“Rastignac has given me the most difficult negotiation in the world,”
said Bianchon to himself, remembering, as he rose next morning, the
delicate commission intrusted to him. “However, I have never asked the
smallest service from my uncle in Court, and have paid more than a
thousand visits gratis for him. And, after all, we are not apt to
mince matters between ourselves. He will say Yes or No, and there an
end.”
After this little soliloquy the famous physician bent his steps, at
seven in the morning, towards the Rue du Fouarre, where dwelt Monsieur
Jean-Jules Popinot, judge of the Lower Court of the Department of the
Seine. The Rue du Fouarre—an old word meaning straw—was in the
thirteenth century the most important street in Paris. There stood the
Schools of the University, where the voices of Abelard and of Gerson
were heard in the world of learning. It is now one of the dirtiest
streets of the Twelfth Arrondissement, the poorest quarter of Paris,
that in which two-thirds of the population lack firing in winter,
which leaves most brats at the gate of the Foundling Hospital, which
sends most beggars to the poorhouse, most rag-pickers to the street
corners, most decrepit old folks to bask against the walls on which
the sun shines, most delinquents to the police courts.
Half-way down this street, which is always damp, and where the gutter
carries to the Seine the blackened waters from some dye-works, there
is an old house, restored no doubt under Francis I., and built of
bricks held together by a few courses of masonry. That it is
substantial seems proved by the shape of its front wall, not
uncommonly seen in some parts of Paris. It bellies, so to speak, in a
manner caused by the protuberance of its first floor, crushed under
the weight of the second and third, but upheld by the strong wall of
the ground floor. At first sight it would seem as though the piers
between the windows, though strengthened by the stone mullions, must
give way, but the observer presently perceives that, as in the tower
at Bologna, the old bricks and old time-eaten stones of this house
persistently preserve their centre of gravity.
At every season of the year the solid piers of the ground floor have
the yellow tone and the imperceptible sweating surface that moisture
gives to stone. The passer-by feels chilled as he walks close to this
wall, where worn corner-stones ineffectually shelter him from the
wheels of vehicles. As is always the case in houses built before
carriages were in use, the vault of the doorway forms a very low
archway not unlike the barbican of a prison. To the right of this
entrance there are three windows, protected outside by iron gratings
of so close a pattern, that the curious cannot possibly see the use
made of the dark, damp rooms within, and the panes too are dirty and
dusty; to the left are two similar windows, one of which is sometimes
open, exposing to view the porter, his wife, and his children;
swarming, working, cooking, eating, and screaming, in a floored and
wainscoted room where everything is dropping to pieces, and into which
you descend two steps—a depth which seems to suggest the gradual
elevation of the soil of Paris.
If on a rainy day some foot-passenger takes refuge under the long
vault, with projecting lime-washed beams, which leads from the door to
the staircase, he will hardly fail to pause and look at the picture
presented by the interior of this house. To the left is a square
garden-plot, allowing of not more than four long steps in each
direction, a garden of black soil, with trellises bereft of vines, and
where, in default of vegetation under the shade of two trees, papers
collect, old rags, potsherds, bits of mortar fallen from the roof; a
barren ground, where time has shed on the walls, and on the trunks and
branches of the trees, a powdery deposit like cold soot. The two parts
of the house, set at a right angle, derive light from this
garden-court shut in by two adjoining houses built on wooden piers,
decrepit and ready to fall, where on each floor some grotesque evidence
is to be seen of the craft pursued by some lodger within. Here long
poles are hung with immense skeins of dyed worsted put out to dry;
there, on ropes, dance clean-washed shirts; higher up, on a shelf,
volumes display their freshly marbled edges; women sing, husbands
whistle, children shout; the carpenter saws his planks, a copper-turner
makes the metal screech; all kinds of industries combine to produce a
noise which the number of instruments renders distracting.
The general system of decoration in this passage, which is neither
courtyard, garden, nor vaulted way, though a little of all, consists
of wooden pillars resting on square stone blocks, and forming arches.
Two archways open on to the little garden; two others, facing the
front gateway, lead to a wooden staircase, with an iron balustrade
that was once a miracle of smith’s work, so whimsical are the shapes
given to the metal; the worn steps creak under every tread. The
entrance to each flat has an architrave dark with dirt, grease, and
dust, and outer doors, covered with Utrecht velvet set with brass
nails, once gilt, in a diamond pattern. These relics of splendor show
that in the time of Louis XIV. the house was the residence of some
councillor to the Parlement, some rich priests, or some treasurer of
the ecclesiastical revenue. But these vestiges of former luxury bring
a smile to the lips by the artless contrast of past and present.
M. Jean-Jules Popinot lived on the first floor of this house, where
the gloom, natural to all first floors in Paris houses, was increased
by the narrowness of the street. This old tenement was known to all
the twelfth arrondissement, on which Providence had bestowed this
lawyer, as it gives a beneficent plant to cure or alleviate every
malady. Here is a sketch of a man whom the brilliant Marquise d’Espard
hoped to fascinate.
