Scenes from a Courtesan's Life/Vautrin's Last Avatar/Section 5
One of the infallible signs by which prison governors and their agents, the police and warders, recognize old stagers (chevaux de retour), that is to say, men who have already eaten beans (les gourganes, a kind of haricots provided for prison fare), is their familiarity with prison ways; those who have been in before, of course, know the manners and customs; they are at home, and nothing surprises them.
And Jacques Collin, thoroughly on his guard, had, until now, played his part to admiration as an innocent man and stranger, both at La Force and at the Conciergerie. But now, broken by grief, and by two deaths—for he had died twice over during that dreadful night—he was Jacques Collin once more. The warder was astounded to find that the Spanish priest needed no telling as to the way to the prison-yard. The perfect actor forgot his part; he went down the corkscrew stairs in the Tour Bonbec as one who knew the Conciergerie.
"Bibi-Lupin is right," said the turnkey to himself; "he is an old stager; he is Jacques Collin."
At the moment when Trompe-la-Mort appeared in the sort of frame to his figure made by the door into the tower, the prisoners, having made their purchases at the stone table called after Saint-Louis, were scattered about the yard, always too small for their number. So the newcomer was seen by all of them at once, and all the more promptly, because nothing can compare for keenness with the eye of a prisoner, who in a prison-yard feels like a spider watching in its web. And this comparison is mathematically exact; for the range of vision being limited on all sides by high dark walls, the prisoners can always see, even without looking at them, the doors through which the warders come and go, the windows of the parlor, and the stairs of the Tour Bonbec—the only exits from the yard. In this utter isolation every trivial incident is an event, everything is interesting; the tedium—a tedium like that of a tiger in a cage—increases their alertness tenfold.
It is necessary to note that Jacques Collin, dressed like a priest who is not strict as to costume, wore black knee breeches, black stockings, shoes with silver buckles, a black waistcoat, and a long coat of dark-brown cloth of a certain cut that betrays the priest whatever he may do, especially when these details are completed by a characteristic style of haircutting. Jacques Collin's wig was eminently ecclesiastical, and wonderfully natural.
"Hallo!" said la Pouraille to le Biffon, "that's a bad sign! A rook! (sanglier, a priest). How did he come here?"
"He is one of their 'narks'" (trucs, spies) "of a new make," replied Fil-de-Soie, "some runner with the bracelets" (marchand de lacets—equivalent to a Bow Street runner) "looking out for his man."
The gendarme boasts of many names in French slang; when he is after a thief, he is "the man with the bracelets" (marchand de lacets); when he has him in charge, he is a bird of ill-omen (hirondelle de la Greve); when he escorts him to the scaffold, he is "groom to the guillotine" (hussard de la guillotine).
To complete our study of the prison-yard, two more of the prisoners must be hastily sketched in. Selerier, alias l'Auvergnat, alias le Pere Ralleau, called le Rouleur, alias Fil-de-Soie—he had thirty names, and as many passports—will henceforth be spoken of by this name only, as he was called by no other among the swell-mob. This profound philosopher, who saw a spy in the sham priest, was a brawny fellow of about five feet eight, whose muscles were all marked by strange bosses. He had an enormous head in which a pair of half-closed eyes sparkled like fire—the eyes of a bird of prey, with gray, dull, skinny eyelids. At first glance his face resembled that of a wolf, his jaws were so broad, powerful, and prominent; but the cruelty and even ferocity suggested by this likeness were counterbalanced by the cunning and eagerness of his face, though it was scarred by the smallpox. The margin of each scar being sharply cut, gave a sort of wit to his expression; it was seamed with ironies. The life of a criminal—a life of danger and thirst, of nights spent bivouacking on the quays and river banks, on bridges and streets, and the orgies of strong drink by which successes are celebrated—had laid, as it were, a varnish over these features. Fil-de-Soie, if seen in his undisguised person, would have been marked by any constable or gendarme as his prey; but he was a match for Jacques Collin in the arts of make-up and dress. Just now Fil-de-Soie, in undress, like a great actor who is well got up only on the stage, wore a sort of shooting jacket bereft of buttons, and whose ripped button-holes showed the white lining, squalid green slippers, nankin trousers now a dingy gray, and on his head a cap without a peak, under which an old bandana was tied, streaky with rents, and washed out.
Le Biffon was a complete contrast to Fil-de-Soie. This famous robber, short, burly, and fat, but active, with a livid complexion, and deep-set black eyes, dressed like a cook, standing squarely on very bandy legs, was alarming to behold, for in his countenance all the features predominated that are most typical of the carnivorous beast.
