The Lerouge Case quotes

“Not at all, sir, it came too late.

Of what avail to have the bread when one has no longer the teeth?

The marriageable age had passed. I resigned my situation, however, to make way for someone poorer than myself. At the end of a month I was sick and tired of life;

Adieu weariness! since I have abandoned the search for books to the search for men. I shrug my shoulders when I see a foolish fellow pay twenty-five francs for the right of hunting a hare. What a prize!

Give me the hunting of a man!

That, at least, calls the faculties into play, and the victory is not inglorious! The game in my sport is equal to the hunter; they both possess intelligence, strength, and cunning. The arms are nearly equal. Ah!

“

Because, M. Tabaret, Madame Gerdy is not my mother!

”

It was easy to perceive that the barrister’s reception rankled in his breast, and that he considered it an insult. He could not forgive Albert his lackeys and his valet. He forgot the words of the illustrious duke, who said, “

I pay my lackeys to be insolent, to save myself the trouble and ridicule of being so.

” Old Tabaret was surprised at his young friend’s display of bitterness, in speaking of these trivial details.

He is about my height, of the same dark complexion, and would resemble me, perhaps, if he did not wear a beard. Only he looks five or six years younger; but this is readily explained, he has neither worked, struggled, nor suffered.

He is one of the fortunate ones who arrive without having to start, or who traverse life’s road on such soft cushions that they are never injured by the jolting of their carriage.

On seeing me, he arose and saluted me graciously.”

but the other, very real, very celebrated and very palpable foot, of which the fair owner (the lovely wife of a well-known banker) used to present the model either in bronze or in marble to her numerous admirers.

Her face was not beautiful, nor even pretty; but her features were such as one seldom forgets; for, at the first glance, they startled the beholder like a flash of lightning.

Her forehead was a little high, and her mouth unmistakably large, notwithstanding the provoking freshness of her lips. Her eyebrows were so perfect they seem to have been drawn with India ink; but, unhappily the pencil had been used too heavily;

Noel would have won her easier by a brutal frankness that would have shown her clearly his situation. He lost her love by the delicacy of his dissimulation, that left her ignorant of the sacrifices he was making for her.

Noel adored Juliette. Until the fatal day he saw her, he had lived like a sage.

This, his first passion, burned him up; and, from the disaster, he saved only appearances.

This is a striking example of the danger of following preconceived ideas in police investigation. We are affrighted at unlikelihood; and, as in this case, the greatest unlikelihood often proves to be the truth.

We retire before the absurd, and it is the absurd that we should examine.

Everything is possible. I would not take a thousand crowns for what I have learnt this evening. I shall kill two birds with one stone. I deliver up the criminal; and I give Noel a hearty lift up to recover his title and his fortune.

“You are modest, M. Tabaret.

Chance assists only the clever, and it is that which annoys the stupid.

But I beg you will be seated and proceed.”

“Yes,” murmured the magistrate—“Yes, M. Tabaret, you have discovered the criminal. The evidence is palpable, even to the blind. Heaven has willed this.

Crime engenders crime.

The great sin of the father has made the son an assassin.”

Was it not a crime to dream of uniting that virginal simplicity to my detestable knowledge of the world? For her, the future is yet the land of smiling chimeras; and long since experience has dissipated all my illusions.

She is as young as innocence, and I am as old as vice.

”

What would she see, if, in my absence, she dreamed of me? Her imagination would present me dressed in a funeral robe, in the depth of a gloomy dungeon, engaged with some vile criminal.

Is it not my trade to descend into all moral sinks, to stir up the foulness of crime?

Am I not compelled to wash in secrecy and darkness the dirty linen of the most corrupt members of society? Ah! some professions are fatal. Ought not the magistrate, like the priest, to condemn himself to solitude and celibacy?

He resolved to recommend this girl to the indulgence of the tribunal, and to extenuate as much as possible her guilt.

For he himself had just determined upon the commission of a crime. He was resolved to kill Albert de Commarin.

During the rest of the night he became all the more determined in this resolution, demonstrating to himself by a thousand mad reasons, which he found solid and inscrutable, the necessity for and the justifiableness of this vengeance.

M. Daburon walked up to him without drawing his revolver. But when within two paces, his heart failed him; he turned suddenly and fled, leaving his friend astonished at a scene, to him, utterly inexplicable.

Only once again will Albert de Commarin be as near death.

