—COMPOSITION OF THE TROUPE
These four ruffians formed a sort of Proteus, winding like a serpent among the police, and striving to escape Vidocq’s indiscreet glances “under divers forms, tree, flame, fountain,” lending each other their names and their traps, hiding in their own shadows, boxes with secret compartments and refuges for each other, stripping off their personalities, as one removes his false nose at a masked ball, sometimes simplifying matters to the point of consisting of but one individual, sometimes multiplying themselves to such a point that Coco-Latour himself took them for a whole throng.
These four men were not four men; they were a sort of mysterious robber with four heads, operating on a grand scale on Paris; they were that monstrous polyp of evil, which inhabits the crypt of society.
Thanks to their ramifications, and to the network underlying their relations, Babet, Gueulemer, Claquesous, and Montparnasse were charged with the general enterprise of the ambushes of the department of the Seine.
The inventors of ideas of that nature, men with nocturnal imaginations, applied to them to have their ideas executed.
They furnished the canvas to the four rascals, and the latter undertook the preparation of the scenery.
They labored at the stage setting.
They were always in a condition to lend a force proportioned and suitable to all crimes which demanded a lift of the shoulder, and which were sufficiently lucrative.
When a crime was in quest of arms, they under-let their accomplices.
They kept a troupe of actors of the shadows at the disposition of all underground tragedies.
They were in the habit of assembling at nightfall, the hour when they woke up, on the plains which adjoin the Salpetriere.
There they held their conferences.
They had twelve black hours before them; they regulated their employment accordingly.
Patron-Minette,—such was the name which was bestowed in the subterranean circulation on the association of these four men.
In the fantastic, ancient, popular parlance, which is vanishing day by day, Patron-Minette signifies the morning, the same as entre chien et loup—between dog and wolf—signifies the evening.
This appellation, Patron-Minette, was probably derived from the hour at which their work ended, the dawn being the vanishing moment for phantoms and for the separation of ruffians.