Part 4

“That is very simple, however,” replied the judge. “However grave the charges against Robert Greslon may be they rest upon certain hypotheses. There are terrible presumptions against him, but there is no absolute certainty. So you see, monsieur, to use the language of the science in which you excel, that a question of psychology will rule the contest. What were the thoughts, what was the character of this young man? It is evident that, if he were much interested in abstract studies the chances of his guilt diminish.”

While making this assertion, in which the savant did not suspect a snare, Valette seemed more and more indifferent. He did not add that one of the arguments of the prosecution, brought forward by the old Marquis de Jussat was that Robert Greslon had been corrupted by his reading. He wished to bring M. Sixte to characterize the principles with which the young man had been impregnated.

“Question me, monsieur,” responded the savant.

“Shall we begin at the beginning?” said the judge. “In what circumstances and at what date did you make the acquaintance of Robert Greslon?”

“Two years ago,” said the savant, “in relation to a work of a purely speculative kind upon human personality, which he came to submit to me.”

“Did you see him often?”

“Twice only.”

“What impression did he make on you?”

“That of a young man admirably endowed for psychological work,” replied the philosopher, weighing his words, so that the judge felt convinced that he wished to see and speak the truth; “so well endowed even that I was almost frightened at his precocity.”

“He did not converse with you about his private life?”

“Very little,” said the philosopher; “he only told me that he lived with his mother, and that he intended to make teaching his profession and at the same time work at some books.”

“Indeed,” replied the judge, “that was one of the articles laid down in a sort of programme of life which was found among the prisoner’s papers, among those that are left. For it is one of the charges against him that, between his examination and his written attestation, he destroyed the most of them. Could you,” he added, “give any explanation of one sentence of this programme which is very obscure to the profane who are not conversant with modern philosophy? Here is the sentence,” taking a sheet from among the others: “Multiply to the utmost psychological experiences.” “What do you think Robert Greslon understands by that?”

“I am very much puzzled to answer you, monsieur,” said M. Sixte after a silence; but the judge began to see that it was useless to use artifice with a man so simple, and he understood that his silence simply showed that he was seeking an exact expression for his thoughts. “I only know the meaning which I myself should attach to this formula, and probably this young man was too well instructed in works of psychology not to think the same. It is evident that in the other sciences of observation, such as physics or chemistry, the counter-verification of any law whatever exacts a positive and concrete application of that law. When I have decomposed water, for example, into its elements, I ought to be able, all conditions being equal, to reconstruct water out of these same elements. That is an experience of the most ordinary kind, but which suffices to summarize the method of the modern sciences. To know by an experimental knowledge is to be able to reproduce at will such or such a phenomenon, by reproducing its conditions.”

“Is such a procedure admissible with moral phenomena? I, for my part, believe that it is, and definitely this that we call education is nothing more than a psychological experience more or less well established, since it sums up thus: having given such a phenomenon--which sometimes is called a virtue, such as patience, prudence, sincerity; sometimes an intellectual aptitude, such as a dead or a living language, orthography, calculation--to find the conditions in which this phenomenon produces itself the most easily. But this field is very limited, for if I wished, for instance, the exact conditions of the birth of such passion being once known, to produce at will this passion in a subject, I should immediately come up against insoluble difficulties of law and morals. There will come a time perhaps, when such experiments will be possible.

“My opinion is that, for the present, we psychologists must keep to the experiences established by law and by accident. With memoirs, with works of literature or art, with statistics, with law reports, with notes on forensic medicine, we have a world of facts at our service.

“Robert Greslon had, in fact, discussed this _desideratum_ of our science with me. I recollect, he regretted that those condemned to death could not be placed in special conditions, which would permit of experimenting upon them certain moral phenomena. This was simply a hypothetical opinion, of a very young mind, who did not consider that, to work usefully in this order of ideas, it is necessary to study one case for a very long time. It would be best to experiment on children, but how could we make any one believe that it would be useful to science to produce in them certain defects or certain vices for example?”

“Vices!” exclaimed the judge astounded by the tranquillity with which the philosopher pronounced this phrase.

“I speak as a psychologist,” responded the savant who smiled in his turn at the exclamation of the judge; “that is just why, monsieur, our science is not susceptible of certain progress. Your exclamation proves that if I had needed any proof. Society cannot get beyond the theory of the good and the bad which for us has no other meaning than to mark a collection of conventions sometimes useful, sometimes puerile.”

“You admit, however, that there are good actions and bad actions,” said M. Valette; then the magistrate asserting himself and turning this general discussion to the profit of his inquiry: “This poisoning of Mlle. de Jussat,” he insinuated, “for example, you will admit that this is a crime?”

