“I have had nothing but success! If two people mean to love each other
for ever, they may help each other, and I can take this. Besides,
I shall succeed, and I will pay her a hundredfold. There is nothing
criminal in this _liaison_; nothing that could cause the most austere
moralist to frown. How many respectable people contract similar unions!
We deceive nobody; it is deception that makes a position humiliating.
If you lie, you lower yourself at once. She and her husband have lived
apart for a long while. Besides, how if I called upon that Alsatian to
resign a wife whom he cannot make happy?”
Rastignac’s battle with himself went on for a long while; and though the
scruples of youth inevitably gained the day, an irresistible curiosity
led him, about half-past four, to return to the Maison Vauquer through
the gathering dusk.
Bianchon had given Vautrin an emetic, reserving the contents of the
stomach for chemical analysis at the hospital. Mlle. Michonneau’s
officious alacrity had still further strengthened his suspicions of her.
Vautrin, moreover, had recovered so quickly that it was impossible
not to suspect some plot against the leader of all frolics at the
lodging-house. Vautrin was standing in front of the stove in the
dining-room when Rastignac came in. All the lodgers were assembled
sooner than usual by the news of young Taillefer’s duel. They were
anxious to hear any detail about the affair, and to talk over the
probable change in Victorine’s prospects. Father Goriot alone was
absent, but the rest were chatting. No sooner did Eugene come into the
room, than his eyes met the inscrutable gaze of Vautrin. It was the same
look that had read his thoughts before--the look that had such power to
waken evil thoughts in his heart. He shuddered.
“Well, dear boy,” said the escaped convict, “I am likely to cheat death
for a good while yet. According to these ladies, I have had a stroke
that would have felled an ox, and come off with flying colors.”
“A bull you might say,” cried the widow.
“You really might be sorry to see me still alive,” said Vautrin in
Rastignac’s ear, thinking that he guessed the student’s thoughts. “You
must be mighty sure of yourself.”
“Mlle. Michonneau was talking the day before yesterday about a gentleman
named _Trompe-la-Mort_,” said Bianchon; “and, upon my word, that name
would do very well for you.”
Vautrin seemed thunderstruck. He turned pale, and staggered back.
He turned his magnetic glance, like a ray of vivid light, on Mlle.
Michonneau; the old maid shrank and trembled under the influence of that
strong will, and collapsed into a chair. The mask of good-nature had
dropped from the convict’s face; from the unmistakable ferocity of that
sinister look, Poiret felt that the old maid was in danger, and hastily
stepped between them. None of the lodgers understood this scene in the
least, they looked on in mute amazement. There was a pause. Just then
there was a sound of tramping feet outside; there were soldiers there,
it seemed, for there was a ring of several rifles on the pavement of
the street. Collin was mechanically looking round the walls for a way of
escape, when four men entered by way of the sitting-room.
“In the name of the King and the Law!” said an officer, but the words
were almost lost in a murmur of astonishment.
Silence fell on the room. The lodgers made way for three of the men, who
had each a hand on a cocked pistol in a side pocket. Two policemen, who
followed the detectives, kept the entrance to the sitting-room, and two
more men appeared in the doorway that gave access to the staircase. A
sound of footsteps came from the garden, and again the rifles of several
soldiers rang on the cobblestones under the window. All chance of
salvation by flight was cut off for Trompe-la-Mort, to whom all eyes
instinctively turned. The chief walked straight up to him, and commenced
operations by giving him a sharp blow on the head, so that the wig fell
off, and Collin’s face was revealed in all its ugliness. There was
a terrible suggestion of strength mingled with cunning in the short,
brick-red crop of hair, the whole head was in harmony with his powerful
frame, and at that moment the fires of hell seemed to gleam from his
eyes. In that flash the real Vautrin shone forth, revealed at once
before them all; they understood his past, his present, and future, his
pitiless doctrines, his actions, the religion of his own good pleasure,
the majesty with which his cynicism and contempt for mankind invested
him, the physical strength of an organization proof against all trials.