M. Popinot, as is seemly for a magistrate, was always dressed in black—a style which contributed to make him ridiculous in the eyes of
those who were in the habit of judging everything from a superficial
examination. Men who are jealous of maintaining the dignity required
by this color ought to devote themselves to constant and minute care
of their person; but our dear M. Popinot was incapable of forcing
himself to the puritanical cleanliness which black demands. His
trousers, always threadbare, looked like camlet—the stuff of which
attorneys’ gowns are made; and his habitual stoop set them, in time,
in such innumerable creases, that in places they were traced with
lines, whitish, rusty, or shiny, betraying either sordid avarice, or
the most unheeding poverty. His coarse worsted stockings were twisted
anyhow in his ill-shaped shoes. His linen had the tawny tinge acquired
by long sojourn in a wardrobe, showing that the late lamented Madame
Popinot had had a mania for much linen; in the Flemish fashion,
perhaps, she had given herself the trouble of a great wash no more
than twice a year. The old man’s coat and waistcoat were in harmony
with his trousers, shoes, stockings, and linen. He always had the luck
of his carelessness; for, the first day he put on a new coat, he
unfailingly matched it with the rest of his costume by staining it
with incredible promptitude. The good man waited till his housekeeper
told him that his hat was too shabby before buying a new one. His
necktie was always crumpled and starchless, and he never set his
dog-eared shirt collar straight after his judge’s bands had disordered
it. He took no care of his gray hair, and shaved but twice a week. He
never wore gloves, and generally kept his hands stuffed into his empty
trousers’ pockets; the soiled pocket-holes, almost always torn, added
a final touch to the slovenliness of his person.
Any one who knows the Palais de Justice at Paris, where every variety
of black attire may be studied, can easily imagine the appearance of
M. Popinot. The habit of sitting for days at a time modifies the
structure of the body, just as the fatigue of hearing interminable
pleadings tells on the expression of a magistrate’s face. Shut up as
he is in courts ridiculously small, devoid of architectural dignity,
and where the air is quickly vitiated, a Paris judge inevitably
acquires a countenance puckered and seamed by reflection, and
depressed by weariness; his complexion turns pallid, acquiring an
earthy or greenish hue according to his individual temperament. In
short, within a given time the most blooming young man is turned into
an “inasmuch” machine—an instrument which applies the Code to
individual cases with the indifference of clockwork.
Hence, nature, having bestowed on M. Popinot a not too pleasing
exterior, his life as a lawyer had not improved it. His frame was
graceless and angular. His thick knees, huge feet, and broad hands
formed a contrast with a priest-like face having a vague resemblance
to a calf’s head, meek to unmeaningness, and but little brightened by
divergent bloodless eyes, divided by a straight flat nose, surmounted
by a flat forehead, flanked by enormous ears, flabby and graceless.
His thin, weak hair showed the baldness through various irregular
partings.
One feature only commended this face to the physiognomist. This man
had a mouth to whose lips divine kindness lent its sweetness. They
were wholesome, full, red lips, finely wrinkled, sinuous, mobile, by
which nature had given expression to noble feelings; lips which spoke
to the heart and proclaimed the man’s intelligence and lucidity, a
gift of second-sight, and a heavenly temper; and you would have judged
him wrongly from looking merely at his sloping forehead, his fireless
eyes, and his shambling gait. His life answered to his countenance; it
was full of secret labor, and hid the virtue of a saint. His superior
knowledge of law proved so strong a recommendation at a time when
Napoleon was reorganizing it in 1808 and 1811, that, by the advice of
Cambaceres, he was one of the first men named to sit on the Imperial
High Court of Justice at Paris. Popinot was no schemer. Whenever any
demand was made, any request preferred for an appointment, the
Minister would overlook Popinot, who never set foot in the house of
the High Chancellor or the Chief Justice. From the High Court he was
sent down to the Common Court, and pushed to the lowest rung of the
ladder by active struggling men. There he was appointed supernumerary
judge. There was a general outcry among the lawyers: “Popinot a
supernumerary!” Such injustice struck the legal world with dismay—the
attorneys, the registrars, everybody but Popinot himself, who made no
complaint. The first clamor over, everybody was satisfied that all was
for the best in the best of all possible worlds, which must certainly
be the legal world. Popinot remained supernumerary judge till the day
when the most famous Great Seal under the Restoration avenged the
oversights heaped on this modest and uncomplaining man by the Chief
Justices of the Empire. After being a supernumerary for twelve years,
M. Popinot would no doubt die a puisne judge of the Court of the
Seine.
To account for the obscure fortunes of one of the superior men of the
legal profession, it is necessary to enter here into some details
which will serve to reveal his life and character, and which will, at
the same time, display some of the wheels of the great machine known
as Justice. M. Popinot was classed by the three Presidents who
successively controlled the Court of the Seine under the category of
possible judges, the stuff of which judges are made. Thus classified,
he did not achieve the reputation for capacity which his previous
labors had deserved. Just as a painter is invariably included in a
category as a landscape painter, a portrait painter, a painter of
history, of sea pieces, or of genre, by a public consisting of
artists, connoisseurs, and simpletons, who, out of envy, or critical
omnipotence, or prejudice, fence in his intellect, assuming, one and
all, that there are ganglions in every brain—a narrow judgment which
the world applies to writers, to statesmen, to everybody who begins
with some specialty before being hailed as omniscient; so Popinot’s
fate was sealed, and he was hedged round to do a particular kind of
work. Magistrates, attorneys, pleaders, all who pasture on the legal
common, distinguish two elements in every case—law and equity. Equity
is the outcome of facts, law is the application of principles to
facts. A man may be right in equity but wrong in law, without any
blame to the judge. Between his conscience and the facts there is a
whole gulf of determining reasons unknown to the judge, but which
condemn or legitimatize the act. A judge is not God; the duty is to
adapt facts to principles, to judge cases of infinite variety while
measuring them by a fixed standard.
