The History of a Crime - Victor Hugo
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"Who knows," said I, "if I have not committed a fault? This injustice is
perhaps a justice."
We were both silent. He resumed,--
"Could you bear exile?"
"I will try."
"Could you live without Paris?"
"I should have the ocean."
"You would then go to the seaside?"
"I think so."
"It is sad."
"It is grand."
There was another pause. He broke it.
"You do not know what exile is. I do know it. It is terrible. Assuredly,
I would not begin it again. Death is a bourne whence no one comes back,
exile is a place whither no one returns."
"If necessary," I said to him, "I will go, and I will return to it."
"Better die. To quit life is nothing, but to quit one's country--"
"Alas!" said I, "that is every thing."
"Well, then, why accept exile when it is in your power to avoid it? What
do you place above your country?"
"Conscience."
This answer made him thoughtful. However, he resumed.
"But on reflection your conscience will approve of what you will have
done."
"No."
"Why?"
"I have told you. Because my conscience is so constituted that it puts
nothing above itself. I feel it upon me as the headland can feel the
lighthouse which is upon it. All life is an abyss, and conscience
illuminates it around me."
"And I also," he exclaimed--and I affirm that nothing could be more
sincere or more loyal than his tone--"and I also feel and see my
conscience. It approves of what I am doing. I appear to be betraying
Louis; but I am really doing him a service. To save him from a crime is
to save him. I have tried every means. There only remains this one, to
arrest him. In coming to you, in acting as I do, I conspire at the same
time against him and for him, against his power, and for his honor. What
I am doing is right."
"It is true," I said to him. "You have a generous and a lofty aim."
And I resumed,--
"But our two duties are different. I could not hinder Louis Bonaparte
from committing a crime unless I committed one myself. I wish neither for
an Eighteenth Brumaire for him, nor for an Eighteenth Fructidor for
myself. I would rather be proscribed than be a proscriber. I have the
choice between two crimes, my crime and the crime of Louis Bonaparte. I
will not choose my crime."
"But then you will have to endure his."
"I would rather endure a crime than commit one."
He remained thoughtful, and said to me,--
"Let it be so."
And he added,--
"Perhaps we are both in the right."
"I think so," I said.
And I pressed his hand.
He took his mother's manuscript and went away. It was three o'clock in
the morning. The conversation had lasted more than two hours. I did not
go to bed until I had written it out.
[32] 14th of June, 1847. Chamber of Peers. See the work "Avant l'Exile."
CHAPTER XI.
THE COMBAT FINISHED, THE ORDEAL BEGINS
I did not know where to go.
On the afternoon of the 7th I determined to go back once more to 19, Rue
Richelieu. Under the gateway some one seized my arm. It was Madame D.
She was waiting for me.
"Do not go in," she said to me.
"Am I discovered?"
"Yes."
"And taken."
"No."
She added,--
"Come."
We crossed the courtyard, and we went out by a backdoor into the Rue
Fontaine Moliere; we reached the square of the Palais Royal. The
_fiacres_ were standing there as usual. We got into the first we came
to.
"Where are we to go?" asked the driver.
She looked at me.
I answered,--
"I do not know."
"I know," she said.
Women always know where Providence lies.
An hour later I was in safety.
From the 4th, every day which passed by consolidated the _coup d'etat_.
Our defeat was complete, and we felt ourselves abandoned. Paris was like
a forest in which Louis Bonaparte was making a _battue_ of the
Representatives; the wild beast was hunting down the sportsmen. We heard
the indistinct baying of Maupas behind us. We were compelled to
disperse. The pursuit was energetic. We entered into the second phase of
duty--the catastrophe accepted and submitted to. The vanquished became
the proscribed. Each one of us had his own concluding adventures. Mine
was what it should have been--exile; death having missed me. I am not
going to relate it here, this book is not my biography, and I ought not
to divert to myself any of the attention which it may excite. Besides,
what concerns me personally is told in a narrative which is one of the
testaments of exile.[33]
Notwithstanding the relentless pursuit which was directed against us, I
did not think it my duty to leave Paris as long as a glimmer of hope
remained, and as long as an awakening of the people seemed possible.
Malarmet sent me word in my refuge that a movement would take place at
Belleville on Tuesday the 9th. I waited until the 12th. Nothing stirred.
The people were indeed dead. Happily such deaths as these, like the
deaths of the gods, are only for a time.
