The public minister continues. “There are, however, among the scantly recommendable depositions that I just mentioned, two particularities that I ought to pint out: he accused is described as a former priest, and his alter ego is one of those vile creatures whose name modesty forbids me to pronounce. The man who wants to reform his fellows is prey to the most shameful passions!
“We find him again, a year later, at the hospital, which he has entered initially as a patient, and has stayed on in the capacity of an orderly; but here, it is no longer the name Liban that he uses to conceal his identity, but that of Balin, and Balin, Messieurs the jurors, I nothing but a new anagram of Bilan. Now, you will confess that if the first might, if necessary be put to the count of coincidence, but it is at least strange that the coincidence is repeated twice.
“Acts of insubordination and a lack of propriety with regard to his superiors oblige the honorable director to dismiss the orderly Balin. The former medical student imagines that he can and ought to remonstrate with his masters. A few well-made dressings and a successful operation succeed in turning his head. His conceit no longer knows any bounds; he openly makes money with the difficult and delicate profession of medicine, and on that account is condemned to a further three months in prison.
“Here occurs an event whose import will not escape you; a terrible detonation frightens all the inhabitants of a suburb; the police mount an investigation, and who is the manufacturer of the explosive that casts terror into a peaceful locality? The guilty party is sitting in the dock.
“His recent condemnation and his previous misadventure have occasioned difficulties; Paris, which seems to have divine him, refuses him the fortune and position coveted; he returns abroad. Months pass; the audacity of the anarchist sect has taken on frightful proportions; the law redoubles its vigilance. London, where all the crimes are perpetrated, is inundated by agents. Jacques Bilan hides under a thousand ingenious forms, but we find him again, calling attention to himself by the violence of his theories, publicly preaching propaganda by action, glorying in his past crimes, anathematizing the lukewarm, arming the excited, becoming the chemist of the sect, fabricating terrible and blind engine of destruction that never strike the chosen victim.
“We arrive at the crime of the eighteenth of December; that evening, two men stop outside the Café Mansard. Paris is terrorized by previous crimes, but the hall is nevertheless packed with customers. Who could imagine that an imbecile hatred might afflict inoffensive employees or tradesmen relaxing after the day’s hard labor? Two wretches are there, however, who are preparing to sow terror and death. And why have they chosen that establishment, frequented above all by the humble, rather than a thousand others more luxurious, where their so-called social crime might attain capitalists and employers? Because a sentiment of personal vengeance drives them; because one of those men is Jacques Liban.”
The designated accused makes a simple sign of negation.
“Companion Blandon stands watch; the other, the bearer of a package wrapped in newspaper, enters the hall, sits down near the door, deposits his device under the bench, orders a drink, for which he pays immediately, ostentatiously lights a cigarette, drops it, bends down as if to pick it up, and leaves.
“That other is Jacques Bilan.
“You know the frightful consequences of that abominable crime. One man dead, three others seriously wounded, one widow, orphans, three unfortunates incapable henceforth of earning a living And it is in the name of humanity that fanatics have dared to commit that crime!
“The guilty parties have profited from the general confusion to flee. The law has grave suspicions, but it cannot find complete certainty. A providential hazard soon informs them of the whole truth. Companion Blandon, put under suspicion, is drawn into a trap and stabbed several times. The unfortunate, left for dead, is still breathing; the approach of death drives him to repent; he declares himself guilty and surrenders the name of the accomplice who conceived the plan, directed it and execute it; and that accomplice is the wretch you are about to condemn, Jacques Bilan.
“Agents immediately set out in search of him; they find traces of him in Brussels, The Hague and Amsterdam, but the anarchist—has he not just admitted it himself?—is a Proteus who changes form at will; the finest sleuths cannot catch him.
“Almost a year passes. The companion does not know that we are aware of his culpability; he thinks that the moment to carry out a new crime has come. He arrives in Paris, and books a room at the Hôtel St-Germain.”
“Registering there under the name of Jacques Bilan,” the accused interjects, ironically.
“That scarcely accords with his renowned skill,” observes the defender.
“Yes,” replies the accuser, “he imprudently registers under his own name, because he does not know about Blandon’s confession, and because he has, in any case, only gone there to burn incriminating papers, to get rid of his suitcase and leave quickly, never to return.
“There is a kind of bravado in that, a challenge thrown down to the police, to Society. But the law is on the alert; it is informed that the audacious criminal is in Paris; he is found; he is arrested, and here he is before you.
“Now, what is the inconceivable system of defense that he has chosen? He is not Jacques Bilan, he says; the numerous papers that prove it are not his; he ought them in London to hide his true identity; the other facts that overwhelm him are unfortunate coincidences, etc. That’s very easy to say—but then, why, on two different occasions, choose anagrams of Bilan to dissimulate himself?
“Who is he? What is the dishonor, the infamy, the crime that he wants to hide under all these names? An honest man does not hide. Who among you, Messieurs the jurors, a victim of a similar situation, before the prospect of the scaffold, would hesitate for a single instant to cry: ‘My name, my birthplace, my family, my friends, my actions: here they are; I am not the man who committed the odious action of which I am accused.’ But the accused refrains from breaking his silence; he does not respond; he will not respond.”
