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EMBRYONIC FORMATION OF CRIMES IN THE INCUBATION OF PRISONS
JAVERT’S TRIUMPH in the Gorbeau tenement had seemed complete, but it was not so.
In the first place, and this was his principal regret, Javert had not made the prisoner prisoner. The victim who slips away is more suspicious than the assassin; and it was probable that this personage, so precious a capture to the bandits, would be a not less valuable prize to the authorities.
And then, Montparnasse had escaped Javert.
He must await another occasion to lay his hand upon “that devilish dandy.” Montparnasse, in fact, having met Eponine, who was standing sentry under the trees of the boulevard, had led her away, liking rather to be Némorin with the daughter than to be Schinderhannes with the father. Well for him that he did so. He was free. As to Eponine, Javert “nabbed” her; trifling consolation. Eponine had rejoined Azelma at Les Madelonnettes.
Finally, on the trip from the Gorbeau tenement to La Force, one of the principal prisoners, Claquesous, had been lost. Nobody knew how it was done, the officers and sergeants “didn’t understand it,” he had changed into vapour, he had glided out of the handcuffs, he had slipped through the cracks of the carriage, the fiacre was leaky, and had fled; nothing could be said, save that on reaching the prison there was no Claquesous. There were either fairies or police in the matter. Had Claquesous melted away into the darkness like a snowflake in the water? Was there some secret connivance of the officers? Did this man belong to the double enigma of disorder and of order? Was he concentric with infraction and with repression? Had this sphinx forepaws in crime and hind-paws in authority? Javert in no wise accepted these combinations, and his hair rose on end in view of such an exposure; but his squad contained other inspectors besides himself, more deeply initiated, perhaps, than himself, although his subordinates, in the secrets of the precinct, and Claquesous was so great a scoundrel that he might be a very good officer. To be on such intimate juggling relations with darkness is excellent for brigandage and admirable for the police. There are such two-edged rascals. However it might be, Claquesous was lost, and was not found again. Javert appeared more irritated than astonished at it.
As to Marius, “that dolt of a lawyer,” who was “probably frightened,” and whose name Javert had forgotten, Javert cared little for him. Besides he was a lawyer, they are always found again. But was he a lawyer merely?
The trial commenced.
The police judge thought it desirable not to put one of the men of the Patron-Minette band into solitary confinement, hoping for some blabbing. This was Brujon, the long-haired man of the Rue du Petit Banquier. He was left in the Charlemagne court, and the watchmen kept their eyes upon him.
This name, Brujon, is one of the traditions of La Force. In the hideous court in what was called the New Building, which the administration named Court Saint Bernard, and which the robbers named La Fosse aux Lions, upon that wall covered with filth and with mould, which rises on the left to the height of the roofs, near an old rusty iron door which leads into the former chapel of the ducal hotel of La Force, now become a dormitory for brigands, a dozen years ago there could still be seen a sort of bastille coarsely cut in the stone with a nail, and below it this signature:
The Brujon of 1811 was the father of the Brujon of 1832.
The last, of whom only a glimpse was caught in the Gorbeau ambush was a sprightly young fellow, very cunning and very adroit, with a flurried and plaintive appearance. It was on account of this flurried air that the judge had selected him, thinking that he would be of more use in the Charlemagne court than in a solitary cell.
Robbers do not cease operations because they are in the hands of justice. They are not disconcerted so easily. Being in prison for one crime does not prevent starting another crime. They are artists who have a picture in the parlour, and who labour none the less for that on a new work in their studio.
Brujon seemed stupefied by the prison. He was sometimes seen whole hours in the Charlemagne court, standing near the canteen, and staring like an idiot at that dirty list of prices of supplies which began with: garlic, 62 centimes, and ended with: cigars, cinq centimes. Or instead, he would pass his time in trembling and making his teeth chatter, saying that he had a fever, and inquiring if one of the twenty-eight beds in the fever ward was not vacant.
