Part 3

This work of almost sixty pages revealed an intellect so prematurely subtle, an acquaintance so exact with the most recent theories of contemporaneous psychology, and finally such ingenuity of analysis, that M. Sixte had believed it a duty to respond by a long letter.

A note of thanks had come back immediately, in which the young man announced that, being obliged to go to Paris for the oral examination of the normal school he would have the honor to present himself, to the master.

The latter had then seen enter his study one afternoon, a young man of about twenty years with fine black eyes, lively and changeable, which lighted up a countenance which was almost too pale. This was the only detail of physiognomy which remained in the memory of the philosopher. Like all other speculative persons, he received only a floating impression of the visible world and he retained but a remembrance as vague as this impression. His memory of ideas was, however, surprising, and he recalled to the smallest detail his conversation with Robert Greslon.

Among the young men whom his renown attracted to him, none had astonished him more by the truly extraordinary precocity of his erudition and his reasoning. No doubt there floated in the mind of this youth much of the effervescence of mind which assimilates too quickly vast quantities of diverse knowledge; but what marvelous facility of deduction! What natural eloquence, and what visible sincerity of enthusiasm.

The savant could see him gesticulating a little and saying: “No, monsieur, you do not know what you are to us, nor what we feel in reading your books. You are the one who accepts the whole truth, the one in whom we can believe. Why, the analysis of love in your “Theory of the Passions” is our breviary. The book is forbidden at the Lyceum. I had it at home and two of my comrades copied certain chapters during the holidays.”

As there is the author’s vanity hidden in the soul of every man who has had his prose printed, be he even so absolutely sincere as M. Adrien Sixte certainly was, this worship of a group of scholars, so ingenuously expressed by one of them, had particularly flattered the philosopher.

Robert Greslon had solicited the honor of a second visit, and then while confessing a failure at the normal school, he disclosed a little of his projects.

M. Sixte, contrary to all his habits, had questioned him upon the most minute details. He had thus learned that the young man was the only son of an engineer who had died without leaving a fortune, and that his mother had made many sacrifices in order to educate him. “But I will accept no more,” said Robert, “it is my intention to take my degree next year, then I shall ask for a chair of philosophy in some college, and I will write an extended work on the variation of personality, of which the essay that I submitted to you is the embryo.” And the eyes of the young psychologist grew more brilliant as he formulated this programme of life.

These two visits dated from August, 1885, the second was in February, 1887, and since then, M. Sixte had received five or six letters from his young disciple. The last announced the entrance of Robert Greslon as preceptor, into a noble family that was passing the summer months in a château near one of the pretty lakes of the Auvergne Mountains--Lake Aydat.

A simple detail will give the measure of the preoccupation into which M. Sixte was thrown by the coincidence between the letter from the office of the judge and the note of Mme. Greslon. Although there were upon his table, the proofs of a long article for the _Philosophical Review_ to correct, he began searching for the correspondence with the young man. He found it readily in the box in which he carefully arranged his smallest papers. It was classed with others of the same kind, under the head: “Doctrines contemporaneous on the formation of mind.”

It made nearly thirty pages, which the savant read again with special care, without finding anything but reflections of an entirely intellectual order, various questions upon some readings, and the statements of certain projects for memories.

What thread could connect such preoccupations with the criminal process of which the mother spoke? Was this process the cause of the summons otherwise inexplicable? This boy whom he had seen only twice must have made a strong impression on the philosopher, for the thought that the mystery hidden behind this call from the Palais de Justice was the same as that which caused the sudden visit of this despairing mother kept him awake a part of the night.

For the first time in all these years he was sharp with Mlle. Trapenard because of some slight negligence, and when he passed in front of the lodge at one o’clock in the afternoon his face, usually so calm, expressed anxiety so plainly that Father Carbonnet, already prepared by the letter of citation which had arrived unsealed, according to a barbarous custom, and which he had read, and as was right confided to his wife--it was now the talk of the whole quarter--said:

“I am not inquisitive about other people’s business, but I would give years of my life as landlord to know what justice can want of poor M. Sixte that he should come down at this time of day.”

“Why, M. Sixte has changed his hour for walking,” said the baker’s daughter to her mother, as she sat behind the counter in the shop, “it seems that he is going to have a lawsuit over an inheritance.”

“Strike me if that isn’t old Sixte going by, the old zebra! It appears that justice is after him,” said one of the two pupils in pharmacy to his comrade; “these old fellows look very innocent, but at bottom they are all rogues.”

“He is more of a bear than usual, he will not even speak to us.” This was said by the wife of the professor of the College of France who lived in the same house with the philosopher and who had just met him. “So much the better, and they say he is going to be prosecuted for writing such books. I am not sorry for that.”