“He does not want to respond!” exclaims the defending advocate.
“He cannot respond,” replies the public prosecutor, “because he really is Companion Bilan, the bitter enemy of all social estate, the murderer who has not hesitate to strike the innocent, the humble, the workers in the name of his infamous doctrines.”
And with a vehement peroration, the orator demands the pitiless application of the law.
The audience and the judges whisper, exchanging their impressions. All eyes turn toward the dock. The pseudo-Jacques Bilan remains impassive.
A juror requests to ask a question.
If Bilan, Liban and Balin are, as the accused claims, borrowed names that hide his true identity, they denote a mania for anagrams that might assist the law to raise his mask. Has a search been made for anagrams of Bilan?”
The accused looks at the questioner with a singularly troubled expression. The man is on the right track.
The President intervenes. “Monsieur, the law does in deal in puerilities; we do not play the diviner here. Address yourself to the illustrated papers!”
“The public prosecution has, however, made a weapon of those puerilities,” observes the stubborn juror.
“I do not have to appreciate the fashion in which the public prosecutor judges it appropriate to establish the accusation.”
“The arguments that are apparently the most futile,” replies the advocate general, who sees a scarcely-dissimulated criticism in the honorable president’s words, “are sometimes of capital importance; I am ready nevertheless to abandon that one if you judge it unworthy of the law. Is this man Jacques Bilan, as all the evidence, all the facts and all the documents demonstrate that he is? If he is not Companion Bilan, it is easy for him to tell us who he is and why he is hiding. One again, who is he? If he continues to remain silent, it is because he is the anarchist Bilan, it is because he cannot be anyone but him. That is all I ask you to remember, Monsieur j
uror.”
“Is that all you had to ask?” adds the President, to the juror, who is still standing. The nonplussed bourgeois sits down without breathing another word.
The defender gets up in his turn. He is a very young blond man, almost beardless, whose debut is awaited with curiosity. The official advocate, conscious of the heavy task that is incumbent upon him, appears very troubled by it.
“Messieurs the judges, Messieurs the jurors,” he said, in substance, “you find yourselves in the presence of an intriguing mystery, and inextricable and unprecedented situation that troubles your conscience and disrupts your logical thinking. Certainly, it is not the first time that an accused has hidden his identity under an assumed name; you have not forgotten the Campi affair;34 but there, the accused really had committed the murder with which he was charged; it was an admitted murderer that was hiding behind an assumed name, whereas here, the case is absolutely opposite; it is an honest man who is hiding under the name of a criminal.
“Can you admit for a single instant that if this man really were Jacques Bilan, the anarchist of the Café Mansard, that he would have registered at a hotel under that name, furnished with all the documents that were found in his suitcase? But in that case, the man would be mad, and no longer responsible for his action! No, Messieurs, the accused is not the author of the abominable crime or which he is reproached.
“There exist in London, and perhaps elsewhere, shady agencies that make a commerce out of various documents and civil estates; these establishments take infinite precautions and it is almost impossible to catch them in the act of committing fraud. It is there, you can be certain, that my unfortunate client procure the compromising papers of which his valise was full. The veritable guilty party is dead, or if he is not, has disposed of his own free will of a dangerous identity. Perhaps he is tranquilly following these debates; his incontestable reputation of cleverness gives me the right to make the suggestion.
“But if this man, as common sense proves, is not Jacques Bilan, you ask me, along with the public prosecutor, who is he? What reasons does he have for hiding? Here, Messieurs, I cannot and ought not to respond to that legitimate question. Respectful of his individual right, I ought not to tell you the near-certainty that has taken possession of my mind. He alone ought to lift the veil that covers him. Considerations beyond all human laws, causes so great that looking death in the face cannot shake his resolution, prevent him from doing so.
“Not only does he not want to be defended, not only has he made no effort to point out the absurdities of the witness statements and the contradictions that are to be found in the eloquent speech of Monsieur the advocate general, but to all my remonstrations, to all my supplications, he has responded with a single assertion that had profoundly troubled me and convinced me of his innocence.
“‘I am not Jacques Bilan,’ he has said to me. ‘I have not committed any action that can fall under the lash of your law; nevertheless, for an action as audacious as it was insensate, which has put me outside humankind, destiny has condemned me to death; it is necessary that I die. I was about to throw myself in the river at the very moment when I was arrested; the supreme power that is punishing me found that the punishment would be unworthy of me and insufficient for it; my pride, not being content with a pedestal, must fatally mount the tragic platform; blood is required to wash away the outrage that I have done to society: plead for the scaffold.’”
A dull rumor of astonishment runs around the room.
“Are those,” the defender resumes, veritably emotional, “words that Companion Jacques Bilan would have pronounced? No, Messieurs, the anarchist would have proclaimed his doctrines, thrown down challenges to the law, cursed the scaffold that is the instrument of social vengeance. Perhaps he would have put on a brave face before death, but he would not have wanted it, he would not have summoned it.
