"Guzzle, cullies, and booze away,
Till Gabriel's trump on Judgment Day!"
We ate partridge that day—that was more than the King did—we drank champagne. My beautiful Marie-Antoinette loved me dearly. My Uncle and Aunt Tanton were there. And all that happiness was only last May, the fifteenth of last May!... And now!... Where is Uncle Tanton now? Shut up in the Châtelet... And his son?... I had to kill him last month to prevent him denouncing me!... I was quick about it... One pistol bullet at Montparnasse, and the body in a ditch; and I was sure of his silence... But how many more to kill?... How many more to kill to be sure of the silence of all?... By the throttle of Madame Phalaris! I had to kill Pepin, the Archer, and Huron the King's Deputy who were in full cry after me one evening, and five archers besides whom I massacred, poor beggars! in Mazarine Street... I see their five corpses still... And yet I'm not at all bad-natured!... I don't want to hurt anybody... I only ask one thing, to be allowed to quietly police Paris, for everybody's security... My chief councillor himself is grumbling. He doesn't forgive my executing Jacques Lefebvre... Of course, there's no living with me any longer; but it's only because I wish to live!
"'After that little talk I leave them... I look out of the door of the Queen Margot: Ferronnerie Street is empty. I hurry off; and near the Cemetery of the Innocents I meet Madeline... But I don't tell her where I am going... As a matter of fact, I am going to spend the night in my hole in Amelot Street[4] like a wretched thief!... It's pouring with rain.'"
[4] In 1823, when they were cleaning the great sewer under Amelot Street, they found near its principal mouth a recess, a cave, about nine feet square which they still called, in the Official Report, "Cartouche's chamber," because that robber had often been obliged to spend the night in it. This is a long way from the legend which represents Cartouche as living in the best society and on the eve of marrying the daughter of a rich nobleman, when he was arrested.
M. Adolphe Lecamus declares that he has given us the exact words which came from the lips of Theophrastus in his hypnotic sleep, but that he has not been able to give us the modulation of these phrases, their strange tones, their sudden stops, their hurried starts, and their often dolorous endings. He makes no attempt to describe the physiognomy of Theophrastus. At times it expressed anger, at times scorn, sometimes extravagant daring, sometimes terror. Sometimes, he declares, at certain moving moments, Theophrastus was exactly like the portrait of Cartouche.
M. de la Nox was desirous of bringing Cartouche to the hour of his death by slow degrees. He feared the shock of making him abruptly live it over again. Therefore he had taken him back to the First of April, 1721.
The minutes which followed were exceedingly painful for us, as the wretched Cartouche once more went through the agony of those last months amid the perpetual treachery of his lieutenants and the incredible, dogged animosity of the police.
The narrative of M. Lecamus, painful as it is, presents no new fact. It merely corroborates history. There is, indeed, nothing to be gained by descending to the laboratory of M. Eliphas de la Nox to acquire a knowledge of the sensational arrest and imprisonment in the Grand-Châtelet. We find in the Register of the Orders of Committal of the King:
"May 16, 1721, Order of the King to seize and arrest one Cartouche, who has murdered Sire Huron, Lieutenant of the Short Robe, and one Tanton; and also Cartouche Cadet, called Louison; the Chevalier, called Cracksman; and Fortier, called Mouchy, for complicity in the murders."
On the margin against the name of Cartouche is written the single word, "Broken."