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These four ruffians formed a sort of Proteus, winding like
a serpent among the police, and striving to escape Vidocq's indiscreet
glances "under divers forms, tree, flame, fountain,"
lending each other their names and their traps, hiding in their
own shadows, boxes with secret compartments and refuges for each
other, stripping off their personalities, as one removes his false
nose at a masked ball, sometimes simplifying matters to the point
of consisting of but one individual, sometimes multiplying themselves
to such a point that Coco-Latour himself took them for a whole
throng.
These four men were not four men; they were a sort of mysterious
robber with four heads, operating on a grand scale on Paris; they
were that monstrous polyp of evil, which inhabits the crypt of
society.
Thanks to their ramifications, and to the network underlying
their relations, Babet, Gueulemer, Claquesous, and Montparnasse
were charged with the general enterprise of the ambushes of the
department of the Seine.
The inventors of ideas of that nature, men with nocturnal
imaginations, applied to them to have their ideas executed.
They furnished the canvas to the four rascals, and the latter
undertook the preparation of the scenery.
They labored at the stage setting.
They were always in a condition to lend a force proportioned
and suitable to all crimes which demanded a lift of the shoulder,
and which were sufficiently lucrative. When a crime was in quest
of arms, they under-let their accomplices. They kept a troupe
of actors of the shadows at the disposition of all underground
tragedies.
They were in the habit of assembling at nightfall, the hour
when they woke up, on the plains which adjoin the Salpetriere.
There they held their conferences.
They had twelve black hours before them; they regulated their
employment accordingly.
Patron-Minette,--such was the name which was bestowed in the
subterranean circulation on the association of these four men.
In the fantastic, ancient, popular parlance, which is vanishing
day by day, Patron-Minette signifies the morning, the same as
entre chien et loup--between dog and wolf--signifies the evening.
This appellation, Patron-Minette, was probably derived from
the hour at which their work ended, the dawn being the vanishing
moment for phantoms and for the separation of ruffians.
These four men were known under this title. When the President
of the Assizes visited Lacenaire in his prison, and questioned
him concerning a misdeed which Lacenaire denied, "Who did
it?" demanded the President.
Lacenaire made this response, enigmatical so far as the magistrate
was concerned, but clear to the police:
"Perhaps it was Patron-Minette."
A piece can sometimes be divined on the enunciation of the
personages; in the same manner a band can almost be judged from
the list of ruffians composing it.
Here are the appellations to which the principal members of
Patron-Minette answered,--for the names have survived in special
memoirs.
Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille.
Brujon.
[There was a Brujon dynasty; we cannot refrain from interpolating
this word.]
Boulatruelle, the road-mender already introduced.
Laveuve.
Finistere.
Homere-Hogu, a negro.
Mardisoir.
(Tuesday evening.)
Depeche.
(Make haste.)
Fauntleroy, alias Bouquetiere (the Flower Girl).
Glorieux, a discharged convict.
Barrecarrosse (Stop-carriage), called Monsieur Dupont.
L'Esplanade-du-Sud.
Poussagrive.
Carmagnolet.
Kruideniers, called Bizarro.
Mangedentelle.
(Lace-eater.)
Les-pieds-en-l'Air. (Feet in the air.)
Demi-Liard, called Deux-Milliards.
Etc., etc.
We pass over some, and not the worst of them.
These names have faces attached.
They do not express merely beings, but species. Each one of
these names corresponds to a variety of those misshapen fungi
from the under side of civilization.
Those beings, who were not very lavish with their countenances,
were not among the men whom one sees passing along the streets.
Fatigued by the wild nights which they passed, they went off by
day to sleep, sometimes in the lime-kilns, sometimes in the abandoned
quarries of Montmatre or Montrouge, sometimes in the sewers. They
ran to earth.
What became of these men?
They still exist.
They have always existed. Horace speaks of them:
Ambubaiarum collegia, pharmacopolae, mendici, mimae; and so
long as society remains what it is, they will remain what they
are.
Beneath the obscure roof of their cavern, they are continually
born again from the social ooze. They return, spectres, but always
identical; only, they no longer bear the same names and they are
no longer in the same skins. The individuals extirpated, the tribe
subsists.
They always have the same faculties.
From the vagrant to the tramp, the race is maintained in its
purity.
They divine purses in pockets, they scent out watches in fobs.
Gold and silver possess an odor for them.
There exist ingenuous bourgeois, of whom it might be said,
that they have a "stealable" air.
These men patiently pursue these bourgeois.
They experience the quivers of a spider at the passage of
a stranger or of a man from the country.
These men are terrible, when one encounters them, or catches
a glimpse of them, towards midnight, on a deserted boulevard.
They do not seem to be men but forms composed of living mists;
one would say that they habitually constitute one mass with the
shadows, that they are in no wise distinct from them, that they
possess no other soul than the darkness, and that it is only momentarily
and for the purpose of living for a few minutes a monstrous life,
that they have separated from the night.
What is necessary to cause these spectres to vanish?
Light. Light in floods.
Not a single bat can resist the dawn. Light up society from
below.
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