“It is with stealing as it is with the military service. There are persons who refuse to let themselves be enrolled, preferring to expatriate themselves. This way of proceeding has its little character of protestation. But alongside of these there are others who, by the simulation of an infirmity, by taking advantage of an exemption or the utilisation of an efficacious protection, manage to evade military servitude. They are right, surely,—a thousand times right,—from their point of view. But, if they tell us that they have thereby performed acts of revolutionary propaganda, and contributed to demolish the régime, it would be easy to demonstrate that their claim is false....
“To resort to ruse, to dissimulate, in order to capture the confidence of the person one is planning to despoil, is, it must be confessed, an unwholesome and degrading line of conduct.”
Among the few Paris pilferers whose lives have distilled the odour of sanctity, who have taken on themselves to perpetuate the tradition of the magnanimous bandit, the philanthropic pirate, and the tender-hearted outlaw, to incarnate the paradox of the “bon voleur” (honest thief), the two most famous are Pini and Duval.
Clément Duval, who robbed and attempted to burn the mansion of Mlle. Madeleine Lemaire, was an iron worker of an independent spirit, who became so disgusted with the sufferings and humiliations of the labourer’s lot that he determined to make a dramatic protest. His previous record was absolutely clean, save for a petty theft from an employer when his compagne and children had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours; and he carried away from the Lemaire residence only a small part of the valuables at his disposal, which shows that gain was not his primary object. In his written defence, which the presiding judge, Berard des Glajeux, did not allow him to read, he dwelt at great length on the hardships of the working-woman. In fact, Duval was a feminist of the first water. Saint Clément Duval! Forget him not, feminists, when you make up your calendar of saints!
In the Revue Bleue, a publication which can hardly be accused of having a revolutionary bias, M. Paul Mimande wrote of Duval: “Well, to my thinking, this thief, this incendiary, is honnête.... I believe him incapable of robbing and killing to satisfy his cupidity. He worked for the collectivity alone. Duval has the serenity of the illuminé who suffers for a holy cause. He is logical in submitting, without murmurs or protestations, to the hard rules of the bagne. Very sincerely, he refuses to find himself disgraced by the livery of the convict; and he shows it by his bearing and his talk. His conscience cries out to him that he has acted well. What does the rest matter!
“I had a long conversation with Clément Duval. I questioned him searchingly; and I discerned in his phrases, ardent, but hollow, a sort of atavic duplicate of the times of John Huss.”
Duval had neither instruction nor the gift of eloquence, and succeeded ill in explaining his theories to the jury of the Seine. Pini, on the other hand, who had been at great pains to educate himself, was an orator and philosopher as well as a student. His defence—less a defence of himself than of his theory of the right to steal (le droit au vol)—was as splendid a bit of impertinence as was ever delivered in a court-room.
Calmly, cynically, with a control of voice and charm of gesture that would have done credit to the most gifted advocate, he said (in part):—
“As to us anarchists, it is with the untroubled assurance of performing a duty that we make our attacks on property. We have two objects in view: first, to claim for ourselves the natural right to existence which you bourgeois concede to beasts and deny to men; second, to provide ourselves with the materials best suited for destroying your show, and, if it becomes necessary, you with it. This manner of reasoning makes your hair stand on end; but what would you have? This is the state of the case. The new times have come. There was a time when the starving wretch who appropriated a morsel of bread, and was arraigned before your plethoric persons therefor, admitted that he had committed a crime, craved pardon, and promised to perish of hunger (he and his family) rather than touch again the property of another. He was ashamed to show his face. To-day it is very different. Extremes meet; and man, after having sunk so low, is retrieving himself splendidly. Arraigned before you for having smashed the strong boxes of your compeers, he does not excuse his act, but defends it, proves to you with pride that he has yielded to the natural need of retaking what had been previously stolen from him; he proves to you that his act is superior in morality to all your laws, flouts your mouthings and your authority, and in the very teeth of your accusations against him tells you that the real thieves, messieurs les juges! are you and your bourgeois band.
“This is precisely my case. Be assured I do not blush under your charges, and I experience a delicious pleasure in being called thief by you.”