The History of a Crime Part 72

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. a.s.suredly, 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 const.i.tuted 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 ma.n.u.script 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.