Suddenly, about the second fortnight in February, 1832, it was discovered that Brujon, that sleepy fellow, had arranged, through the agents of the house, not in his own name, but in the name of three of his comrades, three different errands, which had cost him in all fifty sous, a tremendous expense which attracted the attention of the prison brigadier.
He inquired into it, and by consulting the price list for errands hung up in the convicts’ waiting-room, he found that the fifty sous were made up thus: three errands; one to the Pantheon, ten sous; one to the Val de Grace, fifteen sous; and one to the Barrière de Grenelle, twenty-five sous. This was the most expensive of the whole list. Now the Pantheon, the Val de Grace, and the Barrière de Grenelle happened to be the residences of three of the most dreaded prowlers of the barriers, Kruideniers alias Bizarro, Glorieux, a liberated convict, and Barrecarrosse, upon whom this incident fixed the eyes of the police. They thought they divined that these men were affiliated with Patron-Minette, two of whose chiefs, Babet and Gueulemer, were secured. It was supposed that Brujon’s messages sent, not addressed to any houses, but to persons who were waiting for them in the street, must have been notices of some projected crime. There were still other indications; they arrested the three prowlers, and thought they had foiled Brujon’s machination whatever it was.
About a week after these measures were taken, one night, a watchman, who was watching the dormitory in the lower part of the New Building, at the instant of putting his chestnut into the chestnut-box-this is the means employed to make sure that the watchmen do their duty with exactness; every hour a chestnut must fall into every box nailed on the doors of the dormitories—a watchman then saw through the peep-hole of the dormitory, Brujon sitting up in his bed and writing something by the light of the reflector. The warden entered, Brujon was put in solitary for a month, but they could not find what he had written. The police knew nothing more.
It is certain, however, that the next day “a postman” was thrown from the Charlemagne court into the Fosse aux Lions, over the five-story building which separates the two courts.
Prisoners call a ball of bread artistically kneaded, which is sent into Ireland, that is to say, over the roof of a prison from one court to the other, a postman. Etymology: over England; from one county to the other; into Ireland. This ball falls in the court. He who picks it up opens it, and finds a letter in it addressed to some prisoner in the court. If it be a convict who finds it, he hands the letter to its destination; if it be a warden, or one of those secretly bribed prisoners who are called sheep in the prisons and foxes in the galleys, the letter is carried to the office and delivered to the police.
This time the postman reached its address, although he for whom the message was destined was then in solitary. Its recipient was none other than Babet, one of the four heads of Patron-Minette.
The postman contained a paper rolled up, on which there were only these two lines:
“Babet, there is an affair on hand in the Rue Plumet. A grating in a garden.”
This was the thing that Brujon had written in the night.
In spite of spies, both male and female, Babet found means to send the letter from La Force to La Salpêtrière to “a friend” of his who was shut up there. This girl in her turn transmitted the letter to another whom she knew, named Magnon, who was closely watched by the police, but not yet arrested. This Magnon, whose name the reader has already seen, had some relations with the Thénardiers which will be related hereafter, and could, by going to see Eponine, serve as a bridge between La Salpêtrière and Les Madelonnettes.
It happened just at that very moment, the proofs in the prosecution of Thénardier failing in regard to his daughters, that Eponine and Azelma were released.
When Eponine came out, Magnon, who was watching for her at the door of Les Madelonnettes, handed her Brujon’s note to Babet, charging her to scout out the affair.
Eponine went to the Rue Plumet, reconnoitred the grating and the garden, looked at the house, spied, watched, and, a few days after, carried to Magnon, who lived in the Rue Clocheperce, a biscuit, which Magnon transmitted to Babet’s mistress at La Salpêtrière. A biscuit, in the dark symbolism of the prisons, signifies: nothing to do.
So that in less than a week after that, Babet and Brujon, meeting on the way from La Force, as one was going “to examination,” and the other was returning from it: “Well,” asked Brujon, “the Rue P.?” “Biscuit,” answered Babet.
This was the end of that foetus of crime, engendered by Brujon in La Force.
This abortion, however, led to results entirely foreign to Brujon’s programme. We shall see them.
Often, when thinking to knot one thread, we tie another.