Honore de Balzac (20 page)

"Listen!" said Madame Grevin, "can there be robbers?"

"No, nonsense!" said Grevin, "only carnival cries; the masqueraders must
be coming to pay us a visit."

This discussion gave time for the four strangers to close the doors
towards the courtyards and to lock up Violette and the valet. Madame
Grevin, who was rather obstinate, insisted on knowing what the noise
meant. She rose, left the room, and came face to face with the five
masked men, who treated her as they had treated the farmer and the
valet. Then they rushed into the salon, where the two strongest seized
and gagged Malin, and carried him off into the park, while the three
others remained behind to gag Madame Marion and Grevin and lash them to
their armchairs. The whole affair did not take more than half an hour.
The three unknown men, who were quickly rejoined by the two who had
carried off the senator, then proceeded to ransack the chateau from
cellar to garret. They opened all closets and doors, and sounded the
walls; until five o'clock they were absolute masters of the place. By
that time the valet had managed to loosen with his teeth the rope that
bound Violette. Violette, able then to get the gag from his mouth,
began to shout for help. Hearing the shouts the five men withdrew to
the gardens, where they mounted horses closely resembling those at
Cinq-Cygne and rode away, but not so rapidly that Violette was unable to
catch sight of them. After releasing the valet, the two ladies, and the
notary, Violette mounted his pony and rode after help. When he reached
the pavilion he was amazed to see the gates open and Mademoiselle de
Cinq-Cygne apparently on the watch.

Directly after the young countess had ridden off, Violette was overtaken
by Grevin and the forester of the township of Gondreville, who had taken
horses from the stables at the chateau. The porter's wife was on her way
to summon the gendarmerie from Arcis. Violette at once informed Grevin
of his meeting with Laurence and the sudden flight of the daring girl,
whose strong and decided character was known to all of them.

"She was keeping watch," said Violette.

"Is it possible that those Cinq-Cygne people have done this thing?"
cried Grevin.

"Do you mean to say you didn't recognize that stout Michu?" exclaimed
Violette. "It was he who attacked me; I knew his fist. Besides, they
rode the Cinq-Cygne horses."

Noticing the hoof-marks on the sand of the
rond-point
and along the
park road the notary stationed the forester at the gateway to see to
the preservation of these precious traces until the justice of peace
of Arcis (for whom he now sent Violette) could take note of them.
He himself returned hastily to the chateau, where the lieutenant
and sub-lieutenant of the Imperial gendarmerie at Arcis had arrived,
accompanied by four men and a corporal. The lieutenant was the same
man whose head Francois Michu had broken two years earlier, and who had
heard from Corentin the name of his mischievous assailant. This man,
whose name was Giguet (his brother was in the army, and became one of
the finest colonels of artillery), was an extremely able officer
of gendarmerie. Later he commanded the squadron of the Aube. The
sub-lieutenant, named Welff, had formerly driven Corentin from
Cinq-Cygne to the pavilion, and from the pavilion to Troyes. On the
way, the spy had fully informed him as to what he called the trickery
of Laurence and Michu. The two officers were therefore well inclined to
show, and did show, great eagerness against the family at Cinq-Cygne.

Malin and Grevin had both, the latter working for the former, taken part
in the construction of the Code called that of Brumaire, year IV., the
judicial work of the National Convention, so-called, and promulgated by
the Directory. Grevin knew its provisions thoroughly, and was able to
apply them in this affair with terrible celerity, under a theory, now
converted into a certainty, of the guilt of Michu and the Messieurs
de Simeuse and d'Hauteserre. No one in these days, unless it be some
antiquated magistrates, will remember this system of justice, which
Napoleon was even then overthrowing by the promulgation of his own
Codes, and by the institution of his magistracy under the form in which
it now rules France.

