The Crime of the Boulevard

by Jules Claretie

  CHAPTER XVII.

  ALL the details of that murder, M. Ginory had drawn, one by one, fromPrades in his examination. The murderer denied at first; hesitated;discussed; then at last, like a cask with the bung out, from which poursnot wine, but blood, the prisoner told all; confessed; recounted;loosened his tongue; abandoned himself weakened and conquered, weary ofhis misery.

  "I was so foolish, so stupid," he violently said, "as to keep theportrait. I believed that the frame was worth a fortune. Fool! I sold itfor a hundred sous!"

  He gave the merchant's address, it was on the Quai Saint Michel.Bernardet found the frame as he had found the painted panel, and thistime, no great credit was due him.

  "Now," said he, "the affair is ended, _classe_. My children (he wasrelating his adventures to his little girls), we must pass to another.And why"--

  "Why, what?" asked Mme. Bernardet.

  "Eh! there it is! Why--it lacks the elucidation of a problem. I willsee! I will know!"

  He still remembered the young Danish doctor, whom he had seen with M.Morin at the autopsy. With his knowledge of men, with the sharp, keeneye of the police officer, Bernardet had recognized a man of superiormind; a mind dreamy and mysterious. He knew where Dr. Erwin lived duringhis sojourn in Paris, and he went to his apartment one beautiful morningand rang the bell at the door of a hotel in the Boulevard Saint Martin,where students and strangers lodge. He might have asked advice of M.Morin, of the master of French Science, but he, the Inspector of Surete,approach these high personages, to question them. He dared not as longas there was a Danish doctor.

  Bernardet's brain whirled. He felt almost certain that Dr. Erwin wouldgive the same explanation which he, himself, suspected, in regard to theobserved phenomenon.

  "The dead man's eye has spoken and can speak," said Bernardet tohimself. "Yes, surely. I am not deceived."

  Dr. Erwin met Bernardet cordially and listened to him with profoundattention. The police officer repeated word for word the confessiondrawn from Prades. Then he asked the Danish physician if he reallybelieved that Jacques Dantin's image had been transfixed on the retinaof the dying man's eye, during the time when he had held and gazed atthe portrait.

  "For the proofs which I obtained were very confused," said the officer,"it is possible, and I say it is quite easy to recognize JacquesDantin's features. We have seen it, and, according to your opinion eventhe painting was able to be--how shall I express myself--stored up,retained in the retina."

  "You found the proof there," said Dr. Erwin.

  "So, according to your opinion, I have not deceived myself?"

  "No!"

  "I have truly found in the retina of the dead man's eye the last visionhe saw when living?"

  "Yes!"

  "But the vision of a painting. A painting, Doctor."

  "Why not!" Dr. Erwin responded in a sharp tone. "Do you know whathappened? Knowing that he was dying the unhappy man went, urged by atragic impulse, to that portrait which represented to him all that wasleft, concentrating in one image alone, all his life."

  "Then it is possible? It is possible?" Bernardet repeated.

  "I believe it," said the Dane. "The man is dying. He has only onethought--to go directly to the one who, surviving him, guarded hissecrets and his life. He seized his portrait; he tore it from its hookwith all his strength; he devoured it with his eyes; he drank it in witha look, if I may be allowed the expression. To this picture of the beingwhom he loved he spoke; he cried to him; telling him his last wishes;dictating to him his thoughts of vengeance. At this supreme moment hisenergy was increased a hundredfold, I know not what intensity of lifewas concentrated on this image, and gathering all his failing forces ina last look the man who wished to live; the man weakened by illness,dying, assassinated, put into that last regard the electric force, thefire which fixed the image (confused, no doubt, but recognizable sinceyou have traced the resemblance) upon the retina. A phantom, if youwish, which is reflected in the dead man's eye."

  "And," repeated Bernardet, who wished to be perfectly assured in regardto the question, "it is not only the image of a living being, it is, touse your words, the phantom even of a painting which was retained on theretina?"

  "I do not reply to you: 'That is possible!' It is you who say to me: 'Ihave seen it!' And you have seen it, in truth, and the form, vaguethough it may be, the painted figure permits you to find in a passer-bythe man whose picture the retina had already shown you!"

  "Oh! well! Doctor," said the little Bernardet, "I shall tell that, butthey will deny it. They will say that it is impossible!"

  Dr. Erwin smiled. He seemed to be looking, with his deep blue eyes, atsome invisible perspective, not bounded by the rooms of little room.