I had a last interview with Jules Favre and Michel de Bourges at Madame
Didier's in the Rue de la Ville-Leveque. It was at night. Bastide came
there. This brave man said to me,--
"You are about to leave Paris; for myself, I remain here. Take me as
your lieutenant. Direct me from the depths of your exile. Make use of me
as an arm which you have in France."
"I will make use of you as of a heart," I said to him.
On the 14th, amidst the adventures which my son Charles relates in his
book, I succeeded in reaching Brussels.
The vanquished are like cinders, Destiny blows upon them and disperses
them. There was a gloomy vanishing of all the combatants for Right and
for Law. A tragical disappearance.
[33] "Les Hommes de l'Exile," by Charles Hugo.
CHAPTER XII.
THE EXILED
The Crime having succeeded, all hastened to join it. To persist was
possible, to resist was not possible. The situation became more and more
desperate. One would have said that an enormous wall was rising upon the
horizon ready to close in. The outlet: Exile.
The great souls, the glories of the people, emigrated. Thus there was
seen this dismal sight--France driven out from France.
But what the Present appears to lose, the Future gains, the hand which
scatters is also the hand which sows.
The Representatives of the Left, surrounded, tracked, pursued, hunted
down, wandered for several days from refuge to refuge. Those who escaped
found great difficulty in leaving Paris and France. Madier de Montjan
had very black and thick eyebrows, he shaved off half of them, cut his
hair, and let his beard grow. Yvan, Pelletier, Gindrier, and Doutre
shaved off their moustaches and beards. Versigny reached Brussels on the
14th with a passport in the name of Morin. Schoelcher dressed himself up
as a priest. This costume became him admirably, and suited his austere
countenance and grave voice. A worthy priest helped him to disguise
himself, and lent him his cassock and his band, made him shave off his
whiskers a few days previously, so that he should not be betrayed by the
white trace of his freshly-cut beard, gave him his own passport, and
only left him at the railway station.[34]
De Flotte disguised himself as a servant, and in this manner succeeded
in crossing the frontier at Mouscron. From there he reached Ghent, and
thence Brussels.
On the night of December 26th, I had returned to the little room,
without a fire, which I occupied (No. 9) on the second story of the
Hotel de la Porte-Verte; it was midnight; I had just gone to bed and was
falling asleep, when a knock sounded at my door. I awoke. I always left
the key outside. "Come in," I said. A chambermaid entered with a light,
and brought two men whom I did not know. One was a lawyer, of Ghent,
M. ----; the other was De Flotte. He took my two hands and pressed them
tenderly. "What," I said to him, "is it you?"
At the Assembly De Flotte, with his prominent and thoughtful brow, his
deep-set eyes, his close-shorn head, and his long beard, slightly turned
back, looked like a creation of Sebastian del Piombo wandering out of
his picture of the "Raising of Lazarus;" and I had before my eyes a
short young man, thin and pallid, with spectacles. But what he had not
been able to change, and what I recognized immediately, was the great
heart, the lofty mind, the energetic character, the dauntless courage;
and if I did not recognize him by his features, I recognized him by the
grasp of his hand.
Edgar Quinet was brought away on the 10th by a noble-hearted Wallachian
woman, Princess Cantacuzene, who undertook to conduct him to the
frontier, and who kept her word. It was a troublesome task. Quinet had
a foreign passport in the name of Grubesko, he was to personate a
Wallachian, and it was arranged that he should not know how to speak
French, he who writes it as a master. The journey was perilous. They ask
for passports along all the line, beginning at the terminus. At Amiens
they were particularly suspicious. But at Lille the danger was great.
The gendarmes went from carriage to carriage; entered them lantern in
hand, and compared the written descriptions of the travellers with their
personal appearance. Several who appeared to be suspicious characters
were arrested, and were immediately thrown into prison. Edgar Quinet,
seated by the side of Madame Cantacuzene awaited the turn of his
carriage. At length it came. Madame Cantacuzene leaned quickly forward
towards the gendarmes, and hastened to present her passport, but the
corporal waved back Madame Cantacuzene's passport saying, "It is
useless, Madame. We have nothing to do with women's passports," and he
asked Quinet abruptly, "Your papers?" Quinet held out his passport
unfolded. The gendarmes said to him, "Come out of the carriage, so that
we can compare your description." It happened, however, that the
Wallachian passport contained no description. The corporal frowned, and
said to his subordinates, "An irregular passport! Go and fetch the
Commissary."
All seemed lost, but Madame Cantacuzene began to speak to Quinet in the
most Wallachian words in the world, with incredible assurance and
volubility, so much so that the gendarme, convinced that he had to deal
with all Wallachia in person, and seeing the train ready to start,
returned the passport to Quinet, saying to him, "There! be off with
you!"--a few hours afterwards Edgar Quinet was in Belgium.