The Code of Brumaire, year IV., gave to the director of the jury of
the department the duty of discovering, indicting, and prosecuting the
persons guilty of the delinquency committed at Gondreville. Remark, by
the way, that the Convention had eliminated from its judicial vocabulary
the word "crime";
delinquencies
and
misdemeanors
were alone
admitted; and these were punished with fines, imprisonment, and
penalties "afflictive or infamous." Death was an afflictive punishment.
But the penalty of death was to be done away with after the restoration
of peace, and twenty-four years of hard labor were to take its place.
Thus the Convention estimated twenty-four years of hard labor as
the equivalent of death. What therefore can be said for a code which
inflicts the punishment of hard labor for life? The system then in
process of preparation by the Napoleonic Council of State suppressed the
function of the directors of juries, which united many enormous powers.
In relation to the discovery of delinquencies and their prosecution the
director of the jury was, in fact, agent of police, public prosecutor,
municipal judge, and the court itself. His proceedings and his
indictments were, however, submitted for signature to a commissioner of
the executive power and to the verdict of eight jurymen, before whom
he laid the facts of the case, and who examined the witnesses and the
accused and rendered the preliminary verdict, called the indictment. The
director was, however, in a position to exercise such influence over the
jurymen, who met in his private office, that they could not well avoid
agreeing with him. These jurymen were called the jury of indictment.
There were others who formed the juries of the criminal tribunals
whose duty it was to judge the accused; these were called, in
contradistinction to the jury of indictment, the judgment jury. The
criminal tribunal, to which Napoleon afterwards gave the name of
criminal court, was composed of one President or chief justice, four
judges, the public prosecutor, and a government commissioner.

Nevertheless, from 1799 to 1806 there were special courts (so-called)
which judged without juries certain misdemeanors in certain departments;
these were composed of judges taken from the civil courts and formed
into a special court. This conflict of special justice and criminal
justice gave rise to questions of competence which came before the
courts of appeal. If the department of the Aube had had a special court,
the verdict on the outrage committed on a senator of the Empire would no
doubt have been referred to it; but this tranquil department had
never needed unusual jurisdiction. Grevin therefore despatched the
sub-lieutenant to Troyes to bring the director of the jury of that town.
The emissary went at full gallop, and soon returned in a post-carriage
with the all-powerful magistrate.

The director of the Troyes jury was formerly secretary of one of the
committees of the Convention, a friend of Malin, to whom he owed his
present place. This magistrate, named Lechesneau, had helped Malin, as
Grevin had done, in his work on the Code during the Convention. Malin in
return recommended him to Cambaceres, who appointed him attorney-general
for Italy. Unfortunately for him, Lechesneau had a liaison with a
great lady in Turin, and Napoleon removed him to avoid a criminal trial
threatened by the husband. Lechesneau, bound in gratitude to Malin, felt
the importance of this attack upon his patron, and brought with him a
captain of gendarmerie and twelve men.

Before starting he laid his plans with the prefect, who was unable
at that late hour, it being after dark, to use the telegraph. They
therefore sent a mounted messenger to Paris to notify the minister of
police, the chief justice and the Emperor of this extraordinary crime.
In the salon of Gondreville, Lechesneau found Mesdames Marion and
Grevin, Violette, the senator's valet, and the justice of peace with his
clerk. The chateau had already been examined; the justice, assisted by
Grevin, had carefully collected the first testimony. The first thing
that struck him was the obvious intention shown in the choice of the
day and hour for the attack. The hour prevented an immediate search for
proofs and traces. At this season it was nearly dark by half-past five,
the hour at which Violette gave the alarm, and darkness often means
impunity to evil-doers. The choice of a holiday, when most persons had
gone to the masquerade at Arcis, and the senator was comparatively alone
in the house, showed an obvious intention to get rid of witnesses.

"Let us do justice to the intelligence of the prefecture of police,"
said Lechesneau; "they have never ceased to warn us to be on our guard
against the nobles at Cinq-Cygne; they have always declared that sooner
or later those people would play us some dangerous trick."