The blood flew to his face, and his eyes glared like the eyes of a wild
cat. He started back with savage energy and a fierce growl that drew
exclamations of alarm from the lodgers. At that leonine start the police
caught at their pistols under cover of the general clamor. Collin saw
the gleaming muzzles of the weapons, saw his danger, and instantly gave
proof of a power of the highest order. There was something horrible and
majestic in the spectacle of the sudden transformation in his face; he
could only be compared to a cauldron full of the steam that can send
mountains flying, a terrific force dispelled in a moment by a drop
of cold water. The drop of water that cooled his wrathful fury was a
reflection that flashed across his brain like lightning. He began to
smile, and looked down at his wig.
“You are not in the politest of humors to-day,” he remarked to the
chief, and he held out his hands to the policemen with a jerk of his
head.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “put on the bracelets or the handcuffs. I call on
those present to witness that I make no resistance.”
A murmur of admiration ran through the room at the sudden outpouring
like fire and lava flood from this human volcano, and its equally sudden
cessation.
“There’s a sell for you, master crusher,” the convict added, looking at
the famous director of police.
“Come, strip!” said he of the Petite Rue Saint-Anne, contemptuously.
“Why?” asked Collin. “There are ladies present; I deny nothing, and
surrender.”
He paused, and looked round the room like an orator who is about to
overwhelm his audience.
“Take this down, Daddy Lachapelle,” he went on, addressing a little,
white-haired old man who had seated himself at the end of the table; and
after drawing a printed form from the portfolio, was proceeding to draw
up a document. “I acknowledge myself to be Jacques Collin, otherwise
known as Trompe-la-Mort, condemned to twenty years’ penal servitude, and
I have just proved that I have come fairly by my nickname.--If I had
as much as raised my hand,” he went on, addressing the other lodgers,
“those three sneaking wretches yonder would have drawn claret on Mamma
Vauquer’s domestic hearth. The rogues have laid their heads together to
set a trap for me.”
Mme. Vauquer felt sick and faint at these words.
“Good Lord!” she cried, “this does give one a turn; and me at the Gaite
with him only last night!” she said to Sylvie.
“Summon your philosophy, mamma,” Collin resumed. “Is it a misfortune to
have sat in my box at the Gaite yesterday evening? After all, are you
better than we are? The brand upon our shoulders is less shameful than
the brand set on your hearts, you flabby members of a society rotten
to the core. Not the best man among you could stand up to me.” His
eyes rested upon Rastignac, to whom he spoke with a pleasant smile
that seemed strangely at variance with the savage expression in his
eyes.--“Our little bargain still holds good, dear boy; you can accept
any time you like! Do you understand?” And he sang:
“A charming girl is my Fanchette
In her simplicity.”
“Don’t you trouble yourself,” he went on; “I can get in my money. They
are too much afraid of me to swindle me.”
The convicts’ prison, its language and customs, its sudden sharp
transitions from the humorous to the horrible, its appalling grandeur,
its triviality and its dark depths, were all revealed in turn by the
speaker’s discourse; he seemed to be no longer a man, but the type and
mouthpiece of a degenerate race, a brutal, supple, clear-headed race of
savages. In one moment Collin became the poet of an inferno, wherein all
thoughts and passions that move human nature (save repentance) find a
place. He looked about him like a fallen archangel who is for war to the
end. Rastignac lowered his eyes, and acknowledged this kinship claimed
by crime as an expiation of his own evil thoughts.
“Who betrayed me?” said Collin, and his terrible eyes traveled round the
room. Suddenly they rested on Mlle. Michonneau.
“It was you, old cat!” he said. “That sham stroke of apoplexy was your
doing, lynx eyes!... Two words from me, and your throat would be cut in
less than a week, but I forgive you, I am a Christian. You did not sell
me either. But who did?----Aha! you may rummage upstairs,” he shouted,
hearing the police officers opening his cupboards and taking possession
of his effects. “The nest is empty, the birds flew away yesterday, and
you will be none the wiser. My ledgers are here,” he said tapping his
forehead. “Now I know who sold me! It could only be that blackguard
Fil-de-Soie. That is who it was, old catchpoll, eh?” he said, turning to
the chief. “It was timed so neatly to get the banknotes up above there.
