XCIX. La loi.

XCIX

The Law.

We have seen with what tranquillity Mlle Danglars and Mlle d'Armilly were able to accomplish their transformation and effect their flight: that is because everyone was too occupied with their own affairs to occupy themselves with theirs.

We will leave the banker, the sweat upon his brow, aligning before the phantom of bankruptcy the enormous columns of his liabilities, and we will follow the baroness, who, after remaining for an instant crushed beneath the violence of the blow that had just struck her, had gone to find her usual adviser, Lucien Debray.

It was, in fact, that the baroness counted upon this marriage to abandon at last a guardianship which, with a daughter of Eugénie's character, was not a little embarrassing; it was that in those species of tacit contracts which maintain the hierarchical bond of the family, the mother is really mistress of her daughter only on condition of being continually for her an example of wisdom and a type of perfection.

Now, Mme Danglars dreaded the perspicacity of Eugénie and the counsels of Mlle d'Armilly; she had surprised certain disdainful glances cast by her daughter at Debray, glances which seemed to signify that her daughter knew the whole mystery of her amorous and pecuniary relations with the intimate secretary, while a more sagacious and profound interpretation would, on the contrary, have demonstrated to the baroness that Eugénie detested Debray, not because he was in the paternal house a stumbling-block and a scandal, but because she ranked him simply in the category of those bipeds whom Diogenes tried no longer to call men, and whom Plato designated by the periphrasis of featherless two-footed animals.

Mme Danglars, from her point of view, and unfortunately in this world everyone has his own point of view which prevents him from seeing the point of view of others, Mme Danglars, from her point of view, we say, regretted infinitely that Eugénie's marriage had failed, not because that marriage was suitable, well-matched, and was to make her daughter happy, but because that marriage restored her liberty.

She ran then, as we have said, to Debray's, who, after having, like all Paris, attended the evening of the contract and the scandal which had been its sequel, had hastened to withdraw to his club, where, with some friends, he was talking of the event which at that hour formed the conversation of three quarters of that eminently gossiping city called the capital of the world.

At the moment when Mme Danglars, clad in a black gown and hidden beneath a veil, was ascending the staircase which led to Debray's apartment, despite the certainty the concierge had given her that the young man was not at home, Debray was occupied in repelling the insinuations of a friend who was trying to prove to him that, after the terrible explosion which had just taken place, it was his duty as a friend of the house to marry Mlle Eugénie Danglars and her two millions.

Debray defended himself like a man who asks nothing better than to be vanquished; for often this idea had presented itself spontaneously to his mind; then, as he knew Eugénie, her independent and haughty character, he resumed from time to time a completely defensive attitude, saying that this union was impossible, while letting himself be secretly tickled by the evil idea which, according to all moralists, incessantly preoccupies the most honest and purest of men, watching in the depths of his soul as Satan watches behind the cross. Tea, play, conversation, interesting, as one sees, since they were discussing such grave interests, lasted until one o'clock in the morning.

During this time, Mme Danglars, introduced by Lucien's valet de chambre, waited, veiled and palpitating, in the little green salon between two baskets of flowers which she herself had sent that morning, and which Debray, it must be said, had himself arranged, tiered, and pruned with a care which made the poor woman pardon his absence.

At eleven forty, Mme Danglars, weary of waiting uselessly, remounted a hackney-coach and had herself driven home.

Women of a certain world have this in common with fortunate grisettes, that they do not usually return after midnight. The baroness re-entered the hôtel with as much precaution as Eugénie had just taken to go out; she mounted lightly, and with a tightened heart, the staircase of her apartment, contiguous, as we know, to that of Eugénie.

She dreaded so much to provoke some comment; she believed so firmly, poor respectable woman at least in this respect, in the innocence of her daughter and in her fidelity to the paternal hearth!

Returned to her rooms, she listened at Eugénie's door, then, hearing no noise, she tried to enter; but the bolts were drawn.

Mme Danglars thought that Eugénie, fatigued by the terrible emotions of the evening, had gone to bed and was sleeping.

She called the chambermaid and questioned her.

"Mlle Eugénie," answered the chambermaid, "returned to her apartment with Mlle d'Armilly, then they took tea together; after which they dismissed me, telling me they had no further need of me."

Since that moment, the chambermaid had been in the servants' hall, and, like everyone, she believed the two young persons were in the apartment.

Mme Danglars went to bed then without the shadow of a suspicion; but, tranquil as to the individuals, her mind turned back to the event.

As her ideas cleared in her head, the proportions of the scene of the contract grew; it was no longer a scandal, it was an uproar; it was no longer a shame, it was an ignominy.