France employs about six thousand judges; no generation has six
thousand great men at her command, much less can she find them in the
legal profession. Popinot, in the midst of the civilization of Paris,
was just a very clever cadi, who, by the character of his mind, and by
dint of rubbing the letter of the law into the essence of facts, had
learned to see the error of spontaneous and violent decisions. By the
help of his judicial second-sight he could pierce the double casing of
lies in which advocates hide the heart of a trial. He was a judge, as
the great Desplein was a surgeon; he probed men’s consciences as the
anatomist probed their bodies. His life and habits had led him to an
exact appreciation of their most secret thoughts by a thorough study
of facts.
He sifted a case as Cuvier sifted the earth’s crust. Like that great
thinker, he proceeded from deduction to deduction before drawing his
conclusions, and reconstructed the past career of a conscience as
Cuvier reconstructed an Anoplotherium. When considering a brief he
would often wake in the night, startled by a gleam of truth suddenly
sparkling in his brain. Struck by the deep injustice, which is the end
of these contests, in which everything is against the honest man,
everything to the advantage of the rogue, he often summed up in favor
of equity against law in such cases as bore on questions of what may
be termed divination. Hence he was regarded by his colleagues as a man
not of a practical mind; his arguments on two lines of deduction made
their deliberations lengthy. When Popinot observed their dislike to
listening to him he gave his opinion briefly; it was said that he was
not a good judge in this class of cases; but as his gift of
discrimination was remarkable, his opinion lucid, and his penetration
profound, he was considered to have a special aptitude for the
laborious duties of an examining judge. So an examining judge he
remained during the greater part of his legal career.
Although his qualifications made him eminently fitted for its
difficult functions, and he had the reputation of being so learned in
criminal law that his duty was a pleasure to him, the kindness of his
heart constantly kept him in torture, and he was nipped as in a vise
between his conscience and his pity. The services of an examining
judge are better paid than those of a judge in civil actions, but they
do not therefore prove a temptation; they are too onerous. Popinot, a
man of modest and virtuous learning, without ambition, an
indefatigable worker, never complained of his fate; he sacrificed his
tastes and his compassionate soul to the public good, and allowed
himself to be transported to the noisome pools of criminal
examinations, where he showed himself alike severe and beneficent. His
clerk sometimes would give the accused some money to buy tobacco, or a
warm winter garment, as he led him back from the judge’s office to the
Souriciere, the mouse-trap—the House of Detention where the accused
are kept under the orders of the Examining Judge. He knew how to be an
inflexible judge and a charitable man. And no one extracted a
confession so easily as he without having recourse to judicial
trickery. He had, too, all the acumen of an observer. This man,
apparently so foolishly good-natured, simple, and absent-minded, could
guess all the cunning of a prison wag, unmask the astutest street
huzzy, and subdue a scoundrel. Unusual circumstances had sharpened his
perspicacity; but to relate these we must intrude on his domestic
history, for in him the judge was the social side of the man; another
man, greater and less known, existed within.
Twelve years before the beginning of this story, in 1816, during the
terrible scarcity which coincided disastrously with the stay in France
of the so-called Allies, Popinot was appointed President of the
Commission Extraordinary formed to distribute food to the poor of his
neighborhood, just when he had planned to move from the Rue du
Fouarre, which he as little liked to live in as his wife did. The
great lawyer, the clear-sighted criminal judge, whose superiority
seemed to his colleagues a form of aberration, had for five years been
watching legal results without seeing their causes. As he scrambled up
into the lofts, as he saw the poverty, as he studied the desperate
necessities which gradually bring the poor to criminal acts, as he
estimated their long struggles, compassion filled his soul. The judge
then became the Saint Vincent de Paul of these grown-up children,
these suffering toilers. The transformation was not immediately
complete. Beneficence has its temptations as vice has. Charity
consumes a saint’s purse, as roulette consumes the possessions of a
gambler, quite gradually. Popinot went from misery to misery, from
charity to charity; then, by the time he had lifted all the rags which
cover public pauperism, like a bandage under which an inflamed wound
lies festering, at the end of a year he had become the Providence
incarnate of that quarter of the town. He was a member of the
Benevolent Committee and of the Charity Organization. Wherever any
gratuitous services were needed he was ready, and did everything
without fuss, like the man with the short cloak, who spends his life
in carrying soup round the markets and other places where there are
starving folks.
Popinot was fortunate in acting on a larger circle and in a higher
sphere; he had an eye on everything, he prevented crime, he gave work
to the unemployed, he found a refuge for the helpless, he distributed
aid with discernment wherever danger threatened, he made himself the
counselor of the widow, the protector of homeless children, the
sleeping partner of small traders. No one at the Courts, no one in
Paris, knew of this secret life of Popinot’s. There are virtues so
splendid that they necessitate obscurity; men make haste to hide them
under a bushel. As to those whom the lawyer succored, they, hard at
work all day and tired at night, were little able to sing his praises;
theirs was the gracelessness of children, who can never pay because
they owe too much. There is such compulsory ingratitude; but what
heart that has sown good to reap gratitude can think itself great?
By the end of the second year of his apostolic work, Popinot had
turned the storeroom at the bottom of his house into a parlor, lighted
by the three iron-barred windows. The walls and ceiling of this
spacious room were whitewashed, and the furniture consisted of wooden
benches like those seen in schools, a clumsy cupboard, a walnut-wood
writing-table, and an armchair. In the cupboard were his registers of
donations, his tickets for orders for bread, and his diary. He kept
his ledger like a tradesman, that he might not be ruined by kindness.