  "One has said," he began, "that the word _impossible_ is not French. Itwould be more exact to affirm that it was not _human_! We attain aknowledge of the unknowable. The mysterious is approachable. One mustdeny nothing _a priori_; one must believe all things possible and notonly a dream. Search for the truth, the _harsh_ truth, as your Stendhalsaid. Well! the word is wrong. One ought to say justly, the _exquisite_truth, for it is a joy for those who search, that daily life where eachmovement marks a step advanced, where the heart beats at the thought ofa rendezvous in the laboratory as at a rendezvous of love. Ah! he ishappy who has given his life to science. He lives in a dream. It is thepoetry, in our times of prose. The dream," continued the young doctor asin an ecstasy, while Bernardet listened, ravished, "the dream iseverywhere. It is impossible to make it tangible. Thought, humanthought, can sometime be deciphered like an open book. An Americanphysician asked to be permitted to try an experiment upon the cranium ofa condemned man, still living. Through the cranium he studied the man'sbrain. Has not Edison undertaken to give sight to the blind! But, inorder to accomplish all these things, it is necessary, as in primitivetimes, to believe, to believe always. The twentieth century will seemany others."

  "Ah! Doctor! Doctor!" cried poor little Bernardet, much moved. "I do notwish to be the ignoramus that I am, the father of a family, who hasmouths to feed, and I beg of you to take me as a sweeper in yourlaboratory."

  He departed, enthused by the interview. Henceforth he could say that,he, the ignorant one, had, by his seemingly foolish conviction, provedthe leader of an experiment which had been abandoned for some years; andthe humble police officer had reopened the nearly closed door tocriminal instruction.

  A scruple, moreover, came to him; a doubt, an agony, and he wished toshare it with M. Ginory.

  All the same, with the admirable invention, he had caused an innocentman to be arrested. This thought made him very uneasy. He had produced apower which, instead of striking the guilty, had overthrown an unhappyman, and it was this famous discovery of Dr. Bourion's, persisted in byhim, which had resulted in this mistake.

  "It must be," he thought, "that man may be fallible even in the mostmarvelous discoveries. It is frightful! It is perhaps done to make usmore prudent. Prudent and modest!"

  Doubt now seized him. Must he stop there in these famous experimentswhich ended in this lie? Ought he abandon all research on a road whichended in a cul-de-sac? And he confided that unhappy scruple to theExamining Magistrate, with whom the chances of the service had put himin sympathy. M. Ginory not only was interested in strange discoveries,but he was always indulgent toward the original, little Bernardet.

  "Finally, M. le Juge," said the police officer, shaking his head, "Ihave thought and thought about the discovery, our discovery--that of Dr.Bourion. It is subject to errors, our discovery. It would have led us toput in prison--Jacques Dantin, and Jacques Dantin was not guilty."

  "Oh, yes! M. Bernardet," said the Magistrate, who seemed thoughtful, hisheavy chin resting on his hand. "It ought to make us modest. It is thefate of all human discoveries. To err--to err, is human!"

  "It is not the less true," responded Bernardet, "that all which haspassed opens to us the astonishing horizon of the unknown"----

  "The u
nknowable!" murmured the Magistrate.

  "A physician who sometimes asks me to his experiments invited me to hishouse the other evening and I saw--yes saw, or what one calls seeing, ina mirror placed before me, by the light of the X-rays--greenish rayswhich traversed the body--yes, Monsieur, I saw my heart beat, and mylungs perform their functions, and I am fat, and a thin person couldbetter see himself living and breathing. Is it not fantastic, MonsieurGinory? Would not a man have been shut up as a lunatic thirty years agowho would have pretended that he had discovered that? We shall see--weshall see many others!"

  "And will it add to the happiness of man? and will it diminish grief,wickedness and crime?"

  The Magistrate spoke as if to himself, thoughtfully, sadly. SomethingBernardet said brought a smile to his lips.

  "This is, Monsieur le Juge, a fine ending of the chapter for the secondpart of your work, 'The Duty of a Magistrate Toward ScientificDiscoveries.' And if the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences doesnot add"----

  M. Ginory suddenly turned red and interrupted Bernardet with a word anda gesture.

  "Monsieur Bernardet!"

  "I can only repeat, Monsieur, what public opinion thinks and says," saidBernardet, bowing low. "There was an illusion to this affair written up.An amiable fellow--that Paul Rodier."

  "Ah! Monsieur Bernardet, Monsieur Bernardet!" laughingly said theMagistrate, "you have a weakness for reporters. Do you want me to tellyou something? You will finish by becoming a journalist."

  "And you will certainly finish in the habit of a member of the Academy,Monsieur Ginory," said the little Bernardet, with his air of a mockingabbe.