Honoré de Balzac

“ I will enlist no more recruits to the army of vice.
"In war, monsieur, when a hostile general is captured, he is not shot, you know; his sword is returned to him, and his prison is a large town; well, I am the general of the hulks, and I have surrendered.—I am beaten, not by the law, but by death. The sphere in which I crave to live and act is the only one that is suited to me, and there I can develop the powers I feel within me.
"Decide."
And Jacques Collin stood in an attitude of diffident submission.
"You place the letters in my hands, then?" said the public prosecutor. ”

“ Imagine the night I have spent, between a woman crazy with love and a man crazy with despair. And a statesman's despair is not like that of an idiot. Serizy, as calm as if he were sitting in his place in council, clutched his chair to force himself to show us an unmoved countenance, while sweat stood over the brows bent by so much hard thought.—Worn out by want of sleep, I dozed from five till half-past seven, and I had to be here by half-past eight to warrant an execution. ”

“ Are you going to think yourself a murderer because a suspected criminal hangs himself in prison just as you were about to release him?" cried Madame Camusot. "Why, an examining judge in such a case is like a general whose horse is killed under him!—That is all."
"Such a comparison, my dear, is at best but a jest, and jesting is out of place now. In this case the dead man clutches the living. All our hopes are buried in Lucien's coffin." ”

“ The Countess had the letter clasped to her heart; she was calm, and seemed to have forgiven herself. The Count gave expression to his joy at the sight.
"And these are the men who settle our fate and the fate of nations," thought Jacques Collin, shrugging his shoulders behind the two men. "A female has but to sigh in the wrong way to turn their brain as if it were a glove! A wink, and they lose their head! A petticoat raised a little higher, dropped a little lower, and they rush round Paris in despair! The whims of a woman react on the whole country. ”

“ He knew women as magistrates know criminals; he guessed the most secret impulses of their hearts; and he at once understood that the Countess probably ascribed Lucien's death partly to her own severity, and reproached herself bitterly. Obviously a man on whom she had shed her love would never have thrown away his life!—To know that he had loved her still, in spite of her cruelty, might restore her reason.
If Jacques Collin was a grand general of convicts, he was, it must be owned, a not less skilful physician of souls. ”

“ Are you living with Moses' widow—the Jew who led the swindling gang in the South?" asked Jacques Collin.
For Trompe-la-Mort, like a great general, knew the person of every one of his army.
"That's the woman," said la Pouraille, much flattered.
"A pretty woman," said Jacques Collin, who knew exactly how to manage his dreadful tools. "The moll is a beauty; she is well informed, and stands by her mates, and a first-rate hand. Yes, la Gonore has made a new man of you! What a flat you must be to risk your nut when you have a trip like her at home! ”

“ However insensible duchesses may be, even these women, whose hearts are of stone, cannot see a friend a victim to madness without being painfully impressed by it.
And besides, the connection between Diane and Lucien, though at an end now eighteen months since, had left such memories with the Duchess that the poor boy's disastrous end had been to her also a fearful blow. All night Diane had seen visions of the beautiful youth, so charming, so poetical, who had been so delightful a lover—painted as Leontine depicted him, with the vividness of wild delirium. ”

“ The police, all-pervading, poisons the atmosphere and taints everything, even the hand-grasp of two criminals who have been intimate. A convict who meets his most familiar comrade does not know that he may not have repented and have made a confession to save his life. This absence of confidence, this dread of the nark, marks the liberty, already so illusory, of the prison-yard. ”

“ Was it not a vain boast?"
"I hope I can," replied Jacques Collin modestly.
"Well, then, come with me," said Comte Octave.
"No, monsieur; I will not be seen in the same carriage by your side—I am still a convict. It is my wish to serve the Law; I will not begin by discrediting it. Go back to the Countess; I will be there soon after you. Tell her Lucien's best friend is coming to see her, the Abbe Carlos Herrera; the anticipation of my visit will make an impression on her and favor the cure. You will forgive me for assuming once more the false part of a Spanish priest; it is to do so much good!" ”

“ Just as the sight of an anatomical museum, where foul diseases are represented by wax models, makes the youth who may be taken there more chaste and apt for nobler and purer love, so the sight of the Conciergerie and of the prison-yard, filled with men marked for the hulks or the scaffold or some disgraceful punishment, inspires many, who might not fear that Divine Justice whose voice speaks so loudly to the conscience, with a fear of human justice; and they come out honest men for a long time after. ”

“ A man cut off from among the living by law belongs to the Bench. The Bench is paramount; it is answerable to nobody, it obeys its own conscience. The prison belongs to the Bench, which controls it absolutely. Poetry has taken possession of this social theme, "the man condemned to death"—a subject truly apt to strike the imagination! And poetry has been sublime on it. Prose has no resource but fact; still, the fact is appalling enough to hold its own against verse. The existence of a condemned man who has not confessed his crime, or betrayed his accomplices, is one of fearful torment. ”

“ As the men who were exercising in the prison-yard, when Trompe-la-Mort appeared there, were to be the actors in a scene of crowning importance in the life of Jacques Collin, it will be well to depict a few of the principal personages of this sinister crowd.
Here, as everywhere when men are thrown together, here, as at school even, force, physical and moral, wins the day. Here, then, as on the hulks, crime stamps the man's rank. Those whose head is doomed are the aristocracy. ”

“ Crime and madness have a certain resemblance. To see the prisoners of the Conciergerie in the yard, or the madmen in the garden of an asylum, is much the same thing. Prisoners and lunatics walk to and fro, avoiding each other, looking up with more or less strange or vicious glances, according to the mood of the moment, but never cheerful, never grave; they know each other, or they dread each other. ”

