A Harlot High and Low

by Honoré de Balzac

It may therefore be understood why the three convicts, instead of giving their chief away, wanted to serve him; they admired him because they suspected him of being in possession of the stolen seven hundred and fifty thousand francs, because they saw him still calm under lock and key at the Conciergerie, and because they believed him capable of coming to their rescue.

  The condemned cell

  WHEN Monsieur Gault had left the bogus Spaniard, he returned by way of the visiting-room to his office, then went in search of Bibi-Lupin, who, during the twenty minutes since Jacques Collin had emerged from his cell, was watching everything, ensconced at a Judas-hole in one of the windows overlooking the prison yard.

  ‘None of them recognized him,’ said Monsieur Gault, ‘and Napolitas, who goes round among them all, heard nothing. The poor priest, after all that he went through last night, didn’t utter a word to suggest that his cassock concealed Jacques Collin.’

  ‘That shows how well he knows prison life,’ answered the head of the detective force.

  It was Napolitas, Bibi-Lupin’s secretary, unknown to any of those currently detained at the Conciergerie, who was playing the part of the young man of family accused of forgery.

  ‘And now he’s asked if he can confess the man condemned to death!’ the governor added.

  ‘That’s our last chance!’ cried Bibi-Lupin, ‘I didn’t think of that. This Corsican, Théodore Calvi, was Jacques Collin’s chain-mate: Jacques Collin at the meadow made him, I’ve been told, a set of beautiful reamers.’

  The convicts make themselves pads which they insert between the iron ring and their flesh, to deaden the weight of the fetter on their ankle and instep. These pads, made of oakum and bits of linen rag, are so called after the opening of ship’s seams for caulking, which is what oakum is for.

  ‘Who’s watching the condemned man?’ Bibi-Lupin asked Monsieur Gault.

  ‘The one they call Thimbleheart!’

  ‘Good, I’ll do myself up as a constable, I’ll be there; I shall hear what they say, I take responsibility.’

  ‘Aren’t you afraid, if it is Jacques Collin, that you’ll be spotted and that he’ll strangle you?’ the governor of the Conciergerie asked Bibi-Lupin.

  ‘As a constable, I shall have my sword,’ answered the chief superintendent; ‘besides, if it is Jacques Collin, he won’t do anything to give himself away; and, if he’s a priest, I’m safe.’

  ‘There’s no time to lose,’ Monsieur Gault then said; ‘it’s half past eight, Father Sauteloup has just read out the rejection of the appeal, Monsieur Sanson is in the hall waiting for orders from the Parquet.’

  ‘Yes, it’s today, the Widow’s hussars are standing by,’ replied Bibi-Lupin. ‘I can understand why the Parquet hesitates, this boy goes on saying he’s innocent, and, to my mind, the proofs against him have never been quite sufficient.’

  ‘He’s a real Corsican,’ Monsieur Gault added, ‘he won’t say a word, he stands up to everything.’

  The governor of the Conciergerie’s last words to the chief of criminal investigation contained in a nutshell the sombre history of those condemned to death. A man whom the Law has removed from the number of the living belongs to the Parquet, which is the public prosecutor’s office. His authority is absolute; he is responsible to nobody, he has only his own conscience to deal with. The prison belongs to the Parquet, which is its sovereign master. A great poet has seized upon this subject, eminently proper to strike the imagination, in Victor Hugo’s Dernier Jour d’un Condamné! Poetry there is sublime as usual, prose has no other resource than reality, but the reality itself is terrible enough to vie with lyricism. The life of a man condemned to death who has not admitted his guilt or revealed the names of his accomplices is subject to frightful tortures. It is not a matter here either of a boot to break the feet, or of water ingurgitated into the stomach, or of the distension of the limbs by machines; but of an underhand and as it were negative torture. The Parquet delivers the condemned man over to himself, it leaves him in silence and darkness, with a companion, a sheep, of whom he must be careful.