Arnauld de l'Ariege also had his adventures. He was a marked man, he had
to hide himself. Arnauld being a Catholic, Madame Arnauld went to the
priest; the Abbe Deguerry slipped out of the way, the Abbe Maret
consented to conceal him; the Abbe Maret was honest and good. Arnauld
d'Ariege remained hidden for a fortnight at the house of this worthy
priest. He wrote from the Abbe Maret's a letter to the Archbishop of
Paris, urging him to refuse the Pantheon, which a decree of Louis
Bonaparte took away from France and gave to Rome. This letter angered
the Archbishop. Arnauld, proscribed, reached Brussels, and there, at the
age of eighteen months, died the "little Red," who on the 3d of December
had carried the workman's letter to the Archbishop--an angel sent by God
to the priest who had not understood the angel, and who no longer knew
God.
In this medley of incidents and adventures each one had his drama.
Cournet's drama was strange and terrible.
Cournet, it may be remembered, had been a naval officer. He was one of
those men of a prompt, decisive character, who magnetized other men, and
who on certain extraordinary occasions send an electric shock through a
multitude. He possessed an imposing air, broad shoulders, brawny arms,
powerful fists, a tall stature, all of which give confidence to the
masses, and the intelligent expression which gives confidence to the
thinkers. You saw him pass, and you recognized strength; you heard him
speak, and you felt the will, which is more than strength. When quite a
youth he had served in the navy. He combined in himself in a certain
degree--and it is this which made this energetic man, when well directed
and well employed, a means of enthusiasm and a support--he combined the
popular fire and the military coolness. He was one of those natures
created for the hurricane and for the crowd, who have begun their study
of the people by their study of the ocean, and who are at their ease in
revolutions as in tempests. As we have narrated, he took an important
part in the combat. He had been dauntless and indefatigable, he was one
of those who could yet rouse it to life. From Wednesday afternoon
several police agents were charged to seek him everywhere, to arrest him
wherever they might find him, and to take him to the Prefecture of the
Police, where orders had been given to shoot him immediately.
Cournet, however, with his habitual daring, came and went freely in
order to carry on the lawful resistance, even in the quarters occupied
by the troops, shaving off his moustaches as his sole precaution.
On the Thursday afternoon he was on the boulevards at a few paces from a
regiment of cavalry drawn up in order. He was quietly conversing with
two of his comrades of the fight, Huy and Lorrain. Suddenly, he
perceives himself and his companions surrounded by a company of
_sergents de ville_; a man touches his arm and says to him, "You are
Cournet; I arrest you."
"Bah!" answers Cournet; "My name is Lepine."
The man resumes,--
"You are Cournet. Do not you recognize me? Well, then, I recognize you;
I have been, like you, a member of the Socialist Electoral Committee."
Cournet looks him in the face, and finds this countenance in his memory.
The man was right. He had, in fact, formed part of the gathering in the
Rue Saint Spire. The police spy resumed, laughing,--
"I nominated Eugene Sue with you."
It was useless to deny it, and the moment was not favorable for
resistance. There were on the spot, as we have said, twenty _sergents de
ville_ and a regiment of Dragoons.
"I will follow you," said Cournet.
A _fiacre_ was called up.
"While I am about it," said the police spy, "come in all three of you."
He made Huy and Lorrain get in with Cournet, placed them on the front
seat, and seated himself on the back seat by Cournet, and then shouted
to the driver,--
"To the Prefecture!"
The _sergents de ville_ surrounded the _fiacre_. But whether by chance
or through confidence, or in the haste to obtain the payment for his
capture, the man who had arrested Cournet shouted to the coachman, "Look
sharp, look sharp!" and the _fiacre_ went off at a gallop.
In the meantime Cournet was well aware that on arriving he would be shot
in the very courtyard of the Prefecture. He had resolved not to go
there.
At a turning in the Rue St Antoine he glanced behind, and noticed that
the _sergents de ville_ only followed the _fiacre_ at a considerable
distance.
Not one of the four men which the _fiacre_ was bearing away had as yet
opened their lips.
Cournet threw a meaning look at his two companions seated in front of
him, as much as to say, "We are three; let us take advantage of this to
escape." Both answered by an imperceptible movement of the eyes, which
pointed out the street full of passers-by, and which said, "No."