Thus we see how the most modest men, and those who believe themselves to be the least noticed, can not stir a step without incurring the comments of innumerable tongues, even though they live in what Parisians are pleased to call a quiet quarter. Let us add that M. Sixte would have cared as little for this curiosity, even if he had suspected it, as he cared for a volume of official philosophy. This was for him an expression of extreme contempt.

II.

THE GRESLON AFFAIR.

THE celebrated philosopher was in everything methodically punctual. Among the maxims which he had adopted at the beginning, in imitation of Descartes, was this: “Order enfranchises the mind.”

He arrived, therefore, at the Palais de Justice five minutes before the time appointed. He had to wait a half-hour in the corridor before the judge called him. In this long passage, with its long, bare, white walls, and furnished with a few chairs and tables for the use of the messengers, all voices were lowered, as is usual in all official antechambers.

There were six or seven other persons. The savants companions were an honest bourgeois and his wife, some shopkeepers of the neighborhood who were very much out of their element. The sight of this person, with his smoothly-shaven face, his eyes hidden behind the dark, round glasses of his spectacles, with his long redingote and his inexplicable physiognomy made these people so uneasy that they left the place where they were whispering together:

“He is a detective,” whispered the husband to his wife.

“Do you think so?” asked the woman regarding the enigmatic and immovable figure in terror. “_Dieu_! but he has a false look!”

While this profoundly comic scene was being acted, without the professional observer of the human heart suspecting for a moment the effect he was producing, nor even noticing that there was any one beside him awaiting audience, the Judge of Instruction was talking with a friend in a small room adjoining his office.

Adorned with the autographs and portraits of some famous criminals, this apartment served M. Valette for toilet-room, smoking-room, and also a place of retreat when he wished to chat out of the inevitable presence of his clerk.

The judge was a man less than forty years of age, with a handsome profile, clothes cut in the latest fashion and with rings on his fingers, in fact, a magistrate of the new school. He held in his hand the paper on which the savant had written his name in a clear, running hand and passed it to his friend, a simple man of leisure, with one of those physiognomies at once nervous and expressionless which are only seen in Paris. Would you try to read their tastes, habits, or character? It is impossible, so manifold and contradictory are the sensations which have passed over the countenance. This _viveur_ was one of those men who are always present at first representations, who visit painters’ studios, who attend sensational trials, and who pride themselves on being _au courant_ with the affairs of the day, “in the swim,” as they say to-day.

After reading the name of Adrien Sixte, he exclaimed:

“Well, old fellow, have you the chance of talking with that man! You remember his chapter on love in some old book or other. Ah! he’s a lascar who knows all about the women. But what the devil are you going to question him about?”

“About this Greslon case,” replied the judge; “the young man has often been to his house, and the defense has summoned him as witness for the prisoner. A commission of examination has been issued, nothing more.”

“I wish I could see him,” said the other.

“Would it give you pleasure? Nothing easier. I am going to have him called. You will go out as he comes in. Well, it is settled that we will meet at Durand’s at eight o’clock, is it? Will Gladys be there?”

“Of course. Do you know Gladys’ latest?” We were reproaching Christine in her presence for deceiving Jacques, when she said:

“But she must have two lovers, for she spends in one year twice what each one gives her!”

“Faith,” said Valette, “I believe that she surpasses, in the philosophy of love, all the Sixtes in the world and in the demi-world too.”

The two friends laughed gayly, then the judge gave the order to call the philosopher. The curious one, while shaking hands with Vilette and saying: “Good-by till evening, precisely at eight o’clock,” winked his eye behind his single eyeglass in order the better to unmask the illustrious writer whom he knew from having read the piquant extracts from the “Theory of the Passions,” in the newspapers.

The appearance of the good man, at once timid and eccentric, who entered the judge’s office with the most visible embarrassment, contradicted so plainly the idea of the biting misanthrope, cruel and disillusioned, who was outlined in their imagination, that the man-about-town and the magistrate exchanged a look of astonishment. A smile came irresistibly to their lips, but only for a moment. The friend was already gone. The other motioned to the witness to take a seat in one of the green velvet arm chairs with which the room was furnished, a luxury completed, in the administrative manner, by a green moquette carpet and a mahogany writing desk. The face of the judge had resumed its gravity.

These changes from one attitude to another are much more sincere than those imagine who observe these contrasts of bearing between the private man and the functionary. The perfect social comedian, who holds his profession in perfect contempt, is happily a very rare monster. We have not this strength of scepticism in the service of our hypocrisies. The witty M. Valette, so popular in the demi-monde, the friend of sporting men, emulated by journalists in witticisms, and who had just now commented gayly upon the remark of a bold woman with whom he should dine in the evening, found no trouble to give place to the severe and coolly skillful magistrate whose business it was to find out the truth in the name of the law. If his eye became suddenly acute it was that he might penetrate to the bottom of the consciousness of the newcomer.

