BOOK SEVENTH. — PATRON MINETTE
2.M.7.1. MINES AND MINERS
HUMAN societies all have what is called in theatrical
parlance,
a third lower floor. The social soil is everywhere
undermined,
sometimes for good, sometimes for evil. These works
are superposed one upon the other. There are superior mines
and inferior mines. There is a top and a bottom in this
obscure sub-soil, which sometimes gives way beneath civilization,
and which our indifference and heedlessness trample
under foot. The Encyclopedia, in the last century, was a
mine that was almost open to the sky. The shades, those
sombre hatchers of primitive Christianity, only awaited an
opportunity to bring about an explosion under the Caesars and
to inundate the human race with light. For in the sacred
shadows there lies latent light. Volcanoes are full of a
shadow that is capable of flashing forth. Every form begins
by being night. The catacombs, in which the first mass was
said, were not alone the cellar of Rome, they were the vaults
of the world.
Beneath the social construction, that complicated marvel
of
a structure, there are excavations of all sorts. There is the
religious mine, the philosophical mine, the economic mine, the
revolutionary mine. Such and such a pick-axe with the idea,
such a pick with ciphers. Such another with wrath. People
hail and answer each other from one catacomb to another.
Utopias travel about underground, in the pipes. There they
branch out in every direction. They sometimes meet, and
fraternize
there. Jean-Jacques lends his pick to Diogenes, who
lends him his lantern. Sometimes they enter into combat
there. Calvin seizes Socinius by the hair. But nothing arrests
nor interrupts the tension of all these energies toward the
goal, and the vast, simultaneous activity, which goes and
comes, mounts, descends, and mounts again in these obscurities,
and which immense unknown swarming slowly transforms
the top and the bottom and the inside and the outside. Society
hardly even suspects this digging which leaves its surface intact
and changes its bowels. There are as many different
subterranean stages as there are varying works, as there are
extractions. What emerges from these deep excavations? The
future.
The deeper one goes, the more mysterious are the toilers.
The work is good, up to a degree which the social philosophies
are able to recognize; beyond that degree it is doubtful and
mixed; lower down, it becomes terrible. At a certain depth,
the excavations are no longer penetrable by the spirit of
civilization,
the limit breathable by man has been passed; a beginning
of monsters is possible.
The descending scale is a strange one; and each one of the
rungs of this ladder corresponds to a stage where philosophy
can find foothold, and where one encounters one of these workmen,
sometimes divine, sometimes misshapen. Below John
Huss, there is Luther; below Luther, there is Descartes; below
Descartes, there is Voltaire; below Voltaire, there is Condorcet;
below Condorcet, there is Robespierre; below Robespierre,
there is Marat; below Marat there is Babeuf. And so it goes
on. Lower down, confusedly, at the limit which separates the
indistinct from the invisible, one perceives other gloomy men,
who perhaps do not exist as yet. The men of yesterday are
spectres; those of to-morrow are forms. The eye of the spirit
distinguishes them but obscurely. The embryonic work of the
future is one of the visions of philosophy.
A world in limbo, in the state of foetus, what an
unheard-of
spectre!
Saint-Simon, Owen, Fourier, are there also, in lateral
galleries.
Surely, although a divine and invisible chain unknown to
themselves, binds together all these subterranean pioneers who,
almost always, think themselves isolated, and who are not so,
their works vary greatly, and the light of some contrasts with
the blaze of others. The first are paradisiacal, the last are
tragic. Nevertheless, whatever may be the contrast, all these
toilers, from the highest to the most nocturnal, from the wisest
to the most foolish, possess one likeness, and this is it:
disinterestedness.
Marat forgets himself like Jesus. They throw
themselves on one side, they omit themselves, they think not of
themselves. They have a glance, and that glance seeks the
absolute. The first has the whole heavens in his eyes; the last,
enigmatical though he may be, has still, beneath his eyelids,
the pale beam of the infinite. Venerate the man, whoever he
may be, who has this sign — the starry eye.
The shadowy eye is the other sign.
