Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Part 62

The usher now showed in Madame Poiret. At this unexpected appearance the prisoner had a slight shiver, but his trepidation was not remarked by Camusot, who seemed to have made up his mind.

"What is your name?" asked he, proceeding to carry out the formalities introductory to all depositions and examinations.

Madame Poiret, a little old woman as white and wrinkled as a sweetbread, dressed in a dark-blue silk gown, gave her name as Christine Mich.e.l.le Michonneau, wife of one Poiret, and her age as fifty-one years, said that she was born in Paris, lived in the Rue des Poules at the corner of the Rue des Postes, and that her business was that of lodging-house keeper.

"In 1818 and 1819," said the judge, "you lived, madame, in a boarding-house kept by a Madame Vauquer?"

"Yes, monsieur; it was there that I met Monsieur Poiret, a retired official, who became my husband, and whom I have nursed in his bed this twelvemonth past. Poor man! he is very bad; and I cannot be long away from him."

"There was a certain Vautrin in the house at the time?" asked Camusot.

"Oh, monsieur, that is quite a long story; he was a horrible man, from the galleys----"

"You helped to get him arrested?"

"That is not true sir."

"You are in the presence of the Law; be careful," said Monsieur Camusot severely.

Madame Poiret was silent.

"Try to remember," Camusot went on. "Do you recollect the man? Would you know him again?"

"I think so."

"Is this the man?"

Madame Poiret put on her "eye-preservers," and looked at the Abbe Carlos Herrera.

"It is his build, his height; and yet--no--if--Monsieur le Juge," she said, "if I could see his chest I should recognize him at once."

The magistrate and his clerk could not help laughing, notwithstanding the gravity of their office; Jacques Collin joined in their hilarity, but discreetly. The prisoner had not put on his coat after Bibi-Lupin had removed it, and at a sign from the judge he obligingly opened his shirt.

"Yes, that is his fur tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, sure enough!--But it has worn gray, Monsieur Vautrin," cried Madame Poiret.

"What have you to say to that?" asked the judge of the prisoner.

"That she is mad," replied Jacques Collin.

"Bless me! If I had a doubt--for his face is altered--that voice would be enough. He is the man who threatened me. Ah! and those are his eyes!"

"The police agent and this woman," said Camusot, speaking to Jacques Collin, "cannot possibly have conspired to say the same thing, for neither of them had seen you till now. How do you account for that?"

"Justice has blundered more conspicuously even than it does now in accepting the evidence of a woman who recognizes a man by the hair on his chest and the suspicions of a police agent," replied Jacques Collin.

"I am said to resemble a great criminal in voice, eyes, and build; that seems a little vague. As to the memory which would prove certain relations between Madame and my Sosie--which she does not blush to own--you yourself laughed at. Allow me, monsieur, in the interests of truth, which I am far more anxious to establish for my own sake than you can be for the sake of justice, to ask this lady--Madame Foiret----"

"Poiret."

"Poret--excuse me, I am a Spaniard--whether she remembers the other persons who lived in this--what did you call the house?"

"A boarding-house," said Madame Poiret.

"I do not know what that is."

"A house where you can dine and breakfast by subscription."

"You are right," said Camusot, with a favorable nod to Jacques Collin, whose apparent good faith in suggesting means to arrive at some conclusion struck him greatly. "Try to remember the boarders who were in the house when Jacques Collin was apprehended."

"There were Monsieur de Rastignac, Doctor Bianchon, Pere Goriot, Mademoiselle Taillefer----"

"That will do," said Camusot, steadily watching Jacques Collin, whose expression did not change. "Well, about this Pere Goriot?"

"He is dead," said Madame Poiret.

"Monsieur," said Jacques Collin, "I have several times met Monsieur de Rastignac, a friend, I believe, of Madame de Nucingen's; and if it is the same, he certainly never supposed me to be the convict with whom these persons try to identify me."

"Monsieur de Rastignac and Doctor Bianchon," said the magistrate, "both hold such a social position that their evidence, if it is in your favor, will be enough to procure your release.--Coquart, fill up a summons for each of them."

The formalities attending Madame Poiret's examination were over in a few minutes; Coquart read aloud to her the notes he had made of the little scene, and she signed the paper; but the prisoner refused to sign, alleging his ignorance of the forms of French law.

"That is enough for to-day," said Monsieur Camusot. "You must be wanting food. I will have you taken back to the Conciergerie."

"Alas! I am suffering too much to be able to eat," said Jacques Collin.

Camusot was anxious to time Jacques Collin's return to coincide with the prisoners' hour of exercise in the prison yard; but he needed a reply from the Governor of the Conciergerie to the order he had given him in the morning, and he rang for the usher. The usher appeared, and told him that the porter's wife, from the house on the Quai Malaquais, had an important doc.u.ment to communicate with reference to Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre. This was so serious a matter that it put Camusot's intentions out of his head.

"Show her in," said he.

"Beg your pardon; pray excuse me, gentlemen all," said the woman, courtesying to the judge and the Abbe Carlos by turns. "We were so worried by the Law--my husband and me--the twice when it has marched into our house, that we had forgotten a letter that was lying, for Monsieur Lucien, in our chest of drawers, which we paid ten sous for it, though it was posted in Paris, for it is very heavy, sir. Would you please to pay me back the postage? For G.o.d knows when we shall see our lodgers again!"

"Was this letter handed to you by the postman?" asked Camusot, after carefully examining the envelope.

"Yes, monsieur."

"Coquart, write full notes of this deposition.--Go on, my good woman; tell us your name and your business." Camusot made the woman take the oath, and then he dictated the doc.u.ment.

While these formalities were being carried out, he was scrutinizing the postmark, which showed the hours of posting and delivery, as well at the date of the day. And this letter, left for Lucien the day after Esther's death, had beyond a doubt been written and posted on the day of the catastrophe. Monsieur Camusot's amazement may therefore be imagined when he read this letter written and signed by her whom the law believed to have been the victim of a crime:--

"_Esther to Lucien_.

"MONDAY, May 13th, 1830.

"My last day; ten in the morning.

"MY LUCIEN,--I have not an hour to live. At eleven o'clock I shall be dead, and I shall die without a pang. I have paid fifty thousand francs for a neat little black currant, containing a poison that will kill me with the swiftness of lightning. And so, my darling, you may tell yourself, 'My little Esther had no suffering.'--and yet I shall suffer in writing these pages.

"The monster who has paid so dear for me, knowing that the day when I should know myself to be his would have no morrow--Nucingen has just left me, as drunk as a bear with his skin full of wind.

For the first and last time in my life I have had the opportunity of comparing my old trade as a street hussy with the life of true love, of placing the tenderness which unfolds in the infinite above the horrors of a duty which longs to destroy itself and leave no room even for a kiss. Only such loathing could make death delightful.