All the sorrows of the neighborhood were entered and numbered in a
book, where each had its little account, as merchants’ customers have
theirs. When there was any question as to a man or a family needing
help, the lawyer could always command information from the police.
Lavienne, a man made for his master, was his aide-de-camp. He redeemed
or renewed pawn-tickets, and visited the districts most threatened
with famine, while his master was in court.
From four till seven in the morning in summer, from six till nine in
winter, this room was full of women, children, and paupers, while
Popinot gave audience. There was no need for a stove in winter; the
crowd was so dense that the air was warmed; only, Lavienne strewed
straw on the wet floor. By long use the benches were as polished as
varnished mahogany; at the height of a man’s shoulders the wall had a
coat of dark, indescribable color, given to it by the rags and
tattered clothes of these poor creatures. The poor wretches loved
Popinot so well that when they assembled before his door was opened,
before daybreak on a winter’s morning, the women warming themselves
with their foot-brasiers, the men swinging their arms for circulation,
never a sound had disturbed his sleep. Rag-pickers and other toilers
of the night knew the house, and often saw a light burning in the
lawyer’s private room at unholy hours. Even thieves, as they passed
by, said, “That is his house,” and respected it. The morning he gave
to the poor, the mid-day hours to criminals, the evening to law work.
Thus the gift of observation that characterized Popinot was
necessarily bifrons; he could guess the virtues of a pauper—good
feelings nipped, fine actions in embryo, unrecognized self-sacrifice,
just as he could read at the bottom of a man’s conscience the faintest
outlines of a crime, the slenderest threads of wrongdoing, and infer
all the rest.
Popinot’s inherited fortune was a thousand crowns a year. His wife,
sister to M. Bianchon Senior, a doctor at Sancerre, had brought him
about twice as much. She, dying five years since, had left her fortune
to her husband. As the salary of a supernumerary judge is not large,
and Popinot had been a fully salaried judge only for four years, we
may guess his reasons for parsimony in all that concerned his person
and mode of life, when we consider how small his means were and how
great his beneficence. Besides, is not such indifference to dress as
stamped Popinot an absent-minded man, a distinguishing mark of
scientific attainment, of art passionately pursued, of a perpetually
active mind? To complete this portrait, it will be enough to add that
Popinot was one of the few judges of the Court of the Seine on whom
the ribbon of the Legion of Honor had not been conferred.
Such was the man who had been instructed by the President of the
Second Chamber of the Court—to which Popinot had belonged since his
reinstatement among the judges in civil law—to examine the Marquis
d’Espard at the request of his wife, who sued for a Commission in
Lunacy.
The Rue du Fouarre, where so many unhappy wretches swarmed in the
early morning, would be deserted by nine o’clock, and as gloomy and
squalid as ever. Bianchon put his horse to a trot in order to find his
uncle in the midst of his business. It was not without a smile that he
thought of the curious contrast the judge’s appearance would make in
Madame d’Espard’s room; but he promised himself that he would persuade
him to dress in a way that should not be too ridiculous.
“If only my uncle happens to have a new coat!” said Bianchon to
himself, as he turned into the Rue du Fouarre, where a pale light
shone from the parlor windows. “I shall do well, I believe, to talk
that over with Lavienne.”
At the sound of wheels half a score of startled paupers came out from
under the gateway, and took off their hats on recognizing Bianchon;
for the doctor, who treated gratuitously the sick recommended to him
by the lawyer, was not less well known than he to the poor creatures
assembled there.
Bianchon found his uncle in the middle of the parlor, where the
benches were occupied by patients presenting such grotesque
singularities of costume as would have made the least artistic
passer-by turn round to gaze at them. A draughtsman—a Rembrandt, if
there were one in our day—might have conceived of one of his finest
compositions from seeing these children of misery, in artless
attitudes, and all silent.
Here was the rugged countenance of an old man with a white beard and
an apostolic head—a Saint Peter ready to hand; his chest, partly
uncovered, showed salient muscles, the evidence of an iron
constitution which had served him as a fulcrum to resist a whole poem
of sorrows. There a young woman was suckling her youngest-born to keep
it from crying, while another of about five stood between her knees.
Her white bosom, gleaming amid rags, the baby with its transparent
flesh-tints, and the brother, whose attitude promised a street arab in
the future, touched the fancy with pathos by its almost graceful
contrast with the long row of faces crimson with cold, in the midst of
which sat this family group. Further away, an old woman, pale and
rigid, had the repulsive look of rebellious pauperism, eager to avenge
all its past woes in one day of violence.
There, again, was the young workman, weakly and indolent, whose
brightly intelligent eye revealed fine faculties crushed by necessity
struggled with in vain, saying nothing of his sufferings, and nearly
dead for lack of an opportunity to squeeze between the bars of the
vast stews where the wretched swim round and round and devour each
other.
The majority were women; their husbands, gone to their work, left it
to them, no doubt, to plead the cause of the family with the ingenuity
which characterizes the woman of the people, who is almost always
queen in her hovel. You would have seen a torn bandana on every head,
on every form a skirt deep in mud, ragged kerchiefs, worn and dirty
jackets, but eyes that burnt like live coals. It was a horrible
assemblage, raising at first sight a feeling of disgust, but giving a
certain sense of terror the instant you perceived that the resignation
of these souls, all engaged in the struggle for every necessary of
life, was purely fortuitous, a speculation on benevolence. The two
tallow candles which lighted the parlor flickered in a sort of fog
caused by the fetid atmosphere of the ill-ventilated room.