There is nothing left for you--spies! As for Fil-de-Soie, he will be
under the daisies in less than a fortnight, even if you were to tell off
the whole force to protect him. How much did you give the Michonnette?”
he asked of the police officers. “A thousand crowns? Oh you Ninon in
decay, Pompadour in tatters, Venus of the graveyard, I was worth more
than that! If you had given me warning, you should have had six thousand
francs. Ah! you had no suspicion of that, old trafficker in flesh and
blood, or I should have had the preference. Yes, I would have given six
thousand francs to save myself an inconvenient journey and some loss of
money,” he said, as they fastened the handcuffs on his wrists. “These
folks will amuse themselves by dragging out this business till the end
of time to keep me idle. If they were to send me straight to jail, I
should soon be back at my old tricks in spite of the duffers at the Quai
des Orfevres. Down yonder they will all turn themselves inside out to
help their general--their good Trompe-la-Mort--to get clear away. Is
there a single one among you that can say, as I can, that he has ten
thousand brothers ready to do anything for him?” he asked proudly.
“There is some good there,” he said tapping his heart; “I have never
betrayed any one!--Look you here, you slut,” he said to the old maid,
“they are all afraid of me, do you see? but the sight of you turns them
sick. Rake in your gains.”
He was silent for a moment, and looked round at the lodgers’ faces.
“What dolts you are, all of you! Have you never seen a convict before?
A convict of Collin’s stamp, whom you see before you, is a man less
weak-kneed than others; he lifts up his voice against the colossal fraud
of the Social Contract, as Jean Jacques did, whose pupil he is proud
to declare himself. In short, I stand here single-handed against a
Government and a whole subsidized machinery of tribunals and police, and
I am a match for them all.”
“Ye gods!” cried the painter, “what a magnificent sketch one might make
of him!”
“Look here, you gentlemen-in-waiting to his highness the gibbet, master
of ceremonies to the widow” (a nickname full of sombre poetry, given
by prisoners to the guillotine), “be a good fellow, and tell me if it
really was Fil-de-Soie who sold me. I don’t want him to suffer for some
one else, that would not be fair.”
But before the chief had time to answer, the rest of the party returned
from making their investigations upstairs. Everything had been opened
and inventoried. A few words passed between them and the chief, and the
official preliminaries were complete.
“Gentlemen,” said Collin, addressing the lodgers, “they will take me
away directly. You have all made my stay among you very agreeable, and I
shall look back upon it with gratitude. Receive my adieux, and permit me
to send you figs from Provence.”
He advanced a step or two, and then turned to look once more at
Rastignac.
“Good-bye, Eugene,” he said, in a sad and gentle tone, a strange
transition from his previous rough and stern manner. “If you should
be hard up, I have left you a devoted friend,” and, in spite of his
shackles, he managed to assume a posture of defence, called, “One, two!”
like a fencing-master, and lunged. “If anything goes wrong, apply in
that quarter. Man and money, all at your service.”
The strange speaker’s manner was sufficiently burlesque, so that no
one but Rastignac knew that there was a serious meaning underlying the
pantomime.
As soon as the police, soldiers, and detectives had left the house,
Sylvie, who was rubbing her mistress’ temples with vinegar, looked round
at the bewildered lodgers.
“Well,” said she, “he was a man, he was, for all that.”
Her words broke the spell. Every one had been too much excited, too much
moved by very various feelings to speak. But now the lodgers began
to look at each other, and then all eyes were turned at once on Mlle.
Michonneau, a thin, shriveled, dead-alive, mummy-like figure, crouching
by the stove; her eyes were downcast, as if she feared that the green
eye-shade could not shut out the expression of those faces from her.
This figure and the feeling of repulsion she had so long excited were
explained all at once. A smothered murmur filled the room; it was so
unanimous, that it seemed as if the same feeling of loathing had pitched
all the voices in one key. Mlle. Michonneau heard it, and did not stir.