“From the social point of view, without doubt,” responded M. Sixte. “But for philosophy there is neither crime nor virtue. Our volitions are facts of a certain order governed by certain laws, that is all. But, monsieur,” and here the naïve vanity of the writer showed itself, “you will find a demonstration of these theories, which I venture to think conclusive, in my ‘Anatomy of the Will.’”

“Did you sometimes approach these subjects with Robert Greslon?” asked the judge, “and do you believe that he shared your views?”

“Very probably,” said the philosopher.

“Do you know, monsieur,” asked the magistrate, unmasking his batteries, “that you come very near justifying the accusations of monsieur the Marquis de Jussat, who claims that the doctrines of contemporary materialists have destroyed all moral sense in this young man, and have made him capable of this murder?”

“I do not know what matter is,” said M. Sixte, “so I am not a materialist. As to throwing upon a doctrine the responsibility of the absurd interpretation which a badly balanced brain gives to it, that is almost as bad as to reproach the chemist who discovered dynamite for the crimes in which this substance is employed. That is an argument which has no force.”

The tone in which the philosopher pronounced these words revealed the invincible strength of spiritual resistance which profound faith gives, as a timidity almost infantile, in the midst of the stir of material life, was revealed in the accent with which he suddenly asked:

“Do you believe that I shall be obliged to go to Riom to testify?”

“I think not, monsieur,” said the judge who could not help noticing with new astonishment the contrast between the firmness of thought in the first part of his discourse and the anxiety with which this last sentence had been uttered, “for I see that your interviews with the prisoner have been more superficial than his mother believed, if indeed they were limited to those two visits and to a correspondence which appears to have been exclusively philosophical. But have you never received any confidences relating to his life with the Jussats?”

“Never; beside he ceased to write to me almost immediately after he entered that family, said M. Sixte.”

“In his last letters was there no trace of new aspirations, of inquietude of a curiosity of unknown sensations?”

“I have not noticed any,” said the philosopher.

“Well, monsieur,” replied M. Valette after a brief silence, during which he studied anew this singular witness, “I will not detain you any longer. Your time is too precious. Permit me to go over the few responses you have made, to my clerk. He is not accustomed to examinations that bear upon matters so elevated. You will sign afterward.”

While the magistrate was dictating to his clerk what he thought would be of interest to justice in the deposition of the savant, the latter, who was evidently confused by the horrible revelation of the crime of Robert Greslon and by his conversation with the judge, listened without making any remarks, almost without comprehending what was being said. He signed his name without looking, after M. Valette had read aloud to him the pages on which his answers were recorded, and once more before taking leave he said:

“Then I can be very sure that I shall not have to go down there?”

“I hope not,” said the judge, conducting him to the door; and he added: “in any case it would only be for a day or two,” feeling a secret pleasure at the childish anguish depicted on the good man’s face. Then when M. Sixte had left his office. “There are some fools that it would be well to shut up,” said he to his clerk, who assented by a nod. “It is through ideas like those of this fellow upon crime that young people are ruined. He seems to be sincere. He would be less dangerous if he were a scoundrel. Do you know that he might easily cut off his disciple’s head with his paradoxes? But that appears to be all right. He is only anxious to know if he will have to go to Riom. What a maniac!” And the judge and his clerk shrugged their shoulders and laughed. Then the former after a reverie of some minutes, in which he went over the various impressions he had received in regard to this being absolutely enigmatical to him, added:

“Faith, little did I ever suspect the famous Adrien Sixte was anything like that. It is inconceivable.”

III.

SIMPLE GRIEF.

THE epithet by which the Judge of Instruction condemned the impassibility of the savant would have been more energetic still, if he could have followed M. Sixte and read the philosopher’s thoughts during the short time which separated this examination from the rendezvous fixed by the unhappy mother of Robert Greslon.

Having arrived in the great court of the Palais de Justice, he whom M. Vilette at that very moment was calling a maniac looked first at the clock, as became a worker so minutely regular.

“Quarter-past two,” he thought, “I shall not be home before three. Madame Greslon ought to be there at four. I shall not be able to do any work. That is very disagreeable.” And he resolved on the spot to take his daily walk, the more readily that he could reach the Jardin des Plantes along the river and through the city, whose old physiognomy and quiet peacefulness he loved.

The sky was blue with the clear blue of frosty days, vaguely tinted with violet at the horizon. The Seine flowed under the bridges green and gayly laborious, with its loaded boats on which smoked the chimneys of small wooden houses whose windows were adorned with familiar plants. The horses trotted swiftly over the dry pavement.