In these first moments of conversation with one whom it is their purpose to make talk, even against his own will, born magistrates experience a kind of awakening of their militant nature, like fencers who try the play of an unknown adversary.

The philosopher found that his presentiments had not deceived him, for he saw, written in large letters on the bundle of papers which M. Valette took up these words: “Greslon Case.”

Silence reigned in the room broken only by the rustling of paper and the scratching of the clerk’s pen. This person was preparing to take down the interrogatory with that impersonal indifference which distinguishes men accustomed to play the part of machine in the drama of judicial life. One case to them is as much like another as one death is like another to an employee of an undertaker, or one invalid like another to a hospital attendant.

“I will spare you, monsieur,” said the judge at last, “the usual questions. There are some names and some men of which we are not permitted to be ignorant.”

The philosopher did not even incline his head at this compliment. “Not used to the world,” thought the judge, “this is one of those literary men who think it their duty to despise us,” and then aloud: “I come to the fact which was the motive of the summons addressed to you. You know the crime of which young Greslon is accused?”

“Pardon, monsieur,” interrupted the philosopher, changing the position which he had instinctively taken to listen to the judge, his elbow on the chair, his chin in his hand, and his index finger on his cheek, as in his grand, solitary meditations, “I have not the least idea.”

“It was reported in all the papers with an exactness to which the gentlemen of the press have not accustomed us,” responded the judge, who thought it his duty to reply to the scorn of literature for the robe diagnostic by a little persiflage; and he said to himself: “He is dissimulating--Why? To play sharp? How stupid!”

“Pardon, monsieur,” said the philosopher again, “I never read the papers.”

The judge looked at him keenly and ejaculated an “Ah!” in which there was more irony than astonishment. “Very good,” thought he, “you want to compel me to state the case, wait a little.” There was a certain irritation in his voice as he said:

“Very well, monsieur, I will sum up the accusation in a few words, regretting that you are not better informed of an affair which may very seriously affect your moral if not your legal responsibility.” Here the philosopher raised his head with an anxiety which delighted the judge’s heart. “Caught, my good man,” said he to himself; and aloud: “In any case, you know, monsieur, who Robert Greslon is, and the position which he held in the family of the Marquis Jussat Randon. I have here among these papers copies of several letters which you addressed to him at the château, and which testify that you were--how shall I express it?--the intellectual guide of the accused.” The philosopher again made a motion of the head. “I shall ask you presently to tell me if this young man ever spoke to joy of the domestic life of the family and in what terms. I give you no information probably when I tell you that the family was composed of a father, mother, a son who is a captain of dragoons now in garrison at Lunéville, a second son who was Greslon’s pupil, and a young girl of nineteen, Mlle. Charlotte.”

“The daughter was betrothed to the Baron de Plane, an officer in the same company as her brother. The marriage had been delayed some months for family reasons which have nothing to do with the affair. It had been definitely fixed for the fifteenth of last December.”

“Now, one morning of the week which preceded the arrival of the _fiancé_ and of Count André, the brother of Mlle. de Jussat, the maid entering the room of her young mistress at the usual hour found her dead in her bed.”

The magistrate made a pause, and while continuing to turn over the papers in his packet, looked with half-closed eyes at the witness. The stupor which was depicted on the face of the philosopher, showed such sincerity that the judge himself was astonished.

“He knew nothing about it,” said he to himself, “that is very strange.”

He studied anew, without changing his preoccupied and indifferent air, the countenance of the celebrated man; but he lacked the gifts which would have rendered this abstracted person intelligible, this union of a brain all-powerful in the realm of ideas with an ingenuousness, a timidity almost comical in the domain of facts. He could understand nothing of it, and he resumed his recital.

“Though the physician who was hastily summoned was only a modest, country practitioner, he did not hesitate a minute in recognizing that the appearance of the body contradicted all idea of a natural death. The face was livid, the teeth set, the pupils extraordinarily dilated, and the body, bent in an arch, rested on the nape of the neck and on the heels. In brief, these were the signs of poisoning by strychnine.

“A glass upon the night-table contained the last drops of a potion which Mlle. de Jussat must have taken during the night, as was her custom, for insomnia. She had been suffering for nearly a year from a nervous malady. The doctor analyzed these drops and found traces of nux vomica. This, as you know, is one of the forms in which the terrible poison is sold as medicine. A small bottle without any label, containing some drops of a dark color, was picked up by a gardener under the window of the room. This had been thrown from the window that it might be broken, but it had fallen on the soft earth of a freshly dug flower-bed. These brownish drops were also drops of nux vomica.

