Part 112

At this moment Camusot, who was anxious to get the full benefit of his cleverness, took the two documents, read them through, and promised himself that he would show them to the public prosecutor and take his opinion on them. During this meditation, his usher came back to tell him that Madame la Comtesse de Serizy’s man-servant insisted on speaking with him. At a nod from Camusot, a servant out of livery came in, looked first at the usher, and then at the magistrate, and said, “I have the honor of speaking to Monsieur Camusot?”

“Yes,” replied the lawyer and his clerk.

Camusot took a note which the servant offered him, and read as follows:--

“For the sake of many interests which will be obvious to you, my dear Camusot, do not examine Monsieur de Rubempre. We have brought ample proofs of his innocence that he may be released forthwith.

“D. DE MAUFRIGNEUSE. “L. DE SERIZY.

“P. S.--Burn this note.”

Camusot understood at once that he had blundered preposterously in laying snares for Lucien, and he began by obeying the two fine ladies--he lighted a taper, and burned the letter written by the Duchess. The man bowed respectfully.

“Then Madame de Serizy is coming here?” asked Camusot.

“The carriage is being brought round.”

At this moment Coquart came in to tell Monsieur Camusot that the public prosecutor expected him.

Oppressed by the blunder he had committed, in view of his ambitions, though to the better ends of justice, the lawyer, in whom seven years’ experience had perfected the sharpness that comes to a man who in his practice has had to measure his wits against the grisettes of Paris, was anxious to have some shield against the resentment of two women of fashion. The taper in which he had burned the note was still alight, and he used it to seal up the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse’s notes to Lucien--about thirty in all--and Madame de Serizy’s somewhat voluminous correspondence.

Then he waited on the public prosecutor.

The Palais de Justice is a perplexing maze of buildings piled one above another, some fine and dignified, others very mean, the whole disfigured by its lack of unity. The Salle des Pas-Perdus is the largest known hall, but its nakedness is hideous, and distresses the eye. This vast Cathedral of the Law crushes the Supreme Court. The Galerie Marchande ends in two drain-like passages. From this corridor there is a double staircase, a little larger than that of the Criminal Courts, and under it a large double door. The stairs lead down to one of the Assize Courts, and the doors open into another. In some years the number of crimes committed in the circuit of the Seine is great enough to necessitate the sitting of two Benches.

Close by are the public prosecutor’s offices, the attorney’s room and library, the chambers of the attorney-general, and those of the public prosecutor’s deputies. All these purlieus, to use a generic term, communicate by narrow spiral stairs and the dark passages, which are a disgrace to the architecture not of Paris only, but of all France. The interior arrangement of the sovereign court of justice outdoes our prisons in all that is most hideous. The writer describing our manners and customs would shrink from the necessity of depicting the squalid corridor of about a metre in width, in which the witnesses wait in the Superior Criminal Court. As to the stove which warms the court itself, it would disgrace a cafe on the Boulevard Mont-Parnasse.

The public prosecutor’s private room forms part of an octagon wing flanking the Galerie Marchande, built out recently in regard to the age of the structure, over the prison yard, outside the women’s quarters. All this part of the Palais is overshadowed by the lofty and noble edifice of the Sainte-Chapelle. And all is solemn and silent.

Monsieur de Granville, a worthy successor of the great magistrates of the ancient Parlement, would not leave Paris without coming to some conclusion in the matter of Lucien. He expected to hear from Camusot, and the judge’s message had plunged him into the involuntary suspense which waiting produces on even the strongest minds. He had been sitting in the window-bay of his private room; he rose, and walked up and down, for having lingered in the morning to intercept Camusot, he had found him dull of apprehension; he was vaguely uneasy and worried.

And this was why.

The dignity of his high functions forbade his attempting to fetter the perfect independence of the inferior judge, and yet this trial nearly touched the honor and good name of his best friend and warmest supporter, the Comte de Serizy, Minister of State, member of the Privy Council, Vice-President of the State Council, and prospective Chancellor of the Realm, in the event of the death of the noble old man who held that august office. It was Monsieur de Serizy’s misfortune to adore his wife “through fire and water,” and he always shielded her with his protection. Now the public prosecutor fully understood the terrible fuss that would be made in the world and at court if a crime should be proved against a man whose name had been so often and so malignantly linked with that of the Countess.

“Ah!” he sighed, folding his arms, “formerly the supreme authority could take refuge in an appeal. Nowadays our mania for equality”--he dared not say for Legality, as a poetic orator in the Chamber courageously admitted a short while since--“is the death of us.”

This noble magistrate knew all the fascination and the miseries of an illicit attachment. Esther and Lucien, as we have seen, had taken the rooms where the Comte de Granville had lived secretly on connubial terms with Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille, and whence she had fled one day, lured away by a villain. (See A Double Marriage.)

At the very moment when the public prosecutor was saying to himself, “Camusot is sure to have done something silly,” the examining magistrate knocked twice at the door of his room.

“Well, my dear Camusot, how is that case going on that I spoke of this morning?”

“Badly, Monsieur le Comte; read and judge for yourself.”

He held out the minutes of the two examinations to Monsieur de Granville, who took up his eyeglass and went to the window to read them. He had soon run through them.

“You have done your duty,” said the Count in an agitated voice. “It is all over. The law must take its course. You have shown so much skill, that you need never fear being deprived of your appointment as examining judge---”

If Monsieur de Granville had said to Camusot, “You will remain an examining judge to your dying day,” he could not have been more explicit than in making this polite speech. Camusot was cold in the very marrow.

“Madame la Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, to whom I owe much, had desired me...”

“Oh yes, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse is Madame de Serizy’s friend,” said Granville, interrupting him. “To be sure.--You have allowed nothing to influence you, I perceive. And you did well, sir; you will be a great magistrate.”