With it, evil commences. Reflect and tremble in the
presence
of any one who has no glance at all. The social order has
its black miners.
There is a point where depth is tantamount to burial, and
where light becomes extinct.
Below all these mines which we have just mentioned, below
all these galleries, below this whole immense, subterranean,
venous system of progress and utopia, much further on in the
earth, much lower than Marat, lower than Babeuf, lower, much
lower, and without any connection with the upper levels, there
lies the last mine. A formidable spot. This is what we have
designated as the le troisieme dessous. It is the grave
of shadows.
It is the cellar of the blind. Inferi.
This communicates with the abyss.
2.M.7.2. THE LOWEST DEPTHS
THERE disinterestedness vanishes. The demon is vaguely
outlined; each one is for himself. The I in the eyes
howls,
seeks, fumbles, and gnaws. The social Ugolino is in this gulf.
The wild spectres who roam in this grave, almost beasts,
almost phantoms, are not occupied with universal progress;
they are ignorant both of the idea and of the word; they take
no thought for anything but the satisfaction of their individual
desires. They are almost unconscious, and there exists
within them a sort of terrible obliteration. They have two
mothers, both step-mothers, ignorance and misery. They have
a guide, necessity; and for all forms of satisfaction, appetite.
They are brutally voracious, that is to say, ferocious, not after
the fashion of the tyrant, but after the fashion of the tiger.
>From suffering these spectres pass to crime; fatal affiliation,
dizzy creation, logic of darkness. That which crawls in the
social third lower level is no longer complaint stifled by the
absolute; it is the protest of matter. Man there becomes a
dragon. To be hungry, to be thirsty — that is the point of
departure;
to be Satan — that is the point reached. From that
vault Lacenaire emerges.
We have just seen, in Book Fourth, one of the compartments
of the upper mine, of the great political, revolutionary, and
philosophical excavation. There, as we have just said, all is
pure, noble, dignified, honest. There, assuredly, one might be
misled; but error is worthy of veneration there, so thoroughly
does it imply heroism. The work there effected, taken as a
whole has a name: Progress.
The moment has now come when we must take a look at
other depths, hideous depths. There exists beneath society,
we insist upon this point, and there will exist, until that day
when ignorance shall be dissipated, the great cavern of evil.
This cavern is below all, and is the foe of all. It is
hatred,
without exception. This cavern knows no philosophers; its
dagger has never cut a pen. Its blackness has no connection
with the sublime blackness of the inkstand. Never have the
fingers of night which contract beneath this stifling ceiling,
turned the leaves of a book nor unfolded a newspaper. Babeuf
is a speculator to Cartouche; Marat is an aristocrat to
Schinderhannes.
This cavern has for its object the destruction of
everything.
Of everything. Including the upper superior mines, which
it execrates. It not only undermines, in its hideous swarming,
the actual social order; it undermines philosophy, it undermines
human thought, it undermines civilization, it undermines
revolution, it undermines progress. Its name is simply
theft, prostitution, murder, assassination. It is darkness, and
it desires chaos. Its vault is formed of ignorance.
All the others, those above it, have but one object — to
suppress
it. It is to this point that philosophy and progress tend,
with all their organs simultaneously, by their amelioration of
the real, as well as by their contemplation of the absolute.
Destroy the cavern Ignorance and you destroy the lair Crime.
Let us condense, in a few words, a part of what we have
just
written. The only social peril is darkness.
Humanity is identity. All men are made of the same clay.
There is no difference, here below, at least, in predestination.
The same shadow in front, the same flesh in the present, the
same ashes afterwards. But ignorance, mingled with the human
paste, blackens it. This incurable blackness takes possesssion
of the interior of a man and is there converted into evil.
2.M.7.3. BABET, GUEULEMER, CLAQUESOUS, AND MONTPARNASSE
A QUARTETTE of ruffians, Claquesous, Gueulemer, Babet,
and Montparnasse governed the third lower floor of Paris,
from 1830 to 1835.
