The History of a Crime Part 78

"At whom? At what?"

"At what is going on. It is true I was wrong to laugh."

"At the same time you talked?"

"Yes."

"Of whom?"

"Of the President."

"What did you say?"

"Indeed, what may be said with justice, that he had broken his oath."

"And then?"

"That he had not the right to arrest the Representatives."

"You said that?"

"Yes. And I added that he had not the right to kill people on the boulevard...."

Here the condemned man interrupted himself and exclaimed,--

"And thereupon they send me to Cayenne!"

The judge looks fixedly at the prisoner, and answers,--"Well, then?"

Another form of justice:--

Three miscellaneous personages, three removable functionaries, a Prefect, a soldier, a public prosecutor, whose only conscience is the sound of Louis Bonaparte's bell, seated themselves at a table and judged. Whom? You, me, us, everybody. For what crimes? They invented crimes. In the name of what laws? They invented laws. What penalties did they inflict? They invented penalties. Did they know the accused? No.

Did they listen to him? No. What advocates did they listen to? None.

What witnesses did they question? None. What deliberation did they enter upon? None. What public did they call in? None. Thus, no public, no deliberation, no counsellors, no witnesses, judges who are not magistrates, a jury where none are sworn in, a tribunal which is not a tribunal, imaginary offences, invented penalties, the accused absent, the law absent; from all these things which resembled a dream there came forth a reality: the condemnation of the innocent.

Exile, banishment, transportation, ruin, home-sickness, death, and despair for 40,000 families.

That is what History calls the Mixed Commissions.

Ordinarily the great crimes of State strike the great heads, and content themselves with this destruction; they roll like blocks of stone, all in one piece, and break the great resistances; ill.u.s.trious victims suffice for them. But the Second of December had its refinements of cruelty; it required in addition petty victims. Its appet.i.te for extermination extended to the poor and to the obscure, its anger and animosity penetrated as far as the lowest cla.s.s; it created fissures in the social subsoil in order to diffuse the proscription there; the local triumvirates, nicknamed "mixed mixtures," served it for that. Not one head escaped, however humble and puny. They found means to impoverish the indigent, to ruin those dying of hunger, to spoil the disinherited; the _coup d'etat_ achieved this wonderful feat of adding misfortune to misery. Bonaparte, it seems, took the trouble to hate a mere peasant; the vine-dresser was torn from his vine, the laborer from his furrow, the mason from his scaffold, the weaver from his loom. Men accepted this mission of causing the immense public calamity to fall, morsel by morsel, upon the humblest walks of life. Detestable task! To crumble a catastrophe upon the little and on the weak.

CHAPTER XIV.

A RELIGIOUS INCIDENT

A little religion can be mingled with this justice. Here is an example.

Frederick Morin, like Arnauld de l'Ariege, was a Catholic Republican. He thought that the souls of the victims of the 4th of December, suddenly cast by the volleys of the _coup d'etat_ into the infinite and the unknown, might need some a.s.sistance, and he undertook the laborious task of having a ma.s.s said for the repose of these souls. But the priests wished to keep the ma.s.ses for their friends. The group of Catholic Republicans which Frederick Morin headed applied successively to all the priests of Paris; but met with a refusal. They applied to the Archbishop: again a refusal. As many ma.s.ses for the a.s.sa.s.sin as they liked, but far the a.s.sa.s.sinated not one. To pray for dead men of this sort would be a scandal. The refusal was determined. How should it be overcome? To do without a ma.s.s would have appeared easy to others, but not to these staunch believers. The worthy Catholic Democrats with great difficulty at length unearthed in a tiny suburban parish a poor old vicar, who consented to mumble in a whisper this ma.s.s in the ear of the Almighty, while begging Him to say nothing about it.

CHAPTER XV.

HOW THEY CAME OUT OF HAM

On the night of the 7th and 8th of January, Charras was sleeping. The noise of his bolts being drawn awoke him.

"So then!" said he, "they are going to put us in close confinement." And he went to sleep again.

An hour afterwards the door was opened. The commandant of the fort entered in full uniform, accompanied by a police agent carrying a torch.

It was about four o'clock in the morning.

"Colonel," said the Commandant, "dress yourself at once."

"What for?"

"You are about to leave."

"Some more rascality, I suppose!"

The Commandant was silent. Charras dressed himself.

As he finished dressing, a short young man, dressed in black, came in.

This young man spoke to Charras.

"Colonel, you are about to leave the fortress, you are about to quit France. I am instructed to have you conducted to the frontier."

Charras exclaimed,--

"If I am to quit France I will not leave the fortress. This is yet another outrage. They have no more the right to exile me than they had the right to imprison me. I have on my side the Law, Right, my old services, my commission. I protest. Who are you, sir?"

"I am the Private Secretary of the Minister of the Interior."

"Ah! it is you who are named Leopold Lehon."

The young man cast down his eyes.

Charras continued,--

"You come on the part of some one whom they call 'Minister of the Interior,' M. de Morny, I believe. I know M. de Morny. A bald young man; he has played the game where people lose their hair; and now he is playing the game where people risk their heads."