In spite of herself then, the baroness recalled that she had been without pity for poor Mercédès, struck lately, in her husband and in her son, with a misfortune as great.

"Eugénie," said she to herself, "is lost, and we also. The affair, such as it will be presented, covers us with opprobrium; for in a society like ours, certain ridicules are living, bleeding, incurable wounds.

"What happiness," she murmured, "that God has given Eugénie this strange character which has so often made me tremble!"

And her grateful gaze rose toward heaven, whose mysterious Providence disposes everything in advance according to the events which must happen, and from a defect, even a vice, sometimes makes a happiness.

Then, her thought crossed space, as does, in extending its wings, the bird from an abyss, and stopped at Cavalcanti.

"That Andrea was a wretch, a thief, an assassin; and yet this Andrea possessed manners which indicated a half-education, if not a complete education; this Andrea had presented himself in the world with the appearance of a great fortune, with the support of honorable names."

How to see clear in this labyrinth? To whom to address oneself to emerge from this cruel position?

Debray, to whom she had run with the first impulse of the woman who seeks a support in the man she loves and who sometimes ruins her, Debray could only give her counsel; it was to someone more powerful than he that she must address herself.

The baroness then thought of M. de Villefort.

It was M. de Villefort who had wished to have Cavalcanti arrested, it was M. de Villefort who without pity had carried trouble into the midst of his family as if it had been a stranger family.

But no; on reflection, this was not a man without pity, the king's attorney; it was a magistrate slave to his duties, a loyal and firm friend who, brutally, but with a sure hand, had given the scalpel-stroke into corruption: it was not an executioner, it was a surgeon, a surgeon who had wished to isolate before the world the honor of the Danglars from the ignominy of that lost young man whom they had presented to the world as their son-in-law.

From the moment that M. de Villefort, friend of the Danglars family, acted thus, there was no longer reason to suppose that the king's attorney had known anything in advance and had lent himself to any of Andrea's maneuvers.

The conduct of Villefort, on reflection, appeared then to the baroness still in a light which explained itself to their common advantage.

But there the inflexibility of the king's attorney must stop; she would go to him the next day and obtain from him, if not that he should fail in his duties as magistrate, at least that he should leave them all the latitude of indulgence.

The baroness would invoke the past; she would rejuvenate her memories, she would supplicate in the name of a time that was guilty but happy; M. de Villefort would hush the affair, or at least he would allow (and, to arrive at that, he had only to turn his eyes another way), or at least he would allow Cavalcanti to flee, and would pursue the crime only upon that shadow of a criminal called contumacy.

Then only did she fall asleep more tranquil.

The next day, at nine o'clock, she rose, and without ringing for her chambermaid, without giving sign of existence to anyone in the world, she dressed herself, and, clad with the same simplicity as the eve, she descended the staircase, left the hôtel, walked as far as the rue de Provence, mounted a hackney-coach and had herself driven to M. de Villefort's house.

For a month this accursed house had presented the lugubrious aspect of a lazaretto where the plague would have broken out; a part of the apartments were closed within and without; the shutters, closed, opened only for an instant to give air; one then saw appear at that window the frightened head of a lackey; then the window closed again like the slab of a tomb falling back upon a sepulcher, and the neighbors said in a low voice:

"Are we going to see again today a coffin come out of M. the king's attorney's house?"

Mme Danglars was seized with a shiver at the aspect of this desolate house; she descended from her hackney-coach, and, her knees bending, approached the closed door and rang.

It was only at the third time that the bell had sounded, whose lugubrious tinkling seemed itself to participate in the general sadness, that a concierge appeared, half-opening the door to a width just sufficient to let his words pass.

He saw a woman, a woman of the world, an elegantly clad woman, and yet the door continued to remain almost closed.

"But open, then!" said the baroness.

"First, madame, who are you?" asked the concierge.

"Who I am? but you know me well."

"We know no one any longer, madame."

"But you are mad, my friend!" cried the baroness.

"From whom do you come?"

"Oh! this is too much."

"Madame, it is the order, excuse me; your name?"

"Mme la baronne Danglars. You have seen me twenty times."

"That is possible, madame; now what do you want?"

"Oh! how strange you are! and I shall complain to M. de Villefort of the impertinence of his people."

"Madame, it is not impertinence, it is precaution: no one enters here without a note from M. d'Avrigny, or without having to speak to M. the king's attorney."

"Well, it is precisely with M. the king's attorney that I have business."

"Pressing business?"

"You must see it well, since I have not yet remounted into my carriage. But let us finish: here is my card, carry it to your master."

"Madame will await my return?"

