While the Baroness was visiting Josépha, Victorin was seeing in his study an old woman of about 75. In order to gain admission to the celebrated lawyer, she had made use of the terrible name of the chief of police.
The servant announced, ‘Madame de Saint-Estève.’
‘I’m using one of my professional names,’ she said as she sat down.
Victorin was gripped by an inner shudder, as it were, at the sight of this dreadful old woman. Although richly dressed, she aroused fear because of the indications of cold malevolence on her dull, horribly wrinkled, pale, sinewy face.
Marat,* had he been a woman of her age, would have been like this Saint-Estève, a living image of the Terror. The bloodthirsty greed of tigers gleamed in her pale eyes. Her squat nose, with nostrils extended to form oval holes breathing hellfire, reminded one of the beaks of the most evil birds of prey. The genius of intrigue was manifest on her low, cruel brow. The long hairs which had grown at random in all the furrows of her face, indicated the masculine quality of her undertakings.
Anyone seeing this woman would have thought that all the painters had failed to portray the face of Mephistopheles.
‘My dear Monsieur,’ she said in a patronizing tone, ‘I haven’t been involved in anything for a long time. What I’m going to do for you is out of consideration for my dear nephew, whom I love more than I would a son. Now, the President of the Council dropped a few words in the ear of the Prefect of Police, but he, after conferring with Monsieur Chapuzot about you, thought the police ought not to appear at all in an affair of that kind. My nephew has been given a free hand, but he will act only in an advisory capacity; he must not be compromised.’
‘So you’re the aunt of …’
‘That’s right, and I’m rather proud of it,’ she replied, interrupting the lawyer, ‘for he’s my pupil, a pupil who soon became the master. We’ve examined your affair, and we’ve sized it up. Will you pay thirty thousand francs to be rid of the whole business? I’ll settle the matter for you and you needn’t pay till the job’s done.’
‘Do you know the people concerned?’
‘No, my dear Monsieur, I await further information from you. We were told: “There’s an old idiot who’s in the clutches of a widow. This 29-year-old widow has plied her trade as a thief so well that she has obtained an income of forty thousand francs a year from two heads of families. She’s on the point of absorbing eighty thousand francs a year by marrying an old chap of 61. She’ll ruin a whole respectable family and give this enormous fortune to the child of some lover, by speedily getting rid of her old husband.” That’s the problem.’
‘That’s correct,’ said Victorin. ‘My father-in-law, Monsieur Crevel…’
‘A former perfumer, a mayor. I live in his district under the name of Ma’am Nourrisson,’ she replied.
‘The other person is Madame Marneffe.’
‘I don’t know her,’ said Madame Saint-Estève, ‘but in three days I’ll be in a position to count her underwear.’
‘Could you prevent the marriage?’ the lawyer asked.
‘What stage has it reached?’
‘The banns have been published twice.’
‘The woman would have to be kidnapped. Today’s Sunday. There are only three days, for they’ll get married on Wednesday; no, it’s not possible. But we can kill her for you.’
Victorin Hulot gave a start of horror as any honest man would on hearing these six words spoken in cold blood.
‘Murder!’ he said. ‘And how will you do it?’
‘For the past forty years, Monsieur, we’ve taken the place of fate,’ she replied with fierce pride, ‘and we do anything we please in Paris. More than one family, and from the Faubourg Saint-Germain* at that, have told me their secrets, you know. I’ve made and broken many marriages; I’ve torn up many wills, I’ve saved many reputations. There,’ she said, pointing to her head, ‘I stow away a flock of secrets worth sixty thousand francs a year to me. And you, you’ll be one of my lambs, you see. Would a woman like me be what I am if she talked about her ways and means? I act! Everything that happens, my dear sir, will be the work of chance and you won’t have the least remorse. You’ll be like a man cured by a clairvoyant; at the end of a month they think that nature did it all.’
Victorin broke out into a cold sweat.
The sight of the executioner would have horrified him less than this moralizing, pretentious sister of galley-slaves. As he looked at her wine-coloured dress, she seemed to be dressed in blood.
‘Madame, I can’t accept the assistance of your experience and your operations, if success is to cost someone’s life or if it results in the least criminal act.’
‘You’re a great baby, Monsieur,’ replied Madame Saint-Estève. ‘You want to remain upright in your own eyes, but at the same time you want your enemy to be overcome.’
Victorin shook his head in denial.
‘Yes,’ she continued. ‘You want this Madame Marneffe to drop the prey she has in her jaws. And how would you make a tiger let go of its piece of beef? Would you do it by stroking it and saying: Pussy! Pussy!? You’re not logical. You give the order for battle but you don’t want any wounds. Well, I’ll make you a present of the innocence you have so much at heart. I’ve always looked upon virtue as the stuff of which hypocrisy is made. One day, in three months’ time, a poor priest will come and ask you for forty thousand francs for a charitable cause, a ruined convent in the Levant, in the desert. If you’re satisfied with your lot, give the good fellow the forty thousand francs. You’ll pay much more in taxes. It’s not much, you know, compared with what you’ll gain.’
She stood up on her broad feet, that bulged out of satin slippers which could hardly contain them, and took her leave with a smile and a curtsey.
‘The devil has a sister,’ said Victorin, getting up from his chair.
He saw out this horrible stranger, who had emerged from the caverns of the secret police as a monster rises from the lowest depths of the Opera house at the wave of a magic wand in a fairy ballet.
When he had finished his work at the law-courts, Victorin went to see Monsieur Chapuzot, the head of one of the most important departments at the Prefecture of Police, to make enquiries about his unknown visitor.