On reaching the street, it seemed to M. Daburon that the ground was receding from beneath him, that everything was turning around him. He tried to cry out, but could not utter a sound;

Parricide! Every juror, from the moment he is sworn, weighs infinitely less the evidence he has come to listen to than the risk he runs of incurring the pangs of remorse.

Rather than risk the condemnation of one innocent man, he will allow twenty scoundrels to go unpunished.

The accusation must then come before the jury, armed at all points, with abundant proofs.

The men of ’93 well understood this principle, and acted upon it. By impoverishing the nobles, they destroyed their prestige more effectually than by abolishing their titles.

A prince dismounted, and without footmen, is no more than anyone else.

The Minister of July, who said to the people, ‘Make yourselves rich,’ was not a fool. He gave them the magic formula for power. But they have not the sense to understand it. They want to go too fast.

As the count was known to have passed the day on the road, the dinner was served in advance of the usual hour. All the establishment, even to the lowest scullion, represented the spirit of the first article of the rules of the house, “

Servants are not to execute orders, but anticipate them.

”

Albert had foreseen, had expected this reply; but it crushed him nevertheless.

There are misfortunes so great, that one must constantly think of them to believe in their existence.

This flinching, however, lasted but an instant.

“In the middle of the day,” replied the amateur detective in a whisper, “he would not have been quite so crestfallen. But early in the morning, suddenly awakened, you know—

Always arrest a person early in the morning, when he’s hungry, and only half awake.

”

His head, usually carried so high, leant upon his chest; his figure was bent; his eyes had no longer their accustomed fire; his hands trembled. The extreme disorder of his dress rendered more striking still the change which had come over him.

In one night, he had grown twenty years older.

This man, yesterday so proud of never having bent to a storm, was now completely shattered. The pride of his name had constituted his entire strength; that humbled, he seemed utterly overwhelmed. Everything in him gave way at once;

Albert’s conduct since the beginning of the fatal week, his least words, his most insignificant movements, were reported, commented upon, and explained.

The man who lives in the midst of thirty servants is like an insect in a glass box under the magnifying glass of a naturalist.

Not one of his acts escapes their notice: he can scarcely have a secret of his own; and, if they cannot divine what it is, they at least know that he has one.

But it was already over; and they at once dragged him along the dark corridors, over the filthy, slippery floor. They opened a door, and pushed him into a small cell. He then heard them lock and bolt the door.

He was a prisoner, and, in accordance with special orders, in solitary confinement. He immediately felt a marked sensation of comfort. He was alone.

No more stifled whispers, harsh voices, implacable questions, sounded in his ears. A profound silence reigned around. It seemed to him that he had forever escaped from society; and he rejoiced at it.

“Certainly.

There is no greater punishment, remember, than anxiety; everything is preferable.

If you only possessed an income of ten thousand francs, I would show you a way to prove this. I would tell you to go to Hamburg and risk your entire fortune on one chance at rouge et noir.

It’s impossible! I am as sure of my system as of a sum that has been proved.

The assassin has an alibi. Albert has pleaded none; then he is innocent.

”

As it was, nobody knew anything; and yet everybody pretended to be fully informed.

Let anyone explain who can this very common phenomenon: A crime is committed; justice arrives, wrapped in mystery; the police are still ignorant of almost everything; and yet details of the most minute character are already circulated about the streets.

“So,” said a cook, “that tall dark fellow with the whiskers is the count’s true son!”

His preferred customers consist of women of doubtful morality, actresses, artists, and those venturesome fellows who enter upon professions which depend solely upon those who practice them, such as lawyers and doctors.

He lends to women upon their present beauty, to men upon their future talent.

Slight pledges! His discernment, it should be said, however, enjoys a great reputation. It is rarely at fault. A pretty girl furnished by Clergeot is sure to go far. For an artist to be in Clergeot’s debt was a recommendation preferable to the warmest criticism.

Why, there are not ten girls in Paris who live in such style! And do you think she loves you any the more for it? Not a bit. When she has ruined you, she’ll leave you in the lurch.”

Noel accepted the eloquence of his prudent banker like a man without an umbrella accepts a shower.

“What is the meaning of all this!” he asked.

It was with him, as with the rest of mankind; who knows how much one’s ideas may change, from the beginning to the end of a repast, be it ever so modest!

A philosopher has plainly demonstrated that heroism is but an affair of the stomach.

The old fellow looked at the situation in a much less sombre light. He had plenty of time before him! A clever man could accomplish a great deal in a month! Would his usual penetration fail him now? Certainly not.