  Our well-intentioned modern philanthropy believes itself to have invented the atrocious torment of isolation, but it is wrong. Since the abolition of physical torture, the Parquet, naturally desiring to soothe the already delicate consciences of jurors, has seen what dreadful resources solitude offers Justice against remorse. Solitude is a vacuum; and the moral being, like physical nature, abhors it. Solitude is habitable only by the man of genius who fills it with his ideas, those daughters of the intellectual world, or by the contemplator of the divine works for whom it is illuminated by the light of Heaven, enlivened by the breath and voice of God. Apart from these two men, so close to paradise, solitude is to torture what the moral is to the physical. Between solitude and torture there is the same difference as there is between nervous and surgical illness. It is suffering multiplied by infinity. The body touches upon the infinite through its nervous system, as the mind penetrates it by thought. Thus, in the annals of the Parquet in Paris, criminals who never confessed are numbered.

  The sinister situation, which assumes enormous proportions in certain cases, for instance in politics, when a dynasty or the State is concerned, will have its place in the COMÉDIE HUMAINE. For the moment, the description of that stone box in which, under the Restoration, the Public Prosecutor’s office in Paris kept a man convicted of a capital felony, must suffice to show the horror of the last days before he pays the supreme penalty.

  Before the July revolution, there existed at the Conciergerie, and, indeed, there still exists, a condemned cell, which is described as a chamber or bedroom. This room, set back to back against the registry, is separated from it by a thick wall entirely of freestone and flanked by the even more massive wall, seven or eight feet thick, which supports one end of the immense waiting-hall in the Palais de Justice. Its door is the first you come to along the dark corridor which meets your eyes in the middle of the vaulted entrance-hall, itself sizeable. Light enters this sinister room through a cellar-light, protected by a powerful grill and barely visible outside the Conciergerie, since it opens off the narrow space which remains between the registry window, which is next to the grill of the reception wicket, and the quarters of the clerk of the Conciergerie, which the architect thrust like a cupboard to the far end of the entrance-hall. Its very situation thus explains why this small room, set between four massive walls, was destined, when the Conciergerie and the Palais were reconstructed, to its baleful and ominous use. Any escape from it is out of the question. The corridor which leads to the solitary confinement cells and the women’s quarter comes out facing the big stove, around which constables and warders are always grouped. The skylight, the only way to the outside, set nine feet above the flagstones, overlooks the first courtyard guarded by the constabulary on duty at the main gate to the Conciergerie. No human power could breach the massive walls. Moreover, a criminal condemned to death is at once put in a strait-waistcoat, a garment which, as is well-known, deprives him of the use of his hands; is chained by one foot to his immobile camp bed; and has a sheep to look after him. The floor of the room is paved with thick stones, and the light is so weak that one can hardly see.

  It is impossible not to feel chilled to the bone as one enters, even now, although for sixteen years that room no longer serves any purpose, as a consequence of the changes introduced in Paris in the execution of the decrees of the Law. Imagine the criminal there in the company of his remorse, in silence and darkness, two sources of horror, and ask yourself if it would not have driven you mad? What a constitution it must be whose temper stands up against this situation to which the strait-waistcoat adds immobility, inaction!

  The Corsican Théodore Calvi, then aged twenty-seven, shrouded there in almost total secrecy, had nevertheless for two months resisted both the effect of the dungeon and the stool-pigeon’s captious jabbering!… Let us now look at the singular criminal proceedings which had resulted in the Corsican’s condemnation to death. Th
ey were curious in the extreme, but to analyse them needn’t take us long.

  The matter was at that very moment still causing much distress of mind to the jurors in attendance at the session before which Théodore Calvi had appeared. It was a week since the criminal’s appeal had been rejected by the Central Court. During that time, Monsieur de Granville’s mind had been constantly occupied with the matter, and he had put off the execution from day to day, still hoping to be able to reassure the jurors by publishing the fact that the condemned man, at the threshold of death, had admitted his crime.