If the philosopher saw all these details in the time that he took to reach the sidewalk of the quay, with the precaution of a provincial afraid of the carriages, it was for him a sensation even more unconscious than usual. He continued to think of the surprising revelation which the judge had just made to him; but a philosopher’s head is a machine so peculiar that events do not produce the direct and simple impression which seems natural to other persons. This one was composed of three individuals fitted into one; there was the simple-minded, Sixte, an old bachelor, a slave to the scrupulous care of his servant and anxious first of all for his material tranquillity. Then there was the philosophical polemic, the author, animated, unknown to himself, by a ferocious self-love common to all writers. And last, the great psychologist, passionately attached to the problems of the inner life; and in order that an idea should accomplish its full action upon this mind, it was necessary for it to pass through these three compartments.

From the Palais de Justice to the first step on the border of the Seine, it was the bourgeois who reasoned: “Yes,” said he to himself, repeating the words which the sight of the clock had called forth, “that is very disagreeable. A whole day lost, and why? I wonder what I have to do with all that story, of assassination, and what information my testimony has brought to the examination!”

He did not suspect that, in the hands of a skillful advocate, his theory of crime and responsibility might become the most formidable of weapons against Greslon.

“It was not worth the trouble to disturb me,” continued he. “But these people have no idea of the life of a man who writes. What a stupid that judge was with his imbecile questions! I hope I shall not have to go to Riom to appear before some others of the same sort!”

He saw the picture of his departure painted afresh in his imagination in characters of odious confusion which a derangement of this kind represents to a man of study whom action unsettles and for whom physical ennui becomes a positive unhappiness. Great abstract intellects suffer from these puerilities. The philosopher saw in a flash of anguish his trunk open, his linen packed, the papers necessary to his work placed near his shirts, his getting into a cab, the tumult of the station, the railway carriage, and the coarse familiarity of proximity, the arrival in an unknown town, the miseries of the hotel chamber without the care of Mlle. Trapenard, who had become necessary to him, although he was as ignorant of it as a child.

This thinker, so heroically independent that he would have marched to martyrdom for his convictions, with the firmness of a Bruno or a Vanini, was seized by a sort of vertigo at the picture of an event so ordinary.

He saw himself in the Hall of Assizes, constrained to answer questions, in the presence of an attentive crowd, and that without an idea to support him against his native timidity.

“I will never receive a young man again,” he concluded, “yes, I will shut my door henceforth. But I will not anticipate. Perhaps I shall not have to go through this unpleasant task and all is ended. Ended?” And already the home-keeping citizen gave place in this inward monologue to the second person hidden within the philosopher, namely, the writer of books which were discussed with passion by the public. “Ended?” Yes, for him who comes and goes, who lives in the Rue Guy de la Brosse and who would be very much annoyed if he had to go to Auvergne in the winter, it may be. But what about my books and my ideas? What a strange thing is this instinctive hate of the ignorant for the systems which they cannot even comprehend.

“A jealous young man murders a young girl to prevent her marrying another. This young man has been in correspondence with a philosopher whose works he studies. It is the philosopher who is guilty. And I am a materialist forsooth, I who have proved the nonexistence of matter!”

He shrugged his shoulders, then a new image crossed his memory, the image of Marius Dumoulin, the young substitute at the College of France, the man whom he most detested in the world. He saw, as if they were there before his eyes, some of the formulæ so dear to this defender of spiritualism: “Fatal doctrines. Intellectual poison distilled from pens which one would like to believe are unconscious. Scandalous exposure of a psychology of corruption.” “Yes,” said Adrien Sixte to himself with bitterness, “if some one does not catch up this chance which makes an assassin of one of my pupils, it will not be he! Psychology will have done it all.”

It is proper to state that, Dumoulin had, on the appearance of the “Anatomy of the Will,” pointed out a grave error. Adrien Sixte had based one of his most ingenious chapters upon a so-called discovery of a German physician which was proved to be incorrect. Perhaps Dumoulin dwelt on this inadvertence of the great analyst with a severity of irony far too disrespectful.

M. Sixte, who rarely noticed criticisms, had replied to this one. While confessing the error, he proved without any trouble, that this point of detail did not affect the thesis as a whole. But he cherished an unpardonable rancor against the spiritualist.

“It is as if I heard him!” thought Sixte. “What he may say of my books is nothing but psychology? Psychology! This is the science on which depends the future of our beloved France.”

As we see, the philosopher, like all other systematics, had reached the point where he made his doctrines the pivot of the universe. He reasoned about like this: Given a historic fact, what is the chief cause of it? The general condition of mind. This condition is derived from the current ideas. The French Revolution, for example, proceeded entirely from a false conception of man which springs from the Cartesian philosophy and from the “Discourse on Method.”

He concluded that to modify the march of events, it was necessary to modify the received notions upon the human mind, and to install in their place some precise notions whence would result a new education and politics. So in his indignation against Dumoulin he sincerely believed that he was indignant at an obstacle to the public good.