It was Bianchon who was the first to move; he bent over his neighbor,
and said in a low voice, “If that creature is going to stop here, and
have dinner with us, I shall clear out.”
In the twinkling of an eye it was clear that every one in the room, save
Poiret, was of the medical student’s opinion, so that the latter, strong
in the support of the majority, went up to that elderly person.
“You are more intimate with Mlle. Michonneau than the rest of us,” he
said; “speak to her, make her understand that she must go, and go at
once.”
“At once!” echoed Poiret in amazement.
Then he went across to the crouching figure, and spoke a few words in
her ear.
“I have paid beforehand for the quarter; I have as much right to be here
as any one else,” she said, with a viperous look at the boarders.
“Never mind that! we will club together and pay you the money back,”
said Rastignac.
“Monsieur is taking Collin’s part” she said, with a questioning,
malignant glance at the law student; “it is not difficult to guess why.”
Eugene started forward at the words, as if he meant to spring upon her
and wring her neck. That glance, and the depths of treachery that it
revealed, had been a hideous enlightenment.
“Let her alone!” cried the boarders.
Rastignac folded his arms and was silent.
“Let us have no more of Mlle. Judas,” said the painter, turning to Mme.
Vauquer. “If you don’t show the Michonneau the door, madame, we shall
all leave your shop, and wherever we go we shall say that there are only
convicts and spies left there. If you do the other thing, we will hold
our tongues about the business; for when all is said and done, it might
happen in the best society until they brand them on the forehead, when
they send them to the hulks. They ought not to let convicts go about
Paris disguised like decent citizens, so as to carry on their antics
like a set of rascally humbugs, which they are.”
At this Mme. Vauquer recovered miraculously. She sat up and folded her
arms; her eyes were wide open now, and there was no sign of tears in
them.
“Why, do you really mean to be the ruin of my establishment, my dear
sir? There is M. Vautrin----Goodness,” she cried, interrupting herself,
“I can’t help calling him by the name he passed himself off by for an
honest man! There is one room to let already, and you want me to
turn out two more lodgers in the middle of the season, when no one is
moving----”
“Gentlemen, let us take our hats and go and dine at Flicoteaux’s in the
Place Sorbonne,” cried Bianchon.
Mme. Vauquer glanced round, and saw in a moment on which side her
interest lay. She waddled across to Mlle. Michonneau.
“Come, now,” she said; “you would not be the ruin of my establishment,
would you, eh? There’s a dear, kind soul. You see what a pass these
gentlemen have brought me to; just go up to your room for this evening.”
“Never a bit of it!” cried the boarders. “She must go, and go this
minute!”
“But the poor lady has had no dinner,” said Poiret, with piteous
entreaty.
“She can go and dine where she likes,” shouted several voices.
“Turn her out, the spy!”
“Turn them both out! Spies!”
“Gentlemen,” cried Poiret, his heart swelling with the courage that love
gives to the ovine male, “respect the weaker sex.”
“Spies are of no sex!” said the painter.
“A precious sexorama!”
“Turn her into the streetorama!”
“Gentlemen, this is not manners! If you turn people out of the house,
it ought not to be done so unceremoniously and with no notice at all. We
have paid our money, and we are not going,” said Poiret, putting on his
cap, and taking a chair beside Mlle. Michonneau, with whom Mme. Vauquer
was remonstrating.
“Naughty boy!” said the painter, with a comical look; “run away, naughty
little boy!”
“Look here,” said Bianchon; “if you do not go, all the rest of us will,”
and the boarders, to a man, made for the sitting-room-door.
“Oh! mademoiselle, what is to be done?” cried Mme. Vauquer. “I am a
ruined woman. You can’t stay here; they will go further, do something
violent.”
Mlle. Michonneau rose to her feet.
“She is going!--She is not going!--She is going!--No, she isn’t.”
These alternate exclamations, and a suggestion of hostile intentions,
borne out by the behavior of the insurgents, compelled Mlle. Michonneau
to take her departure. She made some stipulations, speaking in a low
voice in her hostess’ ear, and then--“I shall go to Mme. Buneaud’s,” she
said, with a threatening look.