  A singular criminal trial

  A POOR widow of Nanterre, whose house stood isolated within the commune, situated, as is generally known, amid the infertile plain which extends between Mont Valérien and Saint Germain-en-Laye, between the hills of Sartrouville and Argenteuil, had been murdered and robbed several days after receiving her share of an unexpected inheritance. This share amounted to three thousand francs, a dozen pieces of silver tableware, a gold watch and chain and some linen. Instead of banking the three thousand francs in Paris, as she was advised to by the solicitor of the deceased wine merchant who had bequeathed her the legacy, the old lady wanted to keep it all with her. In the first place she had never seen so much money which belonged to her, in the second she mistrusted everybody in every kind of business, like most of the lower orders and especially those who live in the country. After some reflection and after discussion with a wine-merchant in Nanterre, her own kinsman and that of the deceased wine-merchant, the widow had resolved to buy an annuity, to sell her house in Nanterre and to take up lodgings at Saint Germain.

  The house in which she lived, with its big, ill-fenced garden, was the sort of indifferent structure which small-holders around Paris have built for themselves. The plaster and rubble-stone so abundant in Nanterre, where the surrounding district is full of open quarries, had been, as they commonly are on the outskirts of Paris, made use of in haste and without the least architectural consideration. It is the hut of the savage in a civilized country. The house contained a ground floor and a first floor with attics above.

  The quarryman, this woman’s husband and constructor of the dwelling, had placed very solid iron bars in all the windows. The entrance door was of notable solidity. The dead man knew that he was alone there, in open country, and what country! His customers were big master builders in Paris, and so the best part of his building material had been taken in by cart. The carts would then have returned empty, but among the demolitions in Paris he picked out what best suited his purposes and bought it very cheap. Thus, windows, gratings, doors, shutters, much of the joinery, all were the result of authorized depredations, presents from his clients, good, well-chosen presents. Of two window-frames on offer he selected the better. The house, before which stood a very substantial yard, in which were the stables, was shut off by walls from the road. The gate was a massive grating. Moreover, several watch-dogs lived in the stables, and a smaller dog spent the night in the house. Behind the house was a garden of some two and a half acres.

  Left a widow and childless, the quarryman’s wife lived in the house with one servant. The selling price of his quarry had paid off the quarryman’s debts when he died two years previously. The widow’s only property was this isolated house, where she fed chickens and cows, selling the eggs and milk in Nanterre. No longer having a stable-boy, a carter or the quarry hands whom the dead man had put to work of every kind, she no longer cultivated the garden, but simply picked the few herbs and vegetables which grew of their own accord out of that stony soil.

  The price of the house and the money from her legacy being sufficient to produce seven or eight thousand francs, the woman expected to find herself very well off at Saint Germain with the seven or eight hundred francs’ annuity she imagined she would get for her eight thousand francs. She’d had several discussions with the notary in Saint Germain, for she’d refused to make a deed of gift of the money to the wine-merchant in Nanterre who’d asked her to do this. These were the circumstances when, from one day to the next, neither Widow Pigeau nor her servant were to be seen about. The farmyard gate, the door of the house, the shutters, all remained closed. After three days, the Law, informed of this state of affairs, descended upon the place. Popinot, as examining magistrate, accompanied by the district attorney, came out from Paris, and this is what they found.

  Neither the grating which gave entrance to the yard nor the door of the house showed any signs of forced entry. The key was found in the lock of the front door, on the inside. Nowhere had an iron bar been forced. The locks, the shutters, all the fastenings were intact.

  The outer walls showed no trace which might give a clue to the passage of malefactors. The chimney-pots and earthenware fireplaces were impossible of access, nobody could have got in and out that way. The ridge-tiles, sound and intact, showed no sign of having been disturbed. Penetrating into the bedrooms on the first floor, the magistrates, the constabulary and Bibi-Lupin found the Widow Pigeau strangled in her bed and the servant strangled in hers, by means of the neckerchieves they wore at night. The three thousand francs had been taken, as well as the silver tableware and jewels. The two bodies were in a state of putrefaction, as were those of the house-dog and a big yard-dog. The fencing about the garden was examined, it was nowhere broken. There were no footprints on the garden paths. It seemed probable to the examining magistrate that the murderer had walked on the grass to avoid leaving footprints, if that was the way he had come in, but how had he got into the house? On the garden side, the door had a fanlight protected by three iron bars which had not been tampered with. On that side, the key was equally found in the lock, just as it was at the main door on to the yard at the front.