"Yes, go."

The concierge reclosed the door, leaving Mme Danglars in the street.

The baroness, it is true, did not wait long; an instant after, the door reopened to a width sufficient to give passage to the baroness: she passed, and the door reclosed behind her.

Arrived in the court, the concierge, without losing sight of the door an instant, drew a whistle from his pocket and whistled.

M. de Villefort's valet de chambre appeared on the perron.

"Madame will excuse this good man," said he, coming toward the baroness; "but his orders are precise, and M. de Villefort has charged me to tell madame that he could not do otherwise than he has done."

In the court was a tradesman introduced with the same precautions, and whose goods they were examining.

The baroness mounted the perron; she felt herself profoundly impressed by that sadness which enlarged, so to speak, the circle of her own, and, still guided by the valet de chambre, she was introduced, without her guide having lost sight of her, into the magistrate's study.

However preoccupied Mme Danglars might be with the motive which brought her, the reception which had been given her by all that valetaille had seemed to her so unworthy, that she began by complaining.

But Villefort lifted his head, made heavy by grief, and looked at her with so sad a smile, that the complaints expired upon her lips.

"Excuse my servants for a terror of which I cannot make them guilty: suspected, they have become suspicious."

Mme Danglars had often heard in the world speak of that terror which the magistrate accused; but she would never have believed, if she had not had the experience of her own eyes, that this sentiment could be carried to that point.

"You also, then," said she, "are unhappy?"

"Yes, madame," answered the magistrate.

"You pity me then?"

"Sincerely, madame."

"And you understand what brings me?"

"You come to speak to me of what is happening to you, do you not?"

"Yes, monsieur, an awful misfortune."

"That is to say a mishap."

"A mishap!" cried the baroness.

"Alas! madame," answered the king's attorney with his imperturbable calm, "I have come to call nothing misfortune but things irreparable."

"Eh! monsieur, do you believe it will be forgotten?..."

"Everything is forgotten, madame," said Villefort; "your daughter's marriage will take place tomorrow, if it does not take place today, in a week, if it does not take place tomorrow. And as to regretting Mlle Eugénie's future husband, I do not believe such to be your idea."

Mme Danglars looked at Villefort, stupefied to see in him this almost bantering tranquillity.

"Am I come to a friend?" said she, in a tone full of dolorous dignity.

"You know that you are, madame," answered Villefort, whose cheeks covered themselves, at this assurance he gave, with a slight redness.

Indeed, this assurance made allusion to other events than those which occupied them at that hour, the baroness and he.

"Well, then," said the baroness, "be more affectionate, my dear Villefort; speak to me as a friend and not as a magistrate, and when I find myself profoundly unhappy, do not tell me that I ought to be gay."

Villefort inclined himself.

"When I hear speak of misfortunes, madame," said he, "I have taken, for three months, the unfortunate habit of thinking of my own, and then this egoistic operation of the parallel makes itself in my mind despite me. That is why, beside my misfortunes, yours seemed to me a mishap; that is why, beside my fatal position, yours seemed to me a position to be envied; but that vexes you, let us leave that. You were saying, madame?..."

"I come to know from you, my friend," resumed the baroness, "where the affair of that impostor stands?"

"Impostor!" repeated Villefort; "decidedly, madame, it is a settled purpose with you to attenuate certain things and to exaggerate others; impostor, M. Andrea Cavalcanti, or rather M. Benedetto! You are mistaken, madame, M. Benedetto is plainly and truly an assassin."

"Monsieur, I do not deny the justness of your correction; but the more severely you arm yourself against this unhappy man, the more you strike our family. Let us see, forget him for a moment, instead of pursuing him, let him flee."

"You come too late, madame, the orders are already given."

"Well, if he is arrested... Do you believe he will be arrested?"

"I hope so."

"If he is arrested (listen, I always hear it said that the prisons overflow), well, leave him in prison."

The king's attorney made a negative movement.

"At least until my daughter is married," added the baroness.

"Impossible, madame; justice has formalities."

"Even for me?" said the baroness, half smiling, half serious.

"For all," answered Villefort; "and for myself as for others."

"Ah!" made the baroness, without adding in words what her thought had just betrayed by that exclamation.

Villefort looked at her with that gaze with which he sounded thoughts.

"Yes, I know what you mean to say," resumed he; "you allude to those terrible rumors spread in the world, that all those deaths which, for three months, clothe me in mourning; that this death from which Valentine has just, as if by miracle, escaped, are not natural."

"I was not thinking of that," said Mme Danglars quickly.

