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EMBRYONIC FORMATION OF CRIMES IN THE INCUBATION OF PRISONS
Javert's triumph in the Gorbeau hovel seemed complete, but
had not been so.
In the first place, and this constituted the principal anxiety,
Javert had not taken the prisoner prisoner.
The assassinated man who flees is more suspicious than the
assassin, and it is probable that this personage, who had been
so precious a capture for the ruffians, would be no less fine
a prize for the authorities.
And then, Montparnasse had escaped Javert.
Another opportunity of laying hands on that "devil's
dandy" must be waited for.
Montparnasse had, in fact, encountered Eponine as she stood
on the watch under the trees of the boulevard, and had led her
off, preferring to play Nemorin with the daughter rather than
Schinderhannes with the father.
It was well that he did so. He was free.
As for Eponine, Javert had caused her to be seized; a mediocre
consolation.
Eponine had joined Azelma at Les Madelonettes.
And finally, on the way from the Gorbeau house to La Force,
one of the principal prisoners, Claquesous, had been lost.
It was not known how this had been effected, the police agents
and the sergeants "could not understand it at all."
He had converted himself into vapor, he had slipped through
the handcuffs, he had trickled through the crevices of the carriage,
the fiacre was cracked, and he had fled; all that they were able
to say was, that on arriving at the prison, there was no Claquesous.
Either the fairies or the police had had a hand in it.
Had Claquesous melted into the shadows like a snow-flake in
water?
Had there been unavowed connivance of the police agents? Did
this man belong to the double enigma of order and disorder? Was
he concentric with infraction and repression?
Had this sphinx his fore paws in crime and his hind paws in
authority? Javert did not accept such comminations, and would
have bristled up against such compromises; but his squad included
other inspectors besides himself, who were more initiated than
he, perhaps, although they were his subordinates in the secrets
of the Prefecture, and Claquesous had been such a villain that
he might make a very good agent. It is an excellent thing for
ruffianism and an admirable thing for the police to be on such
intimate juggling terms with the night. These double-edged rascals
do exist.
However that may be, Claquesous had gone astray and was not
found again.
Javert appeared to be more irritated than amazed at this.
As for Marius, "that booby of a lawyer," who had
probably become frightened, and whose name Javert had forgotten,
Javert attached very little importance to him.
Moreover, a lawyer can be hunted up at any time.
But was he a lawyer after all?
The investigation had begun.
The magistrate had thought it advisable not to put one of
these men of the band of Patron Minette in close confinement,
in the hope that he would chatter.
This man was Brujon, the long-haired man of the Rue du Petit-Banquier.
He had been let loose in the Charlemagne courtyard, and the eyes
of the watchers were fixed on him.
This name of Brujon is one of the souvenirs of La Force. In
that hideous courtyard, called the court of the Batiment-Neuf
(New Building), which the administration called the court Saint-Bernard,
and which the robbers called the Fosseaux-Lions (The Lion's Ditch),
on that wall covered with scales and leprosy, which rose on the
left to a level with the roofs, near an old door of rusty iron
which led to the ancient chapel of the ducal residence of La Force,
then turned in a dormitory for ruffians, there could still be
seen, twelve years ago, a sort of fortress roughly carved in the
stone with a nail, and beneath it this signature:--
BRUJON, 1811.
The Brujon of 1811 was the father of the Brujon of 1832.
The latter, of whom the reader caught but a glimpse at the
Gorbeau house, was a very cunning and very adroit young spark,
with a bewildered and plaintive air.
It was in consequence of this plaintive air that the magistrate
had released him, thinking him more useful in the Charlemagne
yard than in close confinement.
Robbers do not interrupt their profession because they are
in the hands of justice.
They do not let themselves be put out by such a trifle as
that.
To be in prison for one crime is no reason for not beginning
on another crime.
They are artists, who have one picture in the salon, and who
toil, none the less, on a new work in their studios.
Brujon seemed to be stupefied by prison.
He could sometimes be seen standing by the hour together in
front of the sutler's window in the Charlemagne yard, staring
like an idiot at the sordid list of prices which began with:
garlic, 62 centimes, and ended with:
cigar, 5 centimes.
Or he passed his time in trembling, chattering his teeth,
saying that he had a fever, and inquiring whether one of the eight
and twenty beds in the fever ward was vacant.
