Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

by Honoré de Balzac

In these days a judge, paid as a functionary, and generally a poor man, has in the place of his dignity of old a haughtiness of demeanor that seems odious to the men raised to be his equals; for haughtiness is dignity without a solid basis. That is the vicious element in the present system. If France were divided into ten circuits, the magistracy might be reinstated by conferring its dignities on men of fortune; but with six-and-twenty circuits this is impossible.

The only real improvement to be insisted on in the exercise of the power intrusted to the examining judge, is an alteration in the conditions of preliminary imprisonment. The mere fact of suspicion ought to make no difference in the habits of life of the suspected parties. Houses of detention for them ought to be constructed in Paris, furnished and arranged in such a way as greatly to modify the feeling of the public with regard to suspected persons. The law is good, and is necessary; its application is in fault, and public feeling judges the laws from the way in which they are carried out. And public opinion in France condemns persons under suspicion, while, by an inexplicable reaction, it justifies those committed for trial. This, perhaps, is a result of the essentially refractory nature of the French.

This illogical temper of the Parisian people was one of the factors which contributed to the climax of this drama; nay, as may be seen, it was one of the most important.

To enter into the secret of the terrible scenes which are acted out in the examining judge’s chambers; to understand the respective positions of the two belligerent powers, the Law and the examinee, the object of whose contest is a certain secret kept by the prisoner from the inquisition of the magistrate—well named in prison slang, “the curious man”—it must always be remembered that persons imprisoned under suspicion know nothing of what is being said by the seven or eight publics that compose the Public, nothing of how much the police know, or the authorities, or the little that newspapers can publish as to the circumstances of the crime.

Thus, to give a man in custody such information as Jacques Collin had just received from Asie as to Lucien’s arrest, is throwing a rope to a drowning man. As will be seen, in consequence of this ignorance, a stratagem which, without this warning, must certainly have been equally fatal to the convict, was doomed to failure.

Monsieur Camusot, the son-in-law of one of the clerks of the cabinet, too well known for any account of his position and connection to be necessary here, was at this moment almost as much perplexed as Carlos Herrera in view of the examination he was to conduct. He had formerly been President of a Court of the Paris circuit; he had been raised from that position and called to be a judge in Paris—one of the most coveted posts in the magistracy—by the influence of the celebrated Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, whose husband, attached to the Dauphin’s person, and Colonel of a cavalry regiment of the Guards, was as much in favor with the King as she was with MADAME. In return for a very small service which he had done the Duchess—an important matter to her—on occasion of a charge of forgery brought against the young Comte d’Esgrignon by a banker of Alencon (see La Cabinet des Antiques; Scenes de la vie de Province), he was promoted from being a provincial judge to be president of his Court, and from being president to being an examining judge in Paris.

For eighteen months now he had sat on the most important Bench in the kingdom; and had once, at the desire of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, had an opportunity of forwarding the ends of a lady not less influential than the Duchess, namely, the Marquise d’Espard, but he had failed. (See the Commission in Lunacy.)

Lucien, as was told at the beginning of the Scene, to be revenged on Madame d’Espard, who aimed at depriving her husband of his liberty of action, was able to put the true facts before the Public Prosecutor and the Comte de Serizy. These two important authorities being thus won over to the Marquis d’Espard’s party, his wife had barely escaped the censure of the Bench by her husband’s generous intervention.

On hearing, yesterday, of Lucien’s arrest, the Marquise d’Espard had sent her brother-in-law, the Chevalier d’Espard, to see Madame Camusot. Madame Camusot had set off forthwith to call on the notorious Marquise. Just before dinner, on her return home, she had called her husband aside in the bedroom.

“If you can commit that little fop Lucien de Rubempre for trial, and secure his condemnation,” said she in his ear, “you will be Councillor to the Supreme Court——”