I willingly accepted this proposition; and when our breakfast was over, we mounted our horses, and set out for the place in question.
“If the forms of justice where we are now going,” said Duchesne, “be divested of much of their pomp and ceremony, be assured of one thing,—it is not at the expense of the more material essence. Of all the police tribunals about Paris, this obscure den in the Bue de Dix Sous is the most effective. Situated in a quarter where crime is as rife as fever in the Pontine Marshes, it has become acquainted with the haunts and habits of the lowest class in Paris,—the lowest class, probably, in any city of Europe. Watching with parental solicitude, it tracks the criminal from his first step in vice to his last deed in crime; from his petty theft to his murder. Knowing the necessities to which poverty impels men, and studying with attention the impulses that grow up amid despair and hunger, it sees motives through a mist of intervening circumstances that would baffle less subtle observers, and can trace the tortuous windings of crime where no other sight could find the clew. Is it not strange to think with what ingenuity men will investigate the minute anatomy of vice, and how little they will do to apply this knowledge to its remedy? Like the surgeon, enamored of his operating skill, he would rather exhibit his dexterity in the amputation, than his science in the saving, of the limb. Such is the bureau of the police in the poorer quarters. In the more fashionable ones it takes a higher flight; amusing the world with its scenes, alternately humorous and pathetic, it forms a kind of feature in the literature of the period, and is the only reading of thousands. In these places the commissaire is usually a bon vivant and a wit; despising the miserable function of administering the law, he takes his seat upon the bench to cap jokes with the witnesses, puzzle the complainant, and embarrass the prisoner. To the reporters alone is he civil; and in return, his poor witticisms appear in the morning papers, with the usual 'loud laughter' that never existed save in type.”
As we thus chatted, we entered a quarter of dirty and narrow streets, inhabited by a poor-looking, squalid population. The women, with little to mark their sex in their coarse, heavy countenances, wore colored kerchiefs on their heads in lieu of a cap, and were for the most part without shoes or stockings. The men, a brutalized, stupid race, sat smoking in the doorways, scarcely lifting their eyes as we passed; or some were eating a coarse morsel of black rye bread, which, by their eagerness in devouring it, seemed an unusual delicacy.
“You scarcely believed there was such poverty in Paris,” said he; “but this is by no means the worst of the quarter. Though M. de Champagny, in his late report, makes no mention of these 'signs of prosperity,' we are now entering the region where, even in noonday, the passage is deemed perilous; but the number of police agents on duty to-day will make the journey a safe one.”
The street we entered at the moment consisted of a mass of tall houses, almost falling from decay and neglect,—scarcely a window remained in many of them; while in front, a row of miserable booths, formed of rude planks, narrowed the passage to a mere path, scarce wide enough for three people abreast. There, vice of every description, and drunkenness, waited not for the dark hours to shroud them, but came forth in the sunlight,—the ruffian shouts of intoxication mingling with the almost maniacal laugh of misery or the reckless chorus of some degrading song. Half-naked wretches leaned from the windows as we passed along,—some staring in stupid wonderment at our appearance; others saluting us with mockery and grimace, or even calling out to us in the slang dialect of the place.
“Yes,” said Duchesne, as he saw the expression of horror and disgust the scene impressed on me, “here are the rotting seeds of revolutions putrefying, to germinate at some future day. Starvation and vice, misery, even to despair, inhabit every den around you. The furious and bloodthirsty wretch of '92, the Chouan, the Jacobite, the escaped galley-slave, the untaken murderer, are here side by side,—crime their great bond of union. To this place men come for an assassin or a false witness, as to a market. Such are the wrecks the retiring waves of a Revolution have left us. So long as the trade of blood lasted, openly, like vultures, they fattened on it; but once the reign of order restored, they were driven to murder and outrage as a livelihood.”
While he was speaking, we approached a narrow arched passage, within which a flight of stone steps arose. “We dismount here,” said he.
At the same moment a group of ragged creatures, of every age, surrounded us to hold our horses, not noticing the orderly who rode at some distance behind us. I followed Duchesne up the steps, and along a gloomy corridor, to a little courtyard, where several dismounted gendarmes were standing in a circle, chatting. Passing through this, we entered a dirty, mean-looking house, around the door of which several people were collected, some of whom saluted the chevalier as he came up.
“Who are these fellows?” said I. “They seem to know you.”
“Oh! nothing but the common police spies,” said he, carelessly; “the fellows who lounge about the cabarets and the low gambling-houses. But here comes one of higher mark.”