A few moments afterwards the _fiacre_ emerged from the Rue St. Antoine,
and entered the Rue de Fourcy. The Rue de Fourcy is usually deserted, no
one was passing down it at that moment.
Cournet turned suddenly to the police spy, and asked him,--
"Have you a warrant for my arrest?"
"No; but I have my card."
And he drew his police agent's card out of his pocket, and showed it to
Cournet. Then the following dialogue ensued between these two men,--
"This is not regular."
"What does that matter to me?"
"You have no right to arrest me."
"All the same, I arrest you."
"Look here; is it money that you want? Do you wish for any? I have some
with me; let me escape."
"A gold nugget as big as your head would not tempt me. You are my finest
capture, Citizen Cournet."
"Where are you taking me to?"
"To the Prefecture."
"They will shoot me there?"
"Possibly."
"And my two comrades?"
"I do not say 'No.'"
"I will not go."
"You will go, nevertheless."
"I tell you I will not go," exclaimed Cournet.
And with a movement, unexpected as a flash of lightning, he seized the
police spy by the throat.
The police agent could not utter a cry, he struggled: a hand of bronze
clutched him.
His tongue protruded from his mouth, his eyes became hideous, and
started from their sockets. Suddenly his head sank down, and reddish
froth rose from his throat to his lips. He was dead.
Huy and Lorrain, motionless, and as though themselves thunderstruck,
gazed at this gloomy deed.
They did not utter a word. They did not move a limb. The _fiacre_ was
still driving on.
"Open the door!" Cournet cried to them.
They did not stir, they seemed to have become stone.
Cournet, whose thumb was closely pressed in the neck of the wretched
police spy, tried to open the door with his left hand, but he did not
succeed, he felt that he could only do it with his right hand, and he
was obliged to loose his hold of the man. The man fell face forwards,
and sank down on his knees.
Cournet opened the door.
"Off with you!" he said to them.
Huy and Lorrain jumped into the street and fled at the top of their
speed.
The coachman had noticed nothing.
Cournet let them get away, and then, pulling the check string, stopped
the _fiacre_, got down leisurely, reclosed the door, quietly took forty
sous from his purse, gave them to the coachman, who had not left his
seat, and said to him, "Drive on."
He plunged into Paris. In the Place des Victoires he met the
ex-Constituent Isidore Buvignier, his friend, who about six weeks
previously had come out of the Madelonnettes, where he had been confined
for the matter of the _Solidarite Republicaine_. Buvignier was one of
the noteworthy figures on the high benches of the Left; fair,
close-shaven, with a stern glance, he made one think of the English
Roundheads, and he had the bearing rather of a Cromwellian Puritan than
of a Dantonist Man of the Mountain. Cournet told his adventure, the
extremity had been terrible.
Buvignier shook his head.
"You have killed a man," he said.
In "Marie Tudor," I have made Fabiani answer under similar
circumstances,--
"No, a Jew."
Cournet, who probably had not read "Marie Tudor," answered,--
"No, a police spy."
Then he resumed,--
"I have killed a police spy to save three men, one of whom was myself."
Cournet was right. They were in the midst of the combat, they were
taking him to be shot; the spy who had arrested him was, properly
speaking, an assassin, and assuredly it was a case of legitimate
defence. I add that this wretch, a democrat for the people, a spy for
the police, was a twofold traitor. Moreover, the police spy was the
jackal of the _coup d'etat_, while Cournet was the combatant for the
Law.
"You must conceal yourself," said Buvignier; "come to Juvisy."
Buvignier had a little refuge at Juvisy, which is on the road to
Corbeil. He was known and loved there; Cournet and he reached there that
evening.
But they had hardly arrived when some peasants said to Buvignier, "The
police have already been here to arrest you, and are coming again
to-night."
It was necessary to go back.
Cournet, more in danger than ever, hunted, wandering, pursued, hid
himself in Paris with considerable difficulty. He remained there till
the 16th. He had no means of procuring himself a passport. At length, on
the 16th, some friends of his on the Northern Railway obtained for him a
special passport, worded as follows:--
"Allow M. ----, an Inspector on the service of the Company, to pass."
He decided to leave the next day, and take the day train, thinking,
perhaps rightly, that the night train would be more closely watched.
On the 17th, at daybreak, favored by the dim dawn, he glided from street
to street, to the Northern Railway Station. His tall stature was a
special source of danger. He, however, reached the station in safety.
The stokers placed him with them on the tender of the engine of the
train, which was about to start. He only had the clothes which he had
worn since the 2d; no clean linen, no trunk, a little money.