"Yes, you were thinking of it, madame, and it was just, for you could do no otherwise than think of it, and you were saying to yourself softly: You who pursue crime, answer: Why then is there around you crime which remains unpunished?"

The baroness grew pale.

"You were saying that to yourself, were you not, madame?"

"Well, I confess it."

"I am going to answer you."

Villefort drew his armchair near Mme Danglars's chair; then, leaning his two hands upon his desk, and taking a tone more subdued than usual:

"There are crimes which remain unpunished," said he, "because one does not know the criminals, and because one fears to strike an innocent head for a guilty head; but when those criminals are known (Villefort extended his hand toward a crucifix placed opposite his desk), when those criminals are known," repeated he, "by the living God, madame, whoever they may be, they shall die! Now, after the oath I have just taken and which I shall keep, madame, dare to ask me mercy for that wretch!"

"Eh! monsieur," resumed Mme Danglars, "are you sure he is as guilty as is said?"

"Listen, here is his dossier: Benedetto, condemned first to five years of the galleys for forgery, at sixteen; the young man promised, as you see; then escaped, then assassin."

"And who is that unhappy man?"

"Eh! does one know that? A vagabond, a Corsican."

"He has then been claimed by no one?"

"By no one; his parents are unknown."

"But that man who had come from Lucca?"

"Another swindler like him; his accomplice, perhaps."

The baroness joined her hands.

"Villefort!" said she, with her sweetest and most caressing intonation.

"For God's sake! madame," answered the king's attorney with a firmness not exempt from dryness, "for God's sake! never ask me then mercy for a guilty man.

"What am I, I? the law. Has the law eyes to see your sadness? Has the law ears to hear your sweet voice? Has the law a memory to apply to itself your delicate thoughts? No, madame, the law commands, and when the law has commanded, it strikes.

"You will tell me that I am a living being and not a code; a man, and not a volume. Look at me, madame, look around me: have men treated me as a brother? have they loved me, I? have they spared me, I? has anyone asked mercy for M. de Villefort, and has that anyone been granted the mercy of M. de Villefort? No, no, no! struck, always struck!

"You persist, woman, that is to say siren that you are, in speaking to me with that charming and expressive eye which reminds me that I must blush. Well, be it, yes, blush for what you know, and perhaps, perhaps for something else still.

"But finally, since I myself have fallen, and more deeply than the others perhaps, well, since that time, I have shaken the garments of others to find the ulcer, and I have always found it, and I shall say more, I have found it with happiness, with joy, that seal of human weakness or perversity.

"For each man whom I recognized as guilty, and each guilty man whom I struck, seemed to me a living proof, a new proof that I was not a hideous exception! Alas! alas! alas! everyone is wicked, madame, let us prove it and strike the wicked!"

Villefort pronounced these last words with a feverish rage which gave to his language a ferocious eloquence.

"But," resumed Mme Danglars, trying to attempt a last effort, "you say that this young man is a vagabond, orphan, abandoned by all?"

"So much the worse, so much the worse, or rather so much the better; Providence has made him thus so that no one should have to weep for him."

"That is to hound the weak, monsieur."

"The weak who assassinates!"

"His dishonor would recoil upon my house."

"Have I not, I, death in mine?"

"Oh! monsieur!" cried the baroness, "you are without pity for others. Well, it is I who tell you, they will be without pity for you!"

"Be it so!" said Villefort, raising his arm to heaven with a gesture of menace.

"At least put off the cause of that unhappy man, if he is arrested, to the next assizes; that will give us six months for it to be forgotten."

"Not at all," said Villefort; "I have five days yet; the instruction is done; five days, that is more time than I need; do you not understand, madame, that I too must forget? Well, when I work, and I work night and day, when I work, there are moments when I no longer remember, and when I no longer remember, I am happy in the manner of the dead: but that is still better than to suffer."

"Monsieur, he has fled; let him flee, inertia is an easy clemency."

"But I have told you it was too late! At daybreak the telegraph played, and at this hour..."

"Monsieur," said the valet de chambre, entering, "a dragoon brings this dispatch from the minister of the Interior."

Villefort seized the letter and broke the seal vivaciously. Mme Danglars trembled with terror. Villefort started with joy.

"Arrested!" cried Villefort; "he has been arrested at Compiègne; it is finished."

Mme Danglars rose cold and pale.

"Adieu, monsieur," said she.

"Adieu, madame," answered the king's attorney, almost joyous in conducting her to the door.

Then returning to his desk:

"Come," said he, striking the letter with the back of his right hand, "I had a forgery, I had three thefts, I had three arsons, there was lacking to me but an assassination, here it is; the session will be fine."

“Stories of the world, in your language.”