“There was no doubt that Mlle. de Jussat had been poisoned. This was demonstrated at the autopsy. “Was it a suicide or a murder? If a suicide, what motive had this young girl, who was soon to be married to a charming man whom she loved, for killing herself? and in such a way, without a word of explanation, without a letter of farewell to her parents! Beside, how had she procured the poison?

“The investigation of this matter put justice on the track of the prisoner. Being questioned, the apothecary of the village deposed that six weeks before the tutor at the château had bought some nux vomica to take for a disorder of the stomach.

“Now the tutor went to Clermont under pretext of visiting his sick mother, on the very day of the discovery of the dead body, having been summoned, as he said, by a telegraphic despatch. It was shown that this telegram had never been received, that on the night of the crime a servant had seen him coming out of Mlle. de Jussat’s room; finally, that the bottle of poison which had been bought at the druggist’s, and was found again in the room of the young man, had been partly emptied and then refilled with water.

“Other witnesses reported that Robert Greslon had been very assiduous in his attentions to the young girl, without the knowledge of her parents. A letter was even discovered which he had written to her and dated eleven months before, but which might be interpreted as a skillful attempt at a beginning of courtship. The servants and even the young lad who was his pupil testified that, for the past eight days, the relations between Mlle. de Jussat and the tutor had been strained. She would scarcely respond to his salutations. From these facts the following hypothesis was deduced:

“Robert Greslon, being in love with this young girl, had courted her in vain and then poisoned her to prevent her marriage with another. This hypothesis was strengthened by the lies of which the young man had been guilty when he was questioned. He denied that he had ever written to Mlle. de Jussat; the letter was shown him, and even half of an envelope, with his handwriting upon it, was found among the remains of burned papers in the fireplace of the victim’s room. He denied going out of Mlle. Charlotte’s room on the night in question, and he was brought face to face with the footman who had seen him, and who supported his assertion with the greater energy that he confessed that he had gone to keep an appointment with one of the maids with whom he was in love, at the same hour.

“Beside, Greslon could not explain why he had bought the nux vomica.

“It was proved that he had never before complained of any stomach trouble. He could neither explain the invention of the dispatch, his sudden departure, nor his frightful agitation at the news of the discovery of the poisoning. Beside, no other motive than a lover’s vengeance was admissible, from the simple fact that the victim’s jewelry and money were not taken and her body bore no mark of violence.

“This is the way it was presumably done: Greslon entered Mlle. de Jussat’s room, knowing that she usually slept until two o’clock, when she awoke to take her potion. He put into this potion enough nux vomica to so overpower the girl that she had only time to replace the glass upon the table, but was unable to call for help. Then, fearing that his emotion would betray him, he went away before the body was discovered.

“The empty bottle which was found on the ground he had thrown from the study window which opened directly above that of Mlle. Charlotte. The other bottle he had refilled with water by one of those unskillful ruses which betray the novice in crime.

“In brief, Greslon is now confined in the jail at Riom and will appear at the assizes of that city, in February, or early in March, accused of poisoning Mlle. de Jussat Randon.

“The charge against him is made more overwhelming by his attitude since his arrest. He has shut himself up in absolute silence, since his falsehoods were confounded, and refuses to answer any question put to him, simply saying he is innocent and has no need to defend himself. He has refused counsel and is in a state of so profound melancholy that we must believe that he is haunted by a terrible remorse.

“He reads and writes a great deal, but what seems very strange, and shows the strength of the comedy with this young man of twenty, he reads and writes only on subjects of pure philosophy, no doubt to counteract the bad impression made by his gloominess, and also to prove his entire freedom of mind. The nature of the prisoner’s occupations leads me, monsieur, after this prolonged statement, to the reason for which your evidence is desired in this case, by the mother of the young man, who naturally rebels against the evidence, and who is dying of grief, but is unable to overcome her son’s silence. Your books, with those of some English psychologists, are the only ones which the prisoner has asked for. I will add that your books were found on the shelves of his library, in a condition which show that they have been most assiduously read, and between the printed leaves there are other leaves filled with comments, sometimes more developed than the text itself. You shall judge for yourself.”

While speaking M. Valette handed the philosopher a copy of the “Psychology of God,” which the latter opened mechanically. He could see at each printed page a corresponding leaf covered with writing similar to his own, but more confused and nervous.

In the tendency of the lines to fall, a graphologue would have discovered a tendency to easy discouragement. This similarity of writing impressed the philosopher for the first time, and gave him a singularly painful sensation. He closed the book and returning it to the judge said:

“I am painfully surprised, monsieur, at the revelations you have just made to me; but I confess I do not understand what sort of relation exists between this crime and my books or my person, nor what can be the nature of the testimony I can be called upon to give.”