Part 117

He drew the table up under the window without making any noise, took off his coat and waistcoat, and got on the table unhesitatingly to break a pane above and one below the iron cross-bar. Standing on the table, he could look out across the yard on a magical view, which he then beheld for the first time. The Governor of the prison, in deference to Monsieur Camusot’s request that he should deal as leniently as possible with Lucien, had led him, as we have seen, through the dark passages of the Conciergerie, entered from the dark vault opposite the Tour d’Argent, thus avoiding the exhibition of a young man of fashion to the crowd of prisoners airing themselves in the yard. It will be for the reader to judge whether the aspect of the promenade was not such as to appeal deeply to a poet’s soul.

The yard of the Conciergerie ends at the quai between the Tour d’Argent and the Tour Bonbec; thus the distance between them exactly shows from the outside the width of the plot of ground. The corridor called the Galerie de Saint-Louis, which extends from the Galerie Marchande to the Courts of Appeals and the Tour Bonbec--in which, it is said, Saint-Louis’ room still exists--may enable the curious to estimate the depths of the yard, as it is of the same length. Thus the dark cells and the private rooms are under the Galerie Marchande. And Queen Marie Antoinette, whose dungeon was under the present cells, was conducted to the presence of the Revolutionary Tribunal, which held its sittings in the place where the Court of Appeals now performs its solemn functions, up a horrible flight of steps, now never used, in the very thickness of the wall on which the Galerie Marchande is built.

One side of the prison-yard--that on which the Hall of Saint-Louis forms the first floor--displays a long row of Gothic columns, between which the architects of I know not what period have built up two floors of cells to accommodate as many prisoners as possible, by choking the capitals, the arches, and the vaults of this magnificent cloister with plaster, barred loopholes, and partitions. Under the room known as the Cabinet de Saint-Louis, in the Tour Bonbec, there is a spiral stair leading to these dens. This degradation of one of the immemorial buildings of France is hideous to behold.

From the height at which Lucien was standing he saw this cloister, and the details of the building that joins the two towers, in sharp perspective; before him were the pointed caps of the towers. He stood amazed; his suicide was postponed to his admiration. The phenomena of hallucination are in these days so fully recognized by the medical faculty that this mirage of the senses, this strange illusion of the mind is beyond dispute. A man under the stress of a feeling which by its intensity has become a monomania, often finds himself in the frame of mind to which opium, hasheesh, or the protoxyde of azote might have brought him. Spectres appear, phantoms and dreams take shape, things of the past live again as they once were. What was but an image of the brain becomes a moving or a living object. Science is now beginning to believe that under the action of a paroxysm of passion the blood rushes to the brain, and that such congestion has the terrible effects of a dream in a waking state, so averse are we to regard thought as a physical and generative force. (See Louis Lambert.)

Lucien saw the building in all its pristine beauty; the columns were new, slender and bright; Saint-Louis’ Palace rose before him as it had once appeared; he admired its Babylonian proportions and Oriental fancy. He took this exquisite vision as a poetic farewell from civilized creation. While making his arrangements to die, he wondered how this marvel of architecture could exist in Paris so utterly unknown. He was two Luciens--one Lucien the poet, wandering through the Middle Ages under the vaults and the turrets of Saint-Louis, the other Lucien ready for suicide.

Just as Monsieur de Granville had ended giving his instructions to the young secretary, the Governor of the Conciergerie came in, and the expression of his face was such as to give the public prosecutor a presentiment of disaster.

“Have you met Monsieur Camusot?” he asked.

“No, monsieur,” said the Governor; “his clerk Coquart instructed me to give the Abbe Carlos a private room and to liberate Monsieur de Rubempre--but it is too late.”

“Good God! what has happened?”

“Here, monsieur, is a letter for you which will explain the catastrophe. The warder on duty in the prison-yard heard a noise of breaking glass in the upper room, and Monsieur Lucien’s next neighbor shrieking wildly, for he heard the young man’s dying struggles. The warder came to me pale from the sight that met his eyes. He found the prisoner hanged from the window bar by his necktie.”

Though the Governor spoke in a low voice, a fearful scream from Madame de Serizy showed that under stress of feeling our faculties are incalculably keen. The Countess heard, or guessed. Before Monsieur de Granville could turn round, or Monsieur de Bauvan or her husband could stop her, she fled like a flash out of the door, and reached the Galerie Marchande, where she ran on to the stairs leading out to the Rue de la Barillerie.

A pleader was taking off his gown at the door of one of the shops which from time immemorial have choked up this arcade, where shoes are sold, and gowns and caps kept for hire.

The Countess asked the way to the Conciergerie.

“Go down the steps and turn to the left. The entrance is from the Quai de l’Horloge, the first archway.”

“That woman is crazy,” said the shop-woman; “some one ought to follow her.”

But no one could have kept up with Leontine; she flew.

A physician may explain how it is that these ladies of fashion, whose strength never finds employment, reveal such powers in the critical moments of life.

The Countess rushed so swiftly through the archway to the wicket-gate that the gendarme on sentry did not see her pass. She flew at the barred gate like a feather driven by the wind, and shook the iron bars with such fury that she broke the one she grasped. The bent ends were thrust into her breast, making the blood flow, and she dropped on the ground, shrieking, “Open it, open it!” in a tone that struck terror into the warders.

The gatekeepers hurried out.

“Open the gate--the public prosecutor sent me--to save the dead man!----”

While the Countess was going round by the Rue de la Barillerie and the Quai de l’Horloge, Monsieur de Granville and Monsieur de Serizy went down to the Conciergerie through the inner passages, suspecting Leontine’s purpose; but notwithstanding their haste, they only arrived in time to see her fall fainting at the outer gate, where she was picked up by two gendarmes who had come down from the guardroom.

On seeing the Governor of the prison, the gate was opened, and the Countess was carried into the office, but she stood up and fell on her knees, clasping her hands.

“Only to see him--to see him! Oh! I will do no wrong! But if you do not want to see me die on the spot, let me look at Lucien dead or living.--Ah, my dear, are you here? Choose between my death and----”

She sank in a heap.

“You are kind,” she said; “I will always love you----”

“Carry her away,” said Monsieur de Bauvan.

“No, we will go to Lucien’s cell,” said Monsieur de Granville, reading a purpose in Monsieur de Serizy’s wild looks.

And he lifted up the Countess, and took her under one arm, while Monsieur de Bauvan supported her on the other side.