Fil-de-Soie and le Biffon were always wheedling la Pouraille, who had lost all hope. The murderer knew that he would be tried, sentenced, and executed within four months. Indeed, Fil-de-Soie and le Biffon, la Pouraille's chums, never called him anything but le Chanoine de l'Abbaye de Monte-a-Regret (a grim paraphrase for a man condemned to the guillotine). It is easy to understand why Fil-de-Soie and le Biffon should fawn on la Pouraille. The man had somewhere hidden two hundred and fifty thousand francs in gold, his share of the spoil found in the house of the Crottats, the "victims," in newspaper phrase. What a splendid fortune to leave to two pals, though the two old stagers would be sent back to the galleys within a few days! Le Biffon and Fil-de-Soie would be sentenced for a term of fifteen years for robbery with violence, without prejudice to the ten years' penal servitude on a former sentence, which they had taken the liberty of cutting short. So, though one had twenty-two and the other twenty-six years of imprisonment to look forward to, they both hoped to escape, and come back to find la Pouraille's mine of gold.
But the "Ten-thousand man" kept his secret; he did not see the use of telling it before he was sentenced. He belonged to the "upper ten" of the hulks, and had never betrayed his accomplices. His temper was well known; Monsieur Popinot, who had examined him, had not been able to get anything out of him.
This terrible trio were at the further end of the prison-yard, that is to say, near the better class of cells. Fil-de-Soie was giving a lecture to a young man who was IN for his first offence, and who, being certain of ten years' penal servitude, was gaining information as to the various convict establishments.
"Well, my boy," Fil-de-Soie was saying sententiously as Jacques Collin appeared on the scene, "the difference between Brest, Toulon, and Rochefort is——"
"Well, old cock?" said the lad, with the curiosity of a novice.
This prisoner, a man of good family, accused of forgery, had come down from the cell next to that where Lucien had been.
"My son," Fil-de-Soie went on, "at Brest you are sure to get some beans at the third turn if you dip your spoon in the bowl; at Toulon you never get any till the fifth; and at Rochefort you get none at all, unless you are an old hand."
Having spoken, the philosopher joined le Biffon and la Pouraille, and all three, greatly puzzled by the priest, walked down the yard, while Jacques Collin, lost in grief, came up it. Trompe-la-Mort, absorbed in terrible meditations, the meditations of a fallen emperor, did not think of himself as the centre of observation, the object of general attention, and he walked slowly, gazing at the fatal window where Lucien had hanged himself. None of the prisoners knew of this catastrophe, since, for reasons to be presently explained, the young forger had not mentioned the subject. The three pals agreed to cross the priest's path.
"He is no priest," said Fil-de-Soie; "he is an old stager. Look how he drags his right foot."
It is needful to explain here—for not every reader has had a fancy to visit the galleys—that each convict is chained to another, an old one and a young one always as a couple; the weight of this chain riveted to a ring above the ankle is so great as to induce a limp, which the convict never loses. Being obliged to exert one leg much more than the other to drag this fetter (manicle is the slang name for such irons), the prisoner inevitably gets into the habit of making the effort. Afterwards, though he no longer wears the chain, it acts upon him still; as a man still feels an amputated leg, the convict is always conscious of the anklet, and can never get over that trick of walking. In police slang, he "drags his right." And this sign, as well known to convicts among themselves as it is to the police, even if it does not help to identify a comrade, at any rate confirms recognition.
In Trompe-la Mort, who had escaped eight years since, this trick had to a great extent worn off; but just now, lost in reflections, he walked at such a slow and solemn pace that, slight as the limp was, it was strikingly evident to so practiced an eye as la Pouraille's. And it is quite intelligible that convicts, always thrown together, as they must be, and never having any one else to study, will so thoroughly have watched each other's faces and appearance, that certain tricks will have impressed them which may escape their systematic foes—spies, gendarmes, and police-inspectors.
Thus it was a peculiar twitch of the maxillary muscles of the left cheek, recognized by a convict who was sent to a review of the Legion of the Seine, which led to the arrest of the lieutenant-colonel of that corps, the famous Coignard; for, in spite of Bibi-Lupin's confidence, the police could not dare believe that the Comte Pontis de Sainte-Helene and Coignard were one and the same man.
"He is our boss" (dab or master) said Fil-de-Soie, seeing in Jacques Collin's eyes the vague glance a man sunk in despair casts on all his surroundings.
"By Jingo! Yes, it is Trompe-la-Mort," said le Biffon, rubbing his hands. "Yes, it is his cut, his build; but what has he done to himself? He looks quite different."