Sure of the active co-operation of the prefect of the Aube, who sent
messengers to all the surrounding prefectures asking them to search
for the five abductors and the senator, Lechesneau began his work by
verifying the first facts. This was soon done by the help of two such
legal heads as those of Grevin and the justice of peace. The latter,
named Pigoult, formerly head-clerk in the office where Malin and Grevin
had first studied law in Paris, was soon after appointed judge of the
municipal court at Arcis. In relation to Michu, Lechesneau knew of the
threats the man had made about the sale of Gondreville to Marion, and
the danger Malin had escaped in his own park from Michu's gun. These
two facts, one being the consequence of the other, were no doubt
the precursors of the present successful attack, and they pointed so
obviously to the late bailiff as the instigator of the outrage that
Grevin, his wife, Violette, and Madame Marion declared that they had
recognized among the five masked men one who exactly resembled Michu.
The color of the hair and whiskers and the thick-set figure of the man
made the mask he wore useless. Besides, who but Michu could have opened
the iron gates of the park with a key? The present bailiff and his wife,
now returned from the masquerade, deposed to have locked both gates
before leaving the pavilion. The gates when examined showed no sign of
being forced.

"When we turned him off he must have taken some duplicate keys with
him," remarked Grevin. "No doubt he has been meditating a desperate
step, for he has lately sold his whole property, and he received the
money for it in my office day before yesterday."

"The others have followed his lead!" exclaimed Lechesneau, struck with
the circumstances. "He has been their evil genius."

Moreover, who could know as well as the Messieurs de Simeuse the ins and
outs of the chateau. None of the assailants seemed to have blundered in
their search; they had gone through the house in a confident way which
showed that they knew what they wanted to find and where to find it.
The locks of none of the opened closets had been forced; therefore the
delinquents had keys. Strange to say, however, nothing had been taken;
the motive, therefore, was not robbery. More than all, when Violette
had followed the tracks of the horses as far as the
rond-point
, he
had found the countess, evidently on guard, at the pavilion. From such a
combination of facts and depositions arose a presumption as to the guilt
of the Messieurs de Simeuse, d'Hauteserre, and Michu, which would have
been strong to unprejudiced minds, and to the director of the jury had
the force of certainty. What were they likely to do to the future Comte
de Gondreville? Did they mean to force him to make over the estate for
which Michu declared in 1799 he had the money to pay?

But there was another aspect of the cast to the knowing criminal lawyer.
He asked himself what could be the object of the careful search made of
the chateau. If revenge were at the bottom of the matter, the assailants
would have killed the senator. Perhaps he had been killed and buried.
The abduction, however, seemed to point to imprisonment. But why keep
their victim imprisoned after searching the castle? It was folly to
suppose that the abduction of a dignitary of the Empire could long
remain secret. The publicity of the matter would prevent any benefit
from it.

To these suggestions Pigoult replied that justice was never able to make
out all the motives of scoundrels. In every criminal case there
were obscurities, he said, between the judge and the guilty person;
conscience had depths into which no human mind could enter unless by the
confession of the criminal.

Grevin and Lechesneau nodded their assent, without, however, relaxing
their determination to see to the bottom of the present mystery.

"The Emperor pardoned those young men," said Pigoult to Grevin. "He
removed their names from the list of
emigres
, though they certainly
took part in that last conspiracy against him."

Lechesneau make no delay in sending his whole force of gendarmerie to
the forest and to the valley of Cinq-Cygne; telling Giguet to take with
him the justice of peace, who, according to the terms of the Code, would
then become an auxiliary police-officer. He ordered them to make
all preliminary inquiries in the township of Cinq-Cygne, and to take
testimony if necessary; and to save time, he dictated and signed a
warrant for the arrest of Michu, against whom the charge was evident on
the positive testimony of Violette. After the departure of the gendarmes
Lechesneau returned to the important question of issuing warrants for
the arrest of the Simeuse and d'Hauteserre brothers. According to
the Code these warrants would have to contain the charges against the
delinquents.