All at once, towards the end of February, 1832, it was discovered
that Brujon, that somnolent fellow, had had three different commissions
executed by the errand-men of the establishment, not under his
own name, but in the name of three of his comrades; and they had
cost him in all fifty sous, an exorbitant outlay which attracted
the attention of the prison corporal.
Inquiries were instituted, and on consulting the tariff of
commissions posted in the convict's parlor, it was learned that
the fifty sous could be analyzed as follows:
three commissions; one to the Pantheon, ten sous; one to Val-de-Grace,
fifteen sous; and one to the Barriere de Grenelle, twenty-five
sous.
This last was the dearest of the whole tariff.
Now, at the Pantheon, at the Val-de-Grace, and at the Barriere
de Grenelle were situated the domiciles of the three very redoubtable
prowlers of the barriers, Kruideniers, alias Bizarre, Glorieux,
an ex-convict, and Barre-Carosse, upon whom the attention of the
police was directed by this incident. It was thought that these
men were members of Patron Minette; two of those leaders, Babet
and Gueulemer, had been captured. It was supposed that the messages,
which had been addressed, not to houses, but to people who were
waiting for them in the street, must have contained information
with regard to some crime that had been plotted.
They were in possession of other indications; they laid hand
on the three prowlers, and supposed that they had circumvented
some one or other of Brujon's machinations.
About a week after these measures had been taken, one night,
as the superintendent of the watch, who had been inspecting the
lower dormitory in the Batiment-Neuf, was about to drop his chestnut
in the box--this was the means adopted to make sure that the watchmen
performed their duties punctually; every hour a chestnut must
be dropped into all the boxes nailed to the doors of the dormitories--
a watchman looked through the peep-hole of the dormitory and beheld
Brujon sitting on his bed and writing something by the light of
the hall-lamp. The guardian entered, Brujon was put in a solitary
cell for a month, but they were not able to seize what he had
written. The police learned nothing further about it.
What is certain is, that on the following morning, a "postilion"
was flung from the Charlemagne yard into the Lions' Ditch, over
the five-story building which separated the two court-yards.
What prisoners call a "postilion" is a pallet of
bread artistically moulded, which is sent into Ireland, that is
to say, over the roofs of a prison, from one courtyard to another.
Etymology:
over England; from one land to another; into Ireland. This
little pellet falls in the yard.
The man who picks it up opens it and finds in it a note addressed
to some prisoner in that yard. If it is a prisoner who finds the
treasure, he forwards the note to its destination; if it is a
keeper, or one of the prisoners secretly sold who are called sheep
in prisons and foxes in the galleys, the note is taken to the
office and handed over to the police.
On this occasion, the postilion reached its address, although
the person to whom it was addressed was, at that moment, in solitary
confinement.
This person was no other than Babet, one of the four heads
of Patron Minette.
The postilion contained a roll of paper on which only these
two lines were written:--
"Babet.
There is an affair in the Rue Plumet.
A gate on a garden."
This is what Brujon had written the night before.
In spite of male and female searchers, Babet managed to pass
the note on from La Force to the Salpetriere, to a "good
friend" whom he had and who was shut up there.
This woman in turn transmitted the note to another woman of
her acquaintance, a certain Magnon, who was strongly suspected
by the police, though not yet arrested. This Magnon, whose name
the reader has already seen, had relations with the Thenardier,
which will be described in detail later on, and she could, by
going to see Eponine, serve as a bridge between the Salpetriere
and Les Madelonettes.
It happened, that at precisely that moment, as proofs were
wanting in the investigation directed against Thenardier in the
matter of his daughters, Eponine and Azelma were released.
When Eponine came out, Magnon, who was watching the gate of
the Madelonettes, handed her Brujon's note to Babet, charging
her to look into the matter.
Eponine went to the Rue Plumet, recognized the gate and the
garden, observed the house, spied, lurked, and, a few days later,
brought to Magnon, who delivers in the Rue Clocheperce, a biscuit,
which Magnon transmitted to Babet's mistress in the Salpetriere.
A biscuit, in the shady symbolism of prisons, signifies:
Nothing to be done.
So that in less than a week from that time, as Brujon and
Babet met in the circle of La Force, the one on his way to the
examination, the other on his way from it:--
"Well?" asked Brujon, "the Rue P.?"
"Biscuit," replied Babet.
Thus did the foetus of crime engendered by Brujon in La Force
miscarry.
This miscarriage had its consequences, however, which were
perfectly distinct from Brujon's programme.
The reader will see what they were.
Often when we think we are knotting one thread, we are tying
quite another.
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