“You are therefore in the presence of a man in great despair, a man who feels very guilty, but guilty of a sin that human law does not recognize, and it is because his forehead, over which an aureole must once have been resplendent, is today surrounded by dense shadow, it is absolutely necessary that you plumb the depths of this mystery, which must certainly affect you intensely, and that, forgetting his recommendations and his pleas, disobedient to his desire, I demand and I beg you not to confound him with the author of the stupid crime committed at the Café Mansard, and not to condemn him to death.”
The same juror requests again to ask a question.
“You have, Monsieur Defender, spoken of a quasi-certainty with regard to the identity of the accused; is it not your duty to make us party to it?”
“I cannot,” the young advocate replies. “One of two things must be true: either my supposition, as strange as it is improbable, is false, and it would be wounding an illustrious family; or it is true, and then it would only have weight with the assent of my client, since he alone can provide the proof, and a simple negation would suffice to destroy all its value. Now, until this moment, he has persisted in remaining silent.”
“This is melodrama,” jeers the advocate general.
“It is drama,” the defender ripostes, sharply. “A drama in which tragedy is intervening, as in the ancient tragedies.”
The young defender’s sincere emotion seems to have produced a good effect. The advocate general thinks that he ought to add a few words.
“If such a precedent is established,” he observes, without emphasis, “the application of laws will soon become a dead letter. It will be sufficient for the accused to claim that an evil fate has caused him to take the name of the guilty party and that he has special reasons for hiding his true identity, in order to find mercy before his judges. That really would be too convenient. You affirm, Monsieur the defender, that a mystery envelops this man. He has only one word to say, and I wish with all my heart that he would pronounce it, in order to clear our conscience. If he is not Jacques Bilan, who is he?”
“Once again,” says the President, obsessed by an anxiety, to whom the face of the accused did not seem unfamiliar, “Who are you?”
The accused remains silent. His left hand, raised in an enigmatic pose, seems nevertheless to affirm an irreducible resolution to keep quiet.
The President comes to the rescue. “Before passing into the deliberation room, accused, I will grant you five minutes of reflection.”
A great silence reigns in the auditorium; one would think that no one wants to trouble that ultimate meditation. All gazes converge on the dock, where the man, prey to an internal combat, his head bowed and his eyes haggard, seems to be appealing for help with all the energy of his soul.
Bated breath is audible.
“The Garden of Olives,” murmurs a poet.
The five minutes have elapsed; the President speaks again.
“Stand up, accused; the moment is grave; your life might perhaps depend on your words. One last time, if you are not Jacques Bilan, who are you?”
“I cannot tell you Monsieur le Président,” he replies, with a movement that betrays a moment of weakness. He rapidly recovers his composure. “If I told you,” he added, with a bitter smile, “you would not believe me.”
“Why not?” observes the President, in a veritable tone of good will.
“If I told you that a man who was illustrious among the illustrious, a man whose bronze stands in one of your public squares and whose renown has resounded all over the world, a man who has been dead and buried for years, stands before you today, what would you respond?”
“I would demand a name and proofs!” exclaims the magistrate, who suspects a simulation of madness and frowns.
The accused hesitates for a few seconds. Now that nothing any longer attaches him to life, is he going to make honorable amends to the society that has deceived him unworthily? Is he going to evade the just punishment, humiliate himself, beg its pardon? Is he going to crown the abortion of his adventure with cowardice? Is it Pride or Destiny that is sealing his lips?
“You remain silent,” the President resumes, in an angry voice. “You prove to us thus that you are combining imposture with cynicism, that you are simulating madness, that you are trying to gain time.”
“Sic fatum,” murmurs the accused, in a low voice, sitting down again.
The jury’s deliberation is brief. The court returns after half an hour. A sinister silence hangs over the assembly. To the questions “Is the accused Jacques Bilan” and “Has Jacques Bilan committed the atrocity at the Café Mansard?” the majority has responded: “Yes.”
Are there any extenuating circumstances? It has responded: “No?”
Jacques Bilan is condemned to death.
Chapter XXXVIII
In spite of the insistences of his advocate, Jacques Bilan has refused his right to appeal or to sign a petition for mercy.
“Convict prison! Exile under the whip of brutal guards!” he cried, finally irritated by the persistence and pleas of the young defender. “That would be a torture a thousand times worse than death! Do you think that I have not reflected maturely before taking the definitive decision to remain silent? If I had told them who I am they would not have wanted, and they would not have been able, to believe me. There is only one man who could demonstrate the truth scientifically. That man occupies my place, possesses my wife and enjoys my fortune, and I do not want to put him to such a rude proof. Once, allowing myself to be carried away by an absurd fit of anger, I shouted my name to them: the padded cell immediately came to bid me to be silent. I could, if necessary, have arrived at that result again, but I have preferred the scaffold. Would you want me now to accept the ignominy of deportation, the ignominy of contact, the ignominy of chains? For whom do you take me? Have you not divined that I really was someone? Was your speech nothing but oratory art?”
The Second Life of Doctor Albin Page 38