The magistrate himself was not the least picturesque figure in the
midst of this assembly. He had on his head a rusty cotton night-cap;
as he had no cravat, his neck was visible, red with cold and wrinkled,
in contrast with the threadbare collar of his old dressing-gown. His
worn face had the half-stupid look that comes of absorbed attention.
His lips, like those of all men who work, were puckered up like a bag
with the strings drawn tight. His knitted brows seemed to bear the
burden of all the sorrows confided to him: he felt, analyzed, and
judged them all. As watchful as a Jew money-lender, he never raised
his eyes from his books and registers but to look into the very heart
of the persons he was examining, with the flashing glance by which a
miser expresses his alarm.
Lavienne, standing behind his master, ready to carry out his orders,
served no doubt as a sort of police, and welcomed newcomers by
encouraging them to get over their shyness. When the doctor appeared
there was a stir on the benches. Lavienne turned his head, and was
strangely surprised to see Bianchon.
“Ah! It is you, old boy!” exclaimed Popinot, stretching himself. “What
brings you so early?”
“I was afraid lest you should make an official visit about which I
wish to speak to you before I could see you.”
“Well,” said the lawyer, addressing a stout little woman who was still
standing close to him, “if you do not tell me what it is you want, I
cannot guess it, child.”
“Make haste,” said Lavienne. “Do not waste other people’s time.”
“Monsieur,” said the woman at last, turning red, and speaking so low
as only to be heard by Popinot and Lavienne, “I have a green-grocery
truck, and I have my last baby to nurse, and I owe for his keep. Well,
I had hidden my little bit of money——”
“Yes; and your man took it?” said Popinot, guessing the sequel.
“Yes, sir.”
“What is your name?”
“La Pomponne.”
“And your husband’s?”
“Toupinet.”
“Rue du Petit-Banquier?” said Popinot, turning over his register. “He
is in prison,” he added, reading a note at the margin of the section
in which this family was described.
“For debt, my kind monsieur.”
Popinot shook his head.
“But I have nothing to buy any stock for my truck; the landlord came
yesterday and made me pay up; otherwise I should have been turned
out.”
Lavienne bent over his master, and whispered in his ear.
“Well, how much do you want to buy fruit in the market?”
“Why, my good monsieur, to carry on my business, I should want—Yes, I
should certainly want ten francs.”
Popinot signed to Lavienne, who took ten francs out of a large bag,
and handed them to the woman, while the lawyer made a note of the loan
in his ledger. As he saw the thrill of delight that made the poor
hawker tremble, Bianchon understood the apprehensions that must have
agitated her on her way to the lawyer’s house.
“You next,” said Lavienne to the old man with the white beard.
Bianchon drew the servant aside, and asked him how long this audience
would last.
“Monsieur has had two hundred persons this morning, and there are
eight to be turned off,” said Lavienne. “You will have time to pay
your early visit, sir.”
“Here, my boy,” said the lawyer, turning round and taking Horace by
the arm; “here are two addresses near this—one in the Rue de Seine,
and the other in the Rue de l’Arbalete. Go there at once. Rue de
Seine, a young girl has just asphyxiated herself; and Rue de
l’Arbalete, you will find a man to remove to your hospital. I will
wait breakfast for you.”
Bianchon returned an hour later. The Rue du Fouarre was deserted; day
was beginning to dawn there; his uncle had gone up to his rooms; the
last poor wretch whose misery the judge had relieved was departing,
and Lavienne’s money bag was empty.
“Well, how are they going on?” asked the old lawyer, as the doctor
came in.
“The man is dead,” replied Bianchon; “the girl will get over it.”
Since the eye and hand of a woman had been lacking, the flat in which
Popinot lived had assumed an aspect in harmony with its master’s. The
indifference of a man who is absorbed in one dominant idea had set its
stamp of eccentricity on everything. Everywhere lay unconquerable
dust, every object was adapted to a wrong purpose with a pertinacity
suggestive of a bachelor’s home. There were papers in the flower
vases, empty ink-bottles on the tables, plates that had been
forgotten, matches used as tapers for a minute when something had to
be found, drawers or boxes half-turned out and left unfinished; in
short, all the confusion and vacancies resulting from plans for order
never carried out. The lawyer’s private room, especially disordered by
this incessant rummage, bore witness to his unresting pace, the hurry
of a man overwhelmed with business, hunted by contradictory
necessities. The bookcase looked as if it had been sacked; there were
books scattered over everything, some piled up open, one on another,
others on the floor face downwards; registers of proceedings laid on
the floor in rows, lengthwise, in front of the shelves; and that floor
had not been polished for two years.
The tables and shelves were covered with ex votos, the offerings of
the grateful poor. On a pair of blue glass jars which ornamented the
chimney-shelf there were two glass balls, of which the core was made
up of many-colored fragments, giving them the appearance of some
singular natural product. Against the wall hung frames of artificial
flowers, and decorations in which Popinot’s initials were surrounded
by hearts and everlasting flowers. Here were boxes of elaborate and
useless cabinet work; there letter-weights carved in the style of work
done by convicts in penal servitude. These masterpieces of patience,
enigmas of gratitude, and withered bouquets gave the lawyer’s room the
appearance of a toyshop. The good man used these works of art as
hiding-places which he filled with bills, worn-out pens, and scraps of
paper. All these pathetic witnesses to his divine charity were thick
with dust, dingy, and faded.