  Once these impossibilities had been fully acknowledged by Monsieur Popinot, by Bibi-Lupin, who spent a whole day inspecting everything, by the district attorney himself and by the chief constable of the station in Nanterre, the murder became an appalling problem which defeated both politics and the Law.

  This drama, reported in the Gazette des Tribunaux, had taken place in the winter of 1828 to 1829. God knows to what extent the strange adventure roused interest in Paris; but Paris, which has new dramas to digest every morning, soon forgets. The Police forgets nothing. Three months after that first fruitless search, a public prostitute, observed by Bibi-Lupin’s men to be spending freely, and watched because of her known dealings with certain robbers, tried to get one of her friends to pawn a dozen silver dishes and a gold watch and chain. The friend refused. This fact came to the ears of Bibi-Lupin, who remembered the tableware and the gold watch stolen in Nanterre. Immediately the state pawnbrokers and all the known fences and receivers in Paris were questioned, and Bibi-Lupin subjected Manon-la-Blonde to constant watching.

  It was presently learnt that Manon-la-Blonde was madly in love with a young man who was scarcely ever seen, for he was said to be deaf to all proofs of love from the fair Manon. The mystery deepened. This young man, subjected to the attention of spies, was presently spotted, then recognized as an escaped convict, the hero of Corsican vendettas, handsome Théodore Calvi, known as Madeleine.

  One of those two-faced receivers, who equally serve robbers and the Police, was loosed on Théodore and undertook to buy from him the plate, the watch and the gold chain. Just as this scrap-iron dealer in the Cour Saint Guillaume was counting out the money for Théodore, disguised as a woman, at half past ten in the evening, the Police pounced, arrested Théodore and confiscated the objects.

  The judicial inquiry started at once. With such weak evidence, it was impossible to secure conviction on a capital charge that would have satisfied the Attorney General. Calvi never contradicted himself, or gave himself away. He said that a country woman had sold him these objects at Argenteuil, and that, after he’d bought them, rumour of the murder committed at Nanterre enlightened him as to the danger of being found in possession of the plate, watch, jewels, which had been listed in the inventory made on the death of the wine-deale
r in Paris, the uncle of Widow Pigeau, and so were known to be stolen goods. Finally, forced by economic necessity to sell them, he said, he’d hoped to get rid of them by way of some uncompromised person.

  Nothing could be got out of the discharged convict, who, by his silence and the firmness of his resolution, succeeded in making the magistracy believe that the Nanterre wine-dealer had committed the crime and that it was this man’s wife from whom Calvi had bought the compromising articles. Widow Pigeau’s unfortunate kinsman and his wife were arrested; but, after a week’s detention and careful investigation, it was established that neither husband nor wife had left home at the period of the crime. Moreover, Calvi himself did not identify, in the wine-dealer’s wife, the woman who, by his account, had sold him the silver and jewellery.

  As Calvi’s doxy, caught up in the inquiry, was convicted of having spent something like a thousand francs between the date of the crime and Calvi’s attempt to dispose of the loot, such evidence was considered enough to send the convict and the woman before a court of assize. That being the eighteenth murder committed by Théodore, he was condemned to death, for he seemed to be the author of the crime so cleverly committed. Although he did not recognize the wine-dealer’s wife from Nanterre, he was recognized by her and by her husband. During the preliminary investigation, numerous witnesses had established the fact of Théodore’s residence in Nanterre for a month or more; there he had worked on building sites, ill-clad, his face dusty with plaster. Everybody in Nanterre gave eighteen as the probable age of this boy, who must have been plotting his crime or, as they said, feeding that baby, for a month.

  The Prosecutor’s office believed in the existence of accomplices. The flues were measured for breadth, to see whether fair-haired Manon could have got in by the fireplace; but a child of six could not have been introduced through those chimney-pots, with which present-day architecture has replaced the open chimneys of former times. But for this singular and irritating mystery, Théodore would have been executed a week ago. The prison chaplain had, as we have seen, completely failed with him.