"I know what he is up to!" cried Fil-de-Soie; "he has some plan in his head. He wants to see the boy" (sa tante) "who is to be executed before long."
The persons known in prison as tantes or aunts may be best described in the ingenious words of the governor of one of the great prisons to the late Lord Durham, who, during his stay in Paris, visited every prison. So curious was he to see every detail of French justice, that he even persuaded Sanson, at that time the executioner, to erect the scaffold and decapitate a living calf, that he might thoroughly understand the working of the machine made famous by the Revolution. The governor having shown him everything—the yards, the workshops, and the underground cells—pointed to a part of the building, and said, "I need not take your Lordship there; it is the quartier des tantes."—"Oh," said Lord Durham, "what are they!"—"The third sex, my Lord."
"And they are going to scrag Theodore!" said la Pouraille, "such a pretty boy! And such a light hand! such cheek! What a loss to society!"
"Yes, Theodore Calvi is yamming his last meal," said le Biffon. "His trips will pipe their eyes, for the little beggar was a great pet."
"So you're here, old chap?" said la Pouraille to Jacques Collin. And, arm-in-arm with his two acolytes, he barred the way to the new arrival. "Why, Boss, have you got yourself japanned?" he went on.
"I hear you have nobbled our pile" (stolen our money), le Biffon added, in a threatening tone.
"You have just got to stump up the tin!" said Fil-de-Soie.
The three questions were fired at him like three pistol-shots.
"Do not make game of an unhappy priest sent here by mistake," Jacques Collin replied mechanically, recognizing his three comrades.
"That is the sound of his pipe, if it is not quite the cut of his mug," said la Pouraille, laying his hand on Jacques Collin's shoulder.
This action, and the sight of his three chums, startled the "Boss" out of his dejection, and brought him back to a consciousness of reality; for during that dreadful night he had lost himself in the infinite spiritual world of feeling, seeking some new road.
"Do not blow the gaff on your Boss!" said Jacques Collin in a hollow threatening tone, not unlike the low growl of a lion. "The reelers are here; let them make fools of themselves. I am faking to help a pal who is awfully down on his luck."
He spoke with the unction of a priest trying to convert the wretched, and a look which flashed round the yard, took in the warders under the archways, and pointed them out with a wink to his three companions.
"Are there not narks about? Keep your peepers open and a sharp lookout. Don't know me, Nanty parnarly, and soap me down for a priest, or I will do for you all, you and your molls and your blunt."
"What, do you funk our blabbing?" said Fil-de-Soie. "Have you come to help your boy to guy?"
"Madeleine is getting ready to be turned off in the Square" (the Place de Greve), said la Pouraille.
"Theodore!" said Jacques Collin, repressing a start and a cry.
"They will have his nut off," la Pouraille went on; "he was booked for the scaffold two months ago."
Jacques Collin felt sick, his knees almost failed him; but his three comrades held him up, and he had the presence of mind to clasp his hands with an expression of contrition. La Pouraille and le Biffon respectfully supported the sacrilegious Trompe-la-Mort, while Fil-de-Soie ran to a warder on guard at the gate leading to the parlor.
"That venerable priest wants to sit down; send out a chair for him," said he.
And so Bibi-Lupin's plot had failed.
Trompe-la-Mort, like a Napoleon recognized by his soldiers, had won the submission and respect of the three felons. Two words had done it. Your molls and your blunt—your women and your money—epitomizing every true affection of man. This threat was to the three convicts an indication of supreme power. The Boss still had their fortune in his hands. Still omnipotent outside the prison, their Boss had not betrayed them, as the false pals said.
Their chief's immense reputation for skill and inventiveness stimulated their curiosity; for, in prison, curiosity is the only goad of these blighted spirits. And Jacques Collin's daring disguise, kept up even under the bolts and locks of the Conciergerie, dazzled the three felons.
"I have been in close confinement for four days and did not know that Theodore was so near the Abbaye," said Jacques Collin. "I came in to save a poor little chap who scragged himself here yesterday at four o'clock, and now here is another misfortune. I have not an ace in my hand——"
"Poor old boy!" said Fil-de-Soie.
"Old Scratch has cut me!" cried Jacques Collin, tearing himself free from his supporters, and drawing himself up with a fierce look. "There comes a time when the world is too many for us! The beaks gobble us up at last."
The governor of the Conciergerie, informed of the Spanish priest's weak state, came himself to the prison-yard to observe him; he made him sit down on a chair in the sun, studying him with the keen acumen which increases day by day in the practise of such functions, though hidden under an appearance of indifference.