Some birds, beautifully stuffed, but eaten by moth, perched in this
wilderness of trumpery, presided over by an Angora cat, Madame
Popinot’s pet, restored to her no doubt with all the graces of life by
some impecunious naturalist, who thus repaid a gift of charity with a
perennial treasure. Some local artist whose heart had misguided his
brush had painted portraits of M. and Madame Popinot. Even in the
bedroom there were embroidered pin-cushions, landscapes in
cross-stitch, and crosses in folded paper, so elaborately cockled as to
show the senseless labor they had cost.
The window-curtains were black with smoke, and the hangings absolutely
colorless. Between the fireplace and the large square table at which
the magistrate worked, the cook had set two cups of coffee on a small
table, and two armchairs, in mahogany and horsehair, awaited the uncle
and nephew. As daylight, darkened by the windows, could not penetrate
to this corner, the cook had left two dips burning, whose unsnuffed
wicks showed a sort of mushroom growth, giving the red light which
promises length of life to the candle from slowness of combustion—a
discovery due to some miser.
“My dear uncle, you ought to wrap yourself more warmly when you go
down to that parlor.”
“I cannot bear to keep them waiting, poor souls!—Well, and what do
you want of me?”
“I have come to ask you to dine to-morrow with the Marquise d’Espard.”
“A relation of ours?” asked Popinot, with such genuine absence of mind
that Bianchon laughed.
“No, uncle; the Marquise d’Espard is a high and puissant lady, who has
laid before the Courts a petition desiring that a Commission in Lunacy
should sit on her husband, and you are appointed——”
“And you want me to dine with her! Are you mad?” said the lawyer,
taking up the code of proceedings. “Here, only read this article,
prohibiting any magistrate’s eating or drinking in the house of either
of two parties whom he is called upon to decide between. Let her come
and see me, your Marquise, if she has anything to say to me. I was, in
fact, to go to examine her husband to-morrow, after working the case
up to-night.”
He rose, took up a packet of papers that lay under a weight where he
could see it, and after reading the title, he said:
“Here is the affidavit. Since you take an interest in this high and
puissant lady, let us see what she wants.”
Popinot wrapped his dressing-gown across his body, from which it was
constantly slipping and leaving his chest bare; he sopped his bread in
the half-cold coffee, and opened the petition, which he read, allowing
himself to throw in a parenthesis now and then, and some discussions,
in which his nephew took part:—
“‘To Monsieur the President of the Civil Tribunal of the Lower Court
of the Department of the Seine, sitting at the Palais de Justice.
“‘Madame Jeanne Clementine Athenais de Blamont-Chauvry, wife of M.
Charles Maurice Marie Andoche, Comte de Negrepelisse, Marquis
d’Espard’—a very good family—’landowner, the said Mme. d’Espard
living in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, No. 104, and the said M.
d’Espard in the Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve, No. 22,’—to be
sure, the President told me he lived in this part of the town—’having
for her solicitor Maitre Desroches’—Desroches! a pettifogging jobber,
a man looked down upon by his brother lawyers, and who does his
clients no good—”
“Poor fellow!” said Bianchon, “unluckily he has no money, and he
rushes round like the devil in holy water—That is all.”
“‘Has the honor to submit to you, Monsieur the President, that for a
year past the moral and intellectual powers of her husband, M.
d’Espard, have undergone so serious a change, that at the present day
they have reached the state of dementia and idiocy provided for by
Article 448 of the Civil Code, and require the application of the
remedies set forth by that article, for the security of his fortune
and his person, and to guard the interest of his children whom he
keeps to live with him.
“‘That, in point of fact, the mental condition of M. d’Espard, which
for some years has given grounds for alarm based on the system he has
pursued in the management of his affairs, has reached, during the last
twelvemonth, a deplorable depth of depression; that his infirm will
was the first thing to show the results of the malady; and that its
effete state leaves M. the Marquis d’Espard exposed to all the perils
of his incompetency, as is proved by the following facts:
“‘For a long time all the income accruing from M. d’Espard’s estates
are paid, without any reasonable cause, or even temporary advantage,
into the hands of an old woman, whose repulsive ugliness is generally
remarked on, named Madame Jeanrenaud, living sometimes in Paris, Rue
de la Vrilliere, No. 8, sometimes at Villeparisis, near Claye, in the
Department of Seine et Marne, and for the benefit of her son, aged
thirty-six, an officer in the ex-Imperial Guards, whom the Marquis
d’Espard has placed by his influence in the King’s Guards, as Major in
the First Regiment of Cuirassiers. These two persons, who in 1814 were
in extreme poverty, have since then purchased house-property of
considerable value; among other items, quite recently, a large house
in the Grand Rue Verte, where the said Jeanrenaud is laying out
considerable sums in order to settle there with the woman Jeanrenaud,
intending to marry: these sums amount already to more than a hundred
thousand francs. The marriage has been arranged by the intervention of
M. d’Espard with his banker, one Mongenod, whose niece he has asked in
marriage for the said Jeanrenaud, promising to use his influence to
procure him the title and dignity of baron. This has in fact been
secured by His Majesty’s letters patent, dated December 29th of last
year, at the request of the Marquis d’Espard, as can be proved by His
Excellency the Keeper of the Seals, if the Court should think proper
to require his testimony.
“‘That no reason, not even such as morality and the law would concur
in disapproving, can justify the influence which the said Mme.