He had some unpleasant moments while thus figuring to himself this detested adversary, taking as a text the death of Mlle. de Jussat for a vigorous sortie against the modern science of the mind.

“Shall I have to answer him again?” asked Sixte, who already was sure of the attack of his rival, such power have the passions to consider real that which they only imagine. “Yes,” he insisted, and then aloud, “I will reply in my best manner!”

He was by this time behind the apsis of Notre Dame and he stopped to survey the architecture of the cathedral. This ancient edifice symbolized to him the complex character of the German intellect which he contrasted in thought with the simplicity of the Hellenic mind, reproduced for him in a photograph of the Parthenon, which he had often contemplated in the Library of Nancy. The remembrance of Germany changed the current of his thoughts for a moment. He recalled, almost unconsciously, Hegel, then the doctrine of the identity of contrarieties, then the theory of evolution which grew out of it. This last idea, joined itself to those which had already agitated him, and resuming his walk, he began to argue against the anticipated objections of Dumoulin in the case of young Greslon.

For the first time the drama of the Château Jussat-Randon appeared real to his mind, for he was thinking of it with the most real part of his nature, his psychologic faculty. He forgot Dumoulin as well as the inconveniences of the possible journey to Riom, and his mind was completely absorbed by the moral problem which the crime presented.

The first question would naturally have been: “Did Robert Greslon really assassinate Mlle. de Jussat?” But the philosopher did not think of that, yielding to this defect of generalizing minds, that never more than half verify the ideas upon which they speculate. Facts are, to them, only matter for theoretic using, and they distort them wilfully the better to build up their systems. The philosopher again took up the formula by which he summed up this drama: “A young man who becomes jealous and commits a murder, this is one more proof in support of my theory that the instinct of destruction and that of love awake at the same time in the male.” He had used this principle to write a chapter of extraordinary boldness on the aberrations of the generative faculty in his ‘Theory of the Passions.’

The reappearance of fierce animality among the civilized would alone suffice to explain this act. It would be necessary also to study the personal heredity of the assassin. He forced himself to see Robert Greslon without any other traits than those which confirmed the hypothesis already outlined in his mind.

“Those very brilliant black eyes, those too vivacious gestures, that brusque manner of entering into relations with me, that enthusiasm in speaking to me, there was nervous derangement in this fellow. The father died young? If it could be proved that there was alcoholism in the family, then there would be a beautiful case of what Legrand Du Saulle calls _épilepsie larvée_. In this way his silence may be explained, and his denials may be sincere. This is the essential difference between an epileptic and the deranged. The last remembers his act, the epileptic forgets them. Would this then be a _larval epileptic_?”

At this point of his reverie the philosopher experienced a moment of real joy. He had just constructed a building of ideas which he called an explanation, following the habit so dear to his race. He considered this hypothesis from different points, recalling several examples cited by his author in his beautiful treatise on forensic medicine, until he arrived at the Jardin des Plantes, which he entered by the large gate of the Quay Saint Bernard.

He turned to the right into an avenue planted with old trees whose distorted trunks were inclosed in iron and coated with whitewash. There floated in the air a musty smell emanating from the tawny beasts which moved around in their barred cages nearby. The philosopher was distracted from his meditations by this odor, and he turned to look at a large, old wild-boar with an enormous head, which, standing on his slender feet, held his mobile and eager snout between the bars.

“And,” thought the savant, “we know ourselves but little better than this animal knows himself. What we call our person is a consciousness so vague, so disturbed by operations which are going on within us,” and returning to Robert Greslon: “Who knows? This young man who was so preoccupied by the multiplicity of the self? Did he not have an obscure feeling that there were in himself two distinct conditions, a primary and secondary condition as it were--two beings in fact, one, lucid, intelligent, honest, loving works of the intellect, the one whom I knew; and another, gloomy, cruel, impulsive, the one who has committed murder. Evidently this is a case. I am very happy to have come across it.” He forgot that on leaving the Palais de Justice he had deplored his relations with the accused. “It will be a fortunate thing to study the mother now. She will furnish me with facts about the ancestors. That is what is lacking to our psychology; good monographs made _de visu_ upon the mental structure of great men and of criminals. I will try to write out this one.”

All sincere passion is egoistic, the intellectual as well as the others. Thus the philosopher, who would not have harmed a fly walked with a more rapid step in going toward the gate at the Rue Cuvier whence he would reach the Rue Jussieu, then the Rue Guy de la Brosse--he was about to have an interview with a despairing mother who was coming, without doubt, to entreat him to aid her in saving the head of a son who was perhaps innocent! But the possible innocence of the prisoner, the grief of the mother, the part which he himself would be called to play in this novel scene, all were effaced by the fixed idea of the notes to be taken, of the little insignificant facts to be collected.