"Oh! Heaven!" cried Jacques Collin. "To be mixed up with such creatures, the dregs of society—felons and murders!—But God will not desert His servant! My dear sir, my stay here shall be marked by deeds of charity which shall live in men's memories. I will convert these unhappy creatures, they shall learn they have souls, that life eternal awaits them, and that though they have lost all on earth, they still may win heaven—Heaven which they may purchase by true and genuine repentance."
Twenty or thirty prisoners had gathered in a group behind the three terrible convicts, whose ferocious looks had kept a space of three feet between them and their inquisitive companions, and they heard this address, spoken with evangelical unction.
"Ay, Monsieur Gault," said the formidable la Pouraille, "we will listen to what this one may say——"
"I have been told," Jacques Collin went on, "that there is in this prison a man condemned to death."
"The rejection of his appeal is at this moment being read to him," said Monsieur Gault.
"I do not know what that means," said Jacques Collin, artlessly looking about him.
"Golly, what a flat!" said the young fellow, who, a few minutes since, had asked Fil-de-Soie about the beans on the hulks.
"Why, it means that he is to be scragged to-day or to-morrow."
"Scragged?" asked Jacques Collin, whose air of innocence and ignorance filled his three pals with admiration.
"In their slang," said the governor, "that means that he will suffer the penalty of death. If the clerk is reading the appeal, the executioner will no doubt have orders for the execution. The unhappy man has persistently refused the offices of the chaplain."
"Ah! Monsieur le Directeaur, this is a soul to save!" cried Jacques Collin, and the sacrilegious wretch clasped his hands with the expression of a despairing lover, which to the watchful governor seemed nothing less than divine fervor. "Ah, monsieur," Trompe-la-Mort went on, "let me prove to you what I am, and how much I can do, by allowing me to incite that hardened heart to repentance. God has given me a power of speech which produces great changes. I crush men's hearts; I open them.—What are you afraid of? Send me with an escort of gendarmes, of turnkeys—whom you will."
"I will inquire whether the prison chaplain will allow you to take his place," said Monsieur Gault.
And the governor withdrew, struck by the expression, perfectly indifferent, though inquisitive, with which the convicts and the prisoners on remand stared at this priest, whose unctuous tones lent a charm to his half-French, half-Spanish lingo.
"How did you come in here, Monsieur l'Abbe?" asked the youth who had questioned Fil-de-Soie.
"Oh, by a mistake!" replied Jacques Collin, eyeing the young gentleman from head to foot. "I was found in the house of a courtesan who had died, and was immediately robbed. It was proved that she had killed herself, and the thieves—probably the servants—have not yet been caught."
"And it was for that theft that your young man hanged himself?"
"The poor boy, no doubt, could not endure the thought of being blighted by his unjust imprisonment," said Trompe-la-Mort, raising his eyes to heaven.
"Ay," said the young man; "they were coming to set him free just when he had killed himself. What bad luck!"
"Only innocent souls can be thus worked on by their imagination," said Jacques Collin. "For, observe, he was the loser by the theft."
"How much money was it?" asked Fil-de-Soie, the deep and cunning.
"Seven hundred and fifty thousand francs," said Jacques Collin blandly.
The three convicts looked at each other and withdrew from the group that had gathered round the sham priest.
"He screwed the moll's place himself!" said Fil-de-Soie in a whisper to le Biffon, "and they want to put us in a blue funk for our cartwheels" (thunes de balles, five-franc pieces).
"He will always be the boss of the swells," replied la Pouraille. "Our pieces are safe enough."
La Pouraille, wishing to find some man he could trust, had an interest in considering Jacques Collin an honest man. And in prison, of all places, a man believes what he hopes.
"I lay you anything, he will come round the big Boss and save his chum!" said Fil-de-Soie.
"If he does that," said le Biffon, "though I don't believe he is really God, he must certainly have smoked a pipe with old Scratch, as they say."
"Didn't you hear him say, 'Old Scratch has cut me'?" said Fil-de-Soie.
"Oh!" cried la Pouraille, "if only he would save my nut, what a time I would have with my whack of the shiners and the yellow boys I have stowed."
"Do what he bids you!" said Fil-de Soie.
"You don't say so?" retorted la Pouraille, looking at his pal.
"What a flat you are! You will be booked for the Abbaye!" said le Biffon. "You have no other door to budge, if you want to keep on your pins, to yam, wet your whistle, and fake to the end; you must take his orders."
"That's all right," said la Pouraille. "There is not one of us that will blow the gaff, or if he does, I will take him where I am going——"
"And he'll do it too," cried Fil-de-Soie.