“Go where you please, mademoiselle,” said Mme. Vauquer, who regarded
this choice of an opposition establishment as an atrocious insult. “Go
and lodge with the Buneaud; the wine would give a cat the colic, and the
food is cheap and nasty.”
The boarders stood aside in two rows to let her pass; not a word was
spoken. Poiret looked so wistfully after Mlle. Michonneau, and so
artlessly revealed that he was in two minds whether to go or stay, that
the boarders, in their joy at being quit of Mlle. Michonneau, burst out
laughing at the sight of him.
“Hist!--st!--st! Poiret,” shouted the painter. “Hallo! I say, Poiret,
hallo!” The _employe_ from the Museum began to sing:
“Partant pour la Syrie,
Le jeune et beau Dunois...”
“Get along with you; you must be dying to go, _trahit sua quemque
voluptas!_” said Bianchon.
“Every one to his taste--free rendering from Virgil,” said the tutor.
Mlle. Michonneau made a movement as if to take Poiret’s arm, with an
appealing glance that he could not resist. The two went out together,
the old maid leaning upon him, and there was a burst of applause,
followed by peals of laughter.
“Bravo, Poiret!”
“Who would have thought it of old Poiret!”
“Apollo Poiret!”
“Mars Poiret!”
“Intrepid Poiret!”
A messenger came in at that moment with a letter for Mme. Vauquer, who
read it through, and collapsed in her chair.
“The house might as well be burned down at once,” cried she, “if there
are to be any more of these thunderbolts! Young Taillefer died at three
o’clock this afternoon. It serves me right for wishing well to those
ladies at that poor man’s expense. Mme. Couture and Victorine want me
to send their things, because they are going to live with her father.
M. Taillefer allows his daughter to keep old Mme. Couture as her lady
companion. Four rooms to let! and five lodgers gone!...”
She sat up, and seemed about to burst into tears.
“Bad luck has come to lodge here, I think,” she cried.
Once more there came a sound of wheels from the street outside.
“What! another windfall for somebody!” was Sylvie’s comment.
But it was Goriot who came in, looking so radiant, so flushed with
happiness, that he seemed to have grown young again.
“Goriot in a cab!” cried the boarders; “the world is coming to an end.”
The good soul made straight for Eugene, who was standing wrapped in
thought in a corner, and laid a hand on the young man’s arm.
“Come,” he said, with gladness in his eyes.
“Then you haven’t heard the news?” said Eugene. “Vautrin was an escaped
convict; they have just arrested him; and young Taillefer is dead.”
“Very well, but what business is it of ours?” replied Father Goriot. “I
am going to dine with my daughter in _your house_, do you understand?
She is expecting you. Come!”
He carried off Rastignac with him by main force, and they departed in as
great a hurry as a pair of eloping lovers.
“Now, let us have dinner,” cried the painter, and every one drew his
chair to the table.
“Well, I never,” said the portly Sylvie. “Nothing goes right to-day! The
haricot mutton has caught! Bah! you will have to eat it, burned as it
is, more’s the pity!”
Mme. Vauquer was so dispirited that she could not say a word as she
looked round the table and saw only ten people where eighteen should
be; but every one tried to comfort and cheer her. At first the dinner
contingent, as was natural, talked about Vautrin and the day’s events;
but the conversation wound round to such topics of interest as duels,
jails, justice, prison life, and alterations that ought to be made
in the laws. They soon wandered miles away from Jacques Collin and
Victorine and her brother. There might be only ten of them, but they
made noise enough for twenty; indeed, there seemed to be more of them
than usual; that was the only difference between yesterday and to-day.
Indifference to the fate of others is a matter of course in this selfish
world, which, on the morrow of tragedy, seeks among the events of
Paris for a fresh sensation for its daily renewed appetite, and this
indifference soon gained the upper hand. Mme. Vauquer herself grew
calmer under the soothing influence of hope, and the mouthpiece of hope
was the portly Sylvie.