In December, the day breaks late and the night closes in early, which is
favorable to proscribed persons.
He reached the frontier at night without hindrance. At Neuveglise he was
in Belgium; he believed himself in safety. When asked for his papers he
caused himself to be taken before the Burgomaster, and said to him, "I
am a political refugee."
The Burgomaster, a Belgian but a Bonapartist--this breed is to be
found--had him at once reconducted to the frontier by the gendarmes, who
were ordered to hand him over to the French authorities.
Cournet gave himself up for lost.
The Belgian gendarmes took him to Armentieres. If they had asked for the
Mayor it would have been all at an end with Cournet, but they asked for
the Inspector of Customs.
A glimmer of hope dawned upon Cournet.
He accosted the Inspector of Customs with his head erect, and shook
hands with him.
The Belgian gendarmes had not yet released him.
"Now, sir," said Cournet to the Custom House officer, "you are an
Inspector of Customs, I am an Inspector of Railways. Inspectors do not
eat inspectors. The deuce take it! Some worthy Belgians have taken
fright and sent me to you between four gendarmes. Why, I know not. I am
sent by the Northern Company to relay the ballast of a bridge somewhere
about here which is not firm. I come to ask you to allow me to continue
my road. Here is my pass."
He presented the pass to the Custom House officer, the Custom House
officer read it, found it according to due form, and said to Cournet,--
"Mr. Inspector, you are free."
Cournet, delivered from the Belgian gendarmes by French authority,
hastened to the railway station. He had friends there.
"Quick," he said, "it is dark, but it does not matter, it is even all
the better. Find me some one who has been a smuggler, and who will help
me to pass the frontier."
They brought him a small lad of eighteen; fair-haired, ruddy, hardy, a
Walloon[35] and who spoke French.
"What is your name?" said Cournet.
"Henry."
"You look like a girl."
"Nevertheless I am a man."
"Is it you who undertake to guide me?"
"Yes."
"You have been a smuggler?"
"I am one still."
"Do you know the roads?"
"No. I have nothing to do with the roads."
"What do you know then?"
"I know the passes."
"There are two Custom House lines."
"I know that well."
"Will you pass me across them?"
"Without doubt."
"Then you are not afraid of the Custom House officers?"
"I'm afraid of the dogs."
"In that case," said Cournet, "we will take sticks."
They accordingly armed themselves with big sticks. Cournet gave fifty
francs to Henry, and promised him fifty more when they should have
crossed the second Custom House line.
"That is to say, at four o'clock in the morning," said Henry.
It was midnight.
They set out on their way.
What Henry called the "passes" another would have called the
"hindrances." They were a succession of pitfalls and quagmires. It had
been raining, and all the holes were pools of water.
An indescribable footpath wound through an inextricable labyrinth,
sometimes as thorny as a heath, sometimes as miry as a marsh.
The night was very dark.
From time to time, far away in the darkness, they could hear a dog bark.
The smuggler then made bends or zigzags, turned sharply to the right or
to the left, and sometimes retraced his steps.
Cournet, jumping hedges, striding over ditches, stumbling at every
moment, slipping into sloughs, laying hold of briers, with his clothes
in rags, his hands bleeding, dying with hunger, battered about, wearied,
worn out, almost exhausted, followed his guide gaily.
At every minute he made a false step; he fell into every bog, and got up
covered with mud. At length he fell into a pond. It was several feet
deep. This washed him.
"Bravo!" he said. "I am very clean, but I am very cold."
At four o'clock in the morning, as Henry had promised him, they reached
Messine, a Belgian village. The two Custom House lines had been cleared.
Cournet had nothing more to fear, either from the Custom House nor from
the _coup d'etat_, neither from men nor from dogs.
He gave Henry the second fifty francs, and continued his journey on
foot, trusting somewhat to chance.
It was not until towards evening that he reached a railway station. He
got into a train, and at nightfall he arrived at the Southern Railway
Station at Brussels.
He had left Paris on the preceding morning, had not slept an hour, had
been walking all night, and had eaten nothing. On searching in his
pocket he missed his pocket book, but found a crust of bread. He was
more delighted at the discovery of the crust than grieved at the loss of
his pocket-book. He carried his money in a waistband; the pocket-book,
which had probably disappeared in the pond, contained his letters, and
amongst others an exceedingly useful letter of introduction from his
friend M. Ernest Koechlin, to the Representatives Guilgot and Carlos
Forel, who at that moment were refugees at Brussels, and lodged at the
Hotel de Brabant.