Scenes from a Courtesan's Life/Vautrin's Last Avatar/Section 15
Jacques Collin took a cab and drove at once to the Quai Malaquais, to the little room he lodged in, quite separate from Lucien's apartment. The porter, greatly astonished at seeing him, wanted to tell him all that had happened.
"I know everything," said the Abbe. "I have been involved in it, in spite of my saintly reputation; but, thanks to the intervention of the Spanish Ambassador, I have been released."
He hurried up to his room, where, from under the cover of a breviary, he took out a letter that Lucien had written to Madame de Serizy after that lady had discarded him on seeing him at the opera with Esther.
Lucien, in his despair, had decided on not sending this letter, believing himself cast off for ever; but Jacques Collin had read the little masterpiece; and as all that Lucien wrote was to him sacred, he had treasured the letter in his prayer-book for its poetical expression of a passion that was chiefly vanity. When Monsieur de Granville told him of Madame de Serizy's condition, the keen-witted man had very wisely concluded that this fine lady's despair and frenzy must be the result of the quarrel she had allowed to subsist between herself and Lucien. He knew women as magistrates know criminals; he guessed the most secret impulses of their hearts; and he at once understood that the Countess probably ascribed Lucien's death partly to her own severity, and reproached herself bitterly. Obviously a man on whom she had shed her love would never have thrown away his life!—To know that he had loved her still, in spite of her cruelty, might restore her reason.
If Jacques Collin was a grand general of convicts, he was, it must be owned, a not less skilful physician of souls.
This man's arrival at the mansion of the Serizys was at once a disgrace and a promise. Several persons, the Count, and the doctors were assembled in the little drawing-room adjoining the Countess' bedroom; but to spare him this stain on his soul's honor, the Comte de Bauvan dismissed everybody, and remained alone with his friend. It was bad enough even then for the Vice-President of the Privy Council to see this gloomy and sinister visitor come in.
Jacques Collin had changed his dress. He was in black with trousers, and a plain frock-coat, and his gait, his look, and his manner were all that could be wished. He bowed to the two statesmen, and asked if he might be admitted to see the Countess.
"She awaits you with impatience," said Monsieur de Bauvan.
"With impatience! Then she is saved," said the dreadful magician.
And, in fact, after an interview of half an hour, Jacques Collin opened the door and said:
"Come in, Monsieur le Comte; there is nothing further to fear."
The Countess had the letter clasped to her heart; she was calm, and seemed to have forgiven herself. The Count gave expression to his joy at the sight.
"And these are the men who settle our fate and the fate of nations," thought Jacques Collin, shrugging his shoulders behind the two men. "A female has but to sigh in the wrong way to turn their brain as if it were a glove! A wink, and they lose their head! A petticoat raised a little higher, dropped a little lower, and they rush round Paris in despair! The whims of a woman react on the whole country. Ah, how much stronger is a man when, like me, he keeps far away from this childish tyranny, from honor ruined by passion, from this frank malignity, and wiles worthy of savages! Woman, with her genius for ruthlessness, her talent for torture, is, and always will be, the marring of man. The public prosecutor, the minister—here they are, all hoodwinked, all moving the spheres for some letters written by a duchess and a chit, or to save the reason of a woman who is more crazy in her right mind than she was in her delirium."
And he smiled haughtily.
"Ay," said he to himself, "and they believe in me! They act on my information, and will leave me in power. I shall still rule the world which has obeyed me these five-and-twenty years."
Jacques Collin had brought into play the overpowering influence he had exerted of yore over poor Esther; for he had, as has often been shown, the mode of speech, the look, the action which quell madmen, and he had depicted Lucien as having died with the Countess' image in his heart.
No woman can resist the idea of having been the one beloved.
"You now have no rival," had been this bitter jester's last words.
He remained a whole hour alone and forgotten in that little room. Monsieur de Granville arrived and found him gloomy, standing up, and lost in a brown study, as a man may well be who makes an 18th Brumaire in his life.
The public prosecutor went to the door of the Countess' room, and remained there a few minutes; then he turned to Jacques Collin and said:
"You have not changed your mind?"
"No, monsieur."
"Well, then, you will take Bibi-Lupin's place, and Calvi's sentence will be commuted."
"And he is not to be sent to Rochefort?"
"Not even to Toulon; you may employ him in your service. But these reprieves and your appointment depend on your conduct for the next six months as subordinate to Bibi-Lupin."
Within a week Bibi-Lupin's new deputy had helped the Crottat family to recover four hundred thousand francs, and had brought Ruffard and Godet to justice.
The price of the certificates sold by Esther Gobseck was found in the courtesan's mattress, and Monsieur de Serizy handed over to Jacques Collin the three hundred thousand francs left to him by Lucien de Rubempre.
The monument erected by Lucien's orders for Esther and himself is considered one of the finest in Pere-Lachaise, and the earth beneath it belongs to Jacques Collin.
After exercising his functions for about fifteen years Jacques Collin retired in 1845.