Jeanrenaud exerts over M. d’Espard, who, indeed, sees her very seldom;
nor account for his strange affection for the said Baron Jeanrenaud,
Major with whom he has but little intercourse. And yet their power is
so considerable, that whenever they need money, if only to gratify a
mere whim, this lady, or her son——’ Heh, heh! No reason even such as morality and the law concur in disapproving! What does the clerk or
the attorney mean to insinuate?” said Popinot.
Bianchon laughed.
“‘This lady, or her son, obtain whatever they ask of the Marquis
d’Espard without demur; and if he has not ready money, M. d’Espard
draws bills to be paid by the said Mongenod, who has offered to give
evidence to that effect for the petitioner.
“‘That, moreover, in further proof of these facts, lately, on the
occasion of the renewal of the leases on the Espard estate, the
farmers having paid a considerable premium for the renewal of their
leases on the old terms, M. Jeanrenaud at once secured the payment of
it into his own hands.
“‘That the Marquis d’Espard parts with these sums of money so little
of his own free-will, that when he was spoken to on the subject he
seemed to remember nothing of the matter; that whenever anybody of any
weight has questioned him as to his devotion to these two persons, his
replies have shown so complete an absence of ideas and of sense of his
own interests, that there obviously must be some occult cause at work
to which the petitioner begs to direct the eye of justice, inasmuch as
it is impossible but that this cause should be criminal, malignant,
and wrongful, or else of a nature to come under medical jurisdiction;
unless this influence is of the kind which constitutes an abuse of
moral power—such as can only be described by the word possession——’The devil!” exclaimed Popinot. “What do you say to that, doctor.
These are strange statements.”
“They might certainly,” said Bianchon, “be an effect of magnetic
force.”
“Then do you believe in Mesmer’s nonsense, and his tub, and seeing
through walls?”
“Yes, uncle,” said the doctor gravely. “As I heard you read that
petition I thought of that. I assure you that I have verified, in
another sphere of action, several analogous facts proving the
unlimited influence one man may acquire over another. In contradiction
to the opinion of my brethren, I am perfectly convinced of the power
of the will regarded as a motor force. All collusion and charlatanism
apart, I have seen the results of such a possession. Actions promised
during sleep by a magnetized patient to the magnetizer have been
scrupulously performed on waking. The will of one had become the will
of the other.”
“Every kind of action?”
“Yes.”
“Even a criminal act?”
“Even a crime.”
“If it were not from you, I would not listen to such a thing.”
“I will make you witness it,” said Bianchon.
“Hm, hm,” muttered the lawyer. “But supposing that this so-called
possession fell under this class of facts, it would be difficult to
prove it as legal evidence.”
“If this woman Jeanrenaud is so hideously old and ugly, I do not see
what other means of fascination she can have used,” observed Bianchon.
“But,” observed the lawyer, “in 1814, the time at which this
fascination is supposed to have taken place, this woman was fourteen
years younger; if she had been connected with M. d’Espard ten years
before that, these calculations take us back four-and-twenty years, to
a time when the lady may have been young and pretty, and have won for
herself and her son a power over M. d’Espard which some men do not
know how to evade. Though the source of this power is reprehensible in
the sight of justice, it is justifiable in the eye of nature. Madame
Jeanrenaud may have been aggrieved by the marriage, contracted
probably at about that time, between the Marquis d’Espard and
Mademoiselle de Blamont-Chauvry, and at the bottom of all this there
may be nothing more than the rivalry of two women, since the Marquis
had for a long time lived apart from Mme. d’Espard.”
“But her repulsive ugliness, uncle?”
“Power of fascination is in direct proportion to ugliness,” said the
lawyer; “that is the old story. And then think of the smallpox,
doctor. But to proceed.
“‘That so long ago as in 1815, in order to supply the sums of money
required by these two persons, the Marquis d’Espard went with his two
children to live in the Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve, in rooms
quite unworthy of his name and rank’—well, we may live as we please—’that he keeps his two children there, the Comte Clement d’Espard
and Vicomte Camille d’Espard, in a style of living quite unsuited to
their future prospects, their name and fortune; that he often wants
money, to such a point, that not long since the landlord, one Mariast,
put in an execution on the furniture in the rooms; that when this
execution was carried out in his presence, the Marquis d’Espard helped
the bailiff, whom he treated like a man of rank, paying him all the
marks of attention and respect which he would have shown to a person
of superior birth and dignity to himself.'”
The uncle and nephew glanced at each other and laughed.
“‘That, moreover, every act of his life, besides the facts with
reference to the widow Jeanrenaud and the Baron Jeanrenaud, her son,
are those of a madman; that for nearly ten years he has given his
thoughts exclusively to China, its customs, manners, and history; that
he refers everything to a Chinese origin; that when he is questioned
on the subject, he confuses the events of the day and the business of
yesterday with facts relating to China; that he censures the acts of
the Government and the conduct of the King, though he is personally
much attached to him, by comparing them with the politics of China;
“‘That this monomania has driven the Marquis d’Espard to conduct
devoid of all sense: against the customs of men of rank, and, in
opposition to his own professed ideas as to the duties of the
nobility, he has joined a commercial undertaking, for which he
constantly draws bills which, as they fall due, threaten both his
honor and his fortune, since they stamp him as a trader, and in
default of payment may lead to his being declared insolvent; that
these debts, which are owing to stationers, printers, lithographers,
and print-colorists, who have supplied the materials for his
publication, called A Picturesque History of China, now coming out in
parts, are so heavy that these tradesmen have requested the petitioner
to apply for a Commission in Lunacy with regard to the Marquis
d’Espard in order to save their own credit.'”