“ This recreation ground, the ante-room to the scaffold or the hulks on one side, on the other still clings to the world through the gendarme, the examining judge, and the Assize Court. It strikes a greater chill perhaps than even the scaffold. The scaffold may be a pedestal to soar to heaven from; but the prison-yard is every infamy on earth concentrated and unavoidable. ”

“ On turning round, Trompe-la-Mort saw the public prosecutor sitting at his table, his head resting on his hands.
"Do you mean that you can save the Comtesse de Serizy from going mad?" asked Monsieur de Granville.
"In five minutes," said Jacques Collin.
"And you can give me all those ladies' letters?"
"Have you read the three?"
"Yes," said the magistrate vehemently, "and I blush for the women who wrote them."
"Well, we are now alone; admit no one, and let us come to terms," said Jacques Collin.
"Excuse me, Justice must first take its course. Monsieur Camusot has instructions to seize your aunt." ”

“ Prudence deserts us—we reply——"
"But why reply when you can act?" said Madame Camusot.
"It is grand to lose oneself utterly!" cried the Duchess with pride. "It is the luxury of the soul."
"Beautiful women are excusable," said Madame Camusot modestly. "They have more opportunities of falling than we have."
The Duchess smiled.
"We are always too generous," said Diane de Maufrigneuse. "I shall do just like that odious Madame d'Espard."
"And what does she do?" asked the judge's wife, very curious. ”

“ Four murders or three. Does it not come to the same thing?"
"Perhaps."
"By the God of good-fellowship, there is no blood in your veins! And I was thinking of saving you!"
"How?"
"Idiot, if we promise to give the money back to the family, you will only be lagged for life. I would not give a piece for your nut if we keep the blunt, but at this moment you are worth seven hundred thousand francs, you flat."
"Good for you, boss!" cried la Pouraille in great glee.
"And then," said Jacques Collin, "besides casting all the murders on Ruffard—Bibi-Lupin will be finely cold. I have him this time." ”

“ And besides, the magistrate—for a magistrate is always a magistrate—knowing nothing of Jacques Collin's career since his escape from prison, fancied that he could impress the criminal who, after all, had only been sentenced for forgery. He would try the effect of generosity on this nature, a compound, like bronze, of various elements, of good and evil.
Again, Monsieur de Granville, who had reached the age of fifty-three without ever having been loved, admired a tender soul, as all men do who have not been loved. ”

“ So, when Camusot, his mind at ease, was sitting down to dinner with his ambitious better-half, the Governor of the Conciergerie and Monsieur Lebrun, the prison doctor, were standing outside the gate bewailing the fragility of iron bars and the strength of ladies in love.
"No one knows," said the doctor to Monsieur Gault, "what an amount of nervous force there is in a man wound up to the highest pitch of passion. Dynamics and mathematics have no formulas or symbols to express that power. ”

“ The only detail which betrayed the blood of the mediaeval executioner was the formidable breadth and thickness of his hands. Well informed too, caring greatly for his position as a citizen and an elector, and an enthusiastic florist, this tall, brawny man with his low voice, his calm reserve, his few words, and a high bald forehead, was like an English nobleman rather than an executioner. And a Spanish priest would certainly have fallen into the mistake which Jacques Collin had intentionally made. ”

“ A tear sparkled in le Biffon's fierce eyes.
"Well, suppose I were to get her lodgings in the Lorcefe des Largues" (the women's La Force, i. e. les Madelonnettes or Saint-Lazare) "for a stretch, allowing that time for you to be sentenced and sent there, to arrive and to escape?"
"Even you cannot work such a miracle. She took no part in the job," replied la Biffe's partner.
"Oh, my good Biffon," said la Pouraille, "our boss is more powerful than God Almighty."
"What is your password for her?" asked Jacques Collin, with the assurance of a master to whom nothing can be refused. ”

“ I would give a year of my life if he would confess, for juries need encouragement; and imagine what a blow it would be to justice if some day it should be discovered that the crime for which he is punished was committed by another.
"In Paris everything is so terribly important; the most trivial incidents in the law courts have political consequences.
"The jury, an institution regarded by the legislators of the Revolution as a source of strength, is, in fact, an instrument of social ruin, for it fails in action; it does not sufficiently protect society. ”

“ Jacques Collin had brought into play the overpowering influence he had exerted of yore over poor Esther; for he had, as has often been shown, the mode of speech, the look, the action which quell madmen, and he had depicted Lucien as having died with the Countess' image in his heart.
No woman can resist the idea of having been the one beloved. ”

“ I want to live, but it is for you now rather than for her."
"Be quite easy, I am not called Trompe-la-Mort for nothing. I undertake the case."
"What! life?" cried the lad, lifting his swaddled hands towards the damp vault of the cell.
"My little Madeleine, prepare to be lagged for life (penal servitude) ," replied Jacques Collin. "You can expect no less; they won't crown you with roses like a fatted ox. ”

“ In all ages the moll, the prostitute, the heroine of so many old-world romances, has been the protectress, companion, and comfort of the sharper, the thief, the pickpocket, the area-sneak, and the burglar.
Prostitution and robbery are the male and female forms of protest made by the natural state against the social state. Even philosophers, the innovators of to-day, the humanitarians with the communists and Fourierists in their train, come at last, without knowing it, to the same conclusion—prostitution and theft. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He had been three months in custody, and was committed for trial, and his chums at La Force, to whom he had never mentioned his accomplices, had given him such small comfort, that he was entirely hopeless after his examination, and this simple expedient had been quite overlooked by these prison-ridden minds. This semblance of a hope almost stupefied his brain.
"Have Ruffard and Godet had their spree yet? Have they forked out any of the yellow boys?" asked Jacques Collin.
"They dare not," replied la Pouraille. "The wretches are waiting till I am turned off. ”