“You forget,” answered M. Mazure, “that the Middle Ages gave birth to the most accursed form of philanthropy ever known—the spiritual. For it is just this name that suits the spirit of the holy Inquisition. It was through pure charity alone that this tribunal handed heretics over to the stake, and if it destroyed the body, it was, so they said, only in order to save the soul.”
“They never said that,” answered M. Bergeret, “and they never thought it. Victor Hugo did, indeed, believe that Torquemada ordered men to be burnt for their good, in order that their eternal happiness might be secured at the price of a short pain. On this theory he constructed a drama that sparkles with the play of antithesis. But there is no foundation whatever for this idea of his, and I should never have imagined that a scholar like you, fattening, as you have done, on old parchments, would have been led astray by a poet’s lies. The truth is that the tribunal of the Inquisition, in handing the heretic over to the secular arm, was simply cutting away a diseased limb from the Church, for fear lest the whole body should be contaminated. As for the limb thus cut off, its fate was in the hands of God. Such was the spirit of the Inquisition, frightful enough, but by no means romantic. But where the Holy Office showed what you rightly call spiritual philanthropy was in the treatment it meted out to those converted from the error of their ways. It charitably condemned them to perpetual imprisonment, and immured them for the good of their souls. But I was merely referring to the State prisons, just now, such as they were in the Middle Ages and in modern times up to the reign of Louis XIV.”
“It is true,” said M. de Terremondre, “that the system of solitary confinement has not produced all the happy results that were expected from it in the reformation of prisoners.”
“This system,” said Dr. Fornerol, “often produces rather serious mental disorders. Yet it is only fair to add that criminals are naturally predisposed to troubles of this kind. We recognise to-day that the criminal is a degenerate. Thus, for instance, thanks to M. Ossian Colot’s courtesy, I have been allowed to make an examination of our murderer, this fellow Lecœur. I found many physiological defects in him.... His teeth, for instance, are quite abnormal. I argue from that fact that he is only partially responsible for his acts.”
“Yet,” said M. Bergeret, “one of the sisters of Mithridates had a double row of teeth in each jaw, and in her brother’s estimation, at any rate, she was a woman of noble courage. So dearly did he love her that when he was a fugitive pursued by Lucullus, he gave orders that she should be strangled by a mute to prevent her falling alive into the hands of the Romans. Nor did she then fail to live up to her brother’s lofty estimation of her character, but suffering death by the bowstring with joyous calmness, said: ‘I thank the king, my brother, for having had a care to my honour, even in the midst of his own besetting troubles.’ You see from this example that heroism is not impossible even with a row of abnormal teeth.”
“Lecœur’s case,” replied the doctor, “presents many other peculiarities which cannot fail to be significant in the eyes of a scientist. Like so many born criminals his senses are blunted. Thus I found, when I examined him, that he was tattooed in every part of his body. You would be surprised at the lewd fancy shown in the choice of scenes and symbols painted on his skin.”
“Really?” said M. de Terremondre.
“The skin of this patient,” said Dr. Fornerol, “really ought to be properly prepared and preserved in our museum. But it is not the character of the tattooing that I want to insist upon, but rather the number of the pictures and their arrangement on the body. Certain parts of the operation must have caused the patient an amount of pain which could scarcely have been bearable to a person of ordinary sensibility.”
“There you are making a mistake!” exclaimed M. de Terremondre. “It is evident that you don’t know my friend Jilly. Yet he is a very well-known man. Jilly was quite young when, in 1885 or ’86, he made the tour of the world with his friend Lord Turnbridge on the yacht Old Friend. Jilly swears that throughout the whole voyage, through storms and calm, neither Lord Turnbridge nor himself ever put foot on deck for a single moment. The whole time they remained in the cabin drinking champagne with an old top-man of the marines who had been taught tattooing by a Tasmanian chief. In the course of the voyage this old top-man covered the two friends from head to foot with tattoo marks, and Jilly returned to France adorned with a fox-hunt that comprises as many as three hundred and twenty-four figures of men, women, horses and dogs. He is always delighted to show it when he sups with boon companions at an inn. Now I really cannot say whether Jilly is abnormally insensitive to pain, but what I can tell you is that he is a fine fellow, and a man of honour and that he is incapable of....”
“But,” asked M. Bergeret, “do you think it right that this butcher’s boy should be guillotined? For you confess that there are such things as born criminals, and in your own phrase it seems that Lecœur was only partially responsible for his acts, through a congenital predisposition to crime.”