“The man is mad!” exclaimed Bianchon.
“You think so, do you?” said his uncle. “If you listen to only one
bell, you hear only one sound.”
“But it seems to me——” said Bianchon.
“But it seems to me,” said Popinot, “that if any relation of mine
wanted to get hold of the management of my affairs, and if, instead of
being a humble lawyer, whose colleagues can, any day, verify what his
condition is, I were a duke of the realm, an attorney with a little
cunning, like Desroches, might bring just such a petition against me.
“‘That his children’s education has been neglected for this
monomania; and that he has taught them, against all the rules of
education, the facts of Chinese history, which contradict the tenets
of the Catholic Church. He also has them taught the Chinese
dialects.'”
“Here Desroches strikes me as funny,” said Bianchon.
“The petition is drawn up by his head-clerk Godeschal, who, as you
know, is not strong in Chinese,” said the lawyer.
“‘That he often leaves his children destitute of the most necessary
things; that the petitioner, notwithstanding her entreaties, can never
see them; that the said Marquis d’Espard brings them to her only once
a year; that, knowing the privations to which they are exposed, she
makes vain efforts to give them the things most necessary for their
existence, and which they require——’ Oh! Madame la Marquise, this is
preposterous. By proving too much you prove nothing.—My dear boy,”
said the old man, laying the document on his knee, “where is the
mother who ever lacked heart and wit and yearning to such a degree as
to fall below the inspirations suggested by her animal instinct? A
mother is as cunning to get at her children as a girl can be in the
conduct of a love intrigue. If your Marquise really wanted to give her
children food and clothes, the Devil himself would not have hindered
her, heh? That is rather too big a fable for an old lawyer to swallow!—To proceed.
“‘That at the age the said children have now attained it is necessary
that steps should be taken to preserve them from the evil effects of
such an education; that they should be provided for as beseems their
rank, and that they should cease to have before their eyes the sad
example of their father’s conduct;
“‘That there are proofs in support of these allegations which the
Court can easily order to be produced. Many times has M. d’Espard
spoken of the judge of the Twelfth Arrondissement as a mandarin of the
third class; he often speaks of the professors of the College Henri
IV. as “men of letters”‘—and that offends them! ‘In speaking of the
simplest things, he says, “They were not done so in China;” in the
course of the most ordinary conversation he will sometimes allude to
Madame Jeanrenaud, or sometimes to events which happened in the time
of Louis XIV., and then sit plunged in the darkest melancholy;
sometimes he fancies he is in China. Several of his neighbors, among
others one Edme Becker, medical student, and Jean Baptiste Fremiot, a
professor, living under the same roof, are of opinion, after frequent
intercourse with the Marquis d’Espard, that his monomania with regard
to everything Chinese is the result of a scheme laid by the said Baron
Jeanrenaud and the widow his mother to bring about the deadening of
all the Marquis d’Espard’s mental faculties, since the only service
which Mme. Jeanrenaud appears to render M. d’Espard is to procure him
everything that relates to the Chinese Empire;
“‘Finally, that the petitioner is prepared to show to the Court that
the moneys absorbed by the said Baron and Mme. Jeanrenaud between 1814
and 1828 amount to not less than one million francs.
“‘In confirmation of the facts herein set forth, the petitioner can
bring the evidence of persons who are in the habit of seeing the
Marquis d’Espard, whose names and professions are subjoined, many of
whom have urged her to demand a commission in lunacy to declare M.
d’Espard incapable of managing his own affairs, as being the only way
to preserve his fortune from the effects of his maladministration and
his children from his fatal influence.
“‘Taking all this into consideration, M. le President, and the
affidavits subjoined, the petitioner desires that it may please you,
inasmuch as the foregoing facts sufficiently prove the insanity and
incompetency of the Marquis d’Espard herein described with his titles
and residence, to order that, to the end that he may be declared
incompetent by law, this petition and the documents in evidence may be
laid before the King’s public prosecutor; and that you will charge one
of the judges of this Court to make his report to you on any day you
may be pleased to name, and thereupon to pronounce judgment,’ etc.
“And here,” said Popinot, “is the President’s order instructing me!—Well, what does the Marquise d’Espard want with me? I know
everything. But I shall go to-morrow with my registrar to see M. le
Marquis, for this does not seem at all clear to me.”
“Listen, my dear uncle, I have never asked the least little favor of
you that had to do with your legal functions; well, now I beg you to
show Madame d’Espard the kindness which her situation deserves. If she
came here, you would listen to her?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, go and listen to her in her own house. Madame d’Espard is
a sickly, nervous, delicate woman, who would faint in your rat-hole of
a place. Go in the evening, instead of accepting her dinner, since the
law forbids your eating or drinking at your client’s expense.”
“And does not the law forbid you from taking any legacy from your
dead?” said Popinot, fancying that he saw a touch of irony on his
nephew’s lips.
“Come, uncle, if it were only to enable you to get at the truth of
this business, grant my request. You will come as the examining judge,
since matters do not seem to you very clear. Deuce take it! It is as
necessary to cross-question the Marquise as it is to examine the
Marquis.”
“You are right,” said the lawyer. “It is quite possible that it is she
who is mad. I will go.”
“I will call for you. Write down in your engagement book: ‘To-morrow
evening at nine, Madame d’Espard.’—Good!” said Bianchon, seeing his
uncle make a note of the engagement.
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