He is a prisoner, accused of murder. So be it. I love him. He is guilty! What of that? I love him. You will condemn him, you will dishonour him. Condemned and dishonoured, I shall love him still.

You will send him to a convict prison. I will follow him; and in the prison, under the convict’s dress, I will yet love him.

If he falls to the bottom of the abyss, I will fall with him. My life is his, let him dispose of it. No, nothing will separate me from him, nothing short of death!

said Mademoiselle d’Arlange bitterly, “you are like the magistrate; you believed in the impossible. You are his father, and you suspected him! You do not know him, then. You were abandoning him, without trying to defend him. Ah, I did not hesitate one moment!”

One is easily induced to believe true that which one is anxiously longing for.

M. de Commarin was not difficult to convince. Without thinking, without discussion, he put faith in Claire’s assertions. He shared her convictions, without asking himself whether it were wise or prudent to do so.

One wishes, desires, and even longs for it; and yet one struggles, combats, and resists. But, if an opportunity occurs, one is only too happy to seize it; then one has an excuse with which to silence one’s conscience.

In thus yielding to the impulse of one’s feelings, one can say: “It was not I who willed it, it was fate.”

“It will be quicker, perhaps,” observed the count, “to go to Noel.”

With the help of the old soldier, whose red, tearful eyes, told of suppressed grief, they moved the count’s chair to the half-opened window to give him a little air. Three days before, this scene would have killed him.

But the heart hardens by misfortune, like hands by labour.

“His tears have saved him,” whispered the doctor to Claire.

M. de Commarin gradually recovered, and, as his thoughts became clearer, his sufferings returned.

Prostration follows great mental shocks. Nature seems to collect her strength to sustain the misfortune.

We do not feel all its intensity at once; it is only afterwards that we realize the extent and profundity of the evil. The count’s gaze was fixed upon the bed where lay Valerie’s body. There, then, was all that remained of her.

To proceed by short inquiries with a witness, when you have no idea of the information he brings, is but to lose time in attempting to gain it. When you think you are approaching the important fact, you may be just avoiding it.

It is much better to give the witness the rein, and to listen carefully, putting him back on the track should he get too far away.

It is the surest and easiest method. This was the course M.

It was conscience that spoke; and I was trying to silence it. I knew very well that I was doing wrong; and I almost wished myself dead.

Why is it that women can turn an honest man’s conscience about like a weathercock with their wheedling?

”

“Alas, sir,” answered the sailor, “I have been already greatly punished; and it is a long time since my troubles began.

Money, wickedly acquired, brings no good.

On arriving home, I bought the wretched meadow for much more than it was worth; and the day I walked over it, feeling that it was actually mine, closed my happiness. Claudine was a coquette; but she had a great many other vices.

Why had he, the magistrate, moved with such deplorable haste? Why before risking anything, had he not waited to possess all the elements of this important case, to hold all the threads of this complicated drama?

Justice is accused of slowness; but it is this very slowness that constitutes its strength and surety, its almost infallibility.

One scarcely knows what a time evidence takes to produce itself. There is no knowing what important testimony investigations apparently useless may reveal.

The old fellow followed. He kept his ground. The brougham gained but little upon him. While running in the middle of the street, at the same time looking out for a cab, he kept saying to himself: “Hurry on, old fellow, hurry on.

When one has no brains, one must use one’s legs.

Why didn’t you think to get this woman’s address from Clergeot? You must hurry yourself, my old friend, you must hurry yourself! When one goes in for being a detective, one should be fit for the profession, and have the shanks of a deer.”

“Gay!” echoed the young woman, shrugging her shoulders; “you do not seem to know much of your friend. If you ever ask him to dinner, take good care not to give him anything to drink.

Wine makes him as merry as a funeral procession.

At the second bottle, he was more tipsy than a cork; so much so, that he lost nearly everything he had with him: his overcoat, purse, umbrella, cigar-case—”

quartering, the stake, the wheel. The guillotine acts so quickly that the condemned man has scarcely time to feel the cold steel cutting through his muscles; it is nothing more than a fillip on the neck.

Through trying so much to mitigate the pain of death, it has now become little more than a joke, and might be abolished altogether.

The certainty of confounding Noel, of delivering him up to justice, of taking vengeance upon him, alone kept old Tabaret up.

About halfway down the Rue Richelieu, M. Tabaret was seized with a sudden giddiness. “I am going to have an attack, I fear,” thought he. “If I die, Noel will escape, and will be my heir.

A man should always keep his will constantly with him, to be able to destroy it, if necessary.

”