Gueulemer was a Hercules of no defined position. For his
lair he had the sewer of the Arche-Marion. He was six feet
high, his pectoral muscles were of marble, his biceps of brass,
his breath was that of a cavern, his torso that of a colossus,
his head that of a bird. One thought one beheld the Farnese
Hercules clad in duck trousers and a cotton velvet waistcoat.
Gueulemer, built after this sculptural fashion, might have
subdued
monsters; he had found it more expeditious to be one.
A low brow, large temples, less than forty years of age, but
with crow's-feet, harsh, short hair, cheeks like a brush, a beard
like that of a wild boar; the reader can see the man before
him. His muscles called for work, his stupidity would have
none of it. He was a great, idle force. He was an assassin
through coolness. He was thought to be a creole. He had,
probably, somewhat to do with Marshal Brune, having been a
porter at Avignon in 1815. After this stage, he had turned
ruffian.
The diaphaneity of Babet contrasted with the grossness of
Gueulemer. Babet was thin and learned. He was transparent
but impenetrable. Daylight was visible through his bones, but
nothing through his eyes. He declared that he was a chemist.
He had been a jack of all trades. He had played in vaudeville
at Saint-Mihiel. He was a man of purpose, a fine talker, who
underlined his smiles and accentuated his gestures. His
occupation
consisted in selling, in the open air, plaster busts and
portraits of "the head of the State." In addition to this, he
extracted teeth. He had exhibited phenomena at fairs, and he
had owned a booth with a trumpet and this poster: "Babet,
Dental Artist, Member of the Academies, makes physical
experiments
on metals and metalloids, extracts teeth, undertakes
stumps abandoned by his brother practitioners. Price: one
tooth, one franc, fifty centimes; two teeth, two francs; three
teeth, two francs, fifty. Take advantage of this opportunity."
This Take advantage of this opportunity meant: Have as
many teeth extracted as possible. He had been married and
had had children. He did not know what had become of his
wife and children. He had lost them as one loses his
handkerchief.
Babet read the papers, a striking exception in the world
to which he belonged. One day, at the period when he had his
family with him in his booth on wheels, he had read in the
Messager, that a woman had just given birth to a child,
who
was doing well, and had a calf's muzzle, and he exclaimed:
"There's a fortune! my wife has not the wit to present me
with a child like that!"
Later on he had abandoned everything, in order to
"undertake
Paris." This was his expression.
Who was Claquesous? He was night. He waited until the
sky was daubed with black, before he showed himself. At
nightfall he emerged from the hole whither he returned before
daylight. Where was this hole? No one knew. He only
addressed his accomplices in the most absolute darkness, and
with his back turned to them. Was his name Claquesous?
Certainly not. If a candle was brought, he put on a mask.
He was a ventriloquist. Babet said: "Claquesous is a nocturne
for two voices." Claquesous was vague, terrible, and a
roamer. No one was sure whether he had a name, Claquesous
being a sobriquet; none was sure that he had a voice, as his
stomach spoke more frequently than his voice; no one was sure
that he had a face, as he was never seen without his mask. He
disappeared as though he had vanished into thin air; when he
appeared, it was as though he sprang from the earth.
A lugubrious being was Montparnasse. Montparnasse was a
child; less than twenty years of age, with a handsome face,
lips like cherries, charming black hair, the brilliant light of
springtime in his eyes; he had all vices and aspired to all
crimes.
The digestion of evil aroused in him an appetite for
worse.
It was the street boy turned pickpocket, and a pickpocket
turned garroter. He was genteel, effeminate, graceful, robust,
sluggish, ferocious. The rim of his hat was curled up on the
left side, in order to make room for a tuft of hair, after the
style of 1829. He lived by robbery with violence. His coat
was of the best cut, but threadbare. Montparnasse was a
fashion-plate in misery and given to the commission of murders.
The cause of all this youth's crimes was the desire to be
well-dressed. The first grisette who had said to him: "You
are handsome!" had cast the stain of darkness into his heart,
and had made a Cain of this Abel. Finding that he was handsome,
he desired to be elegant: now, the height of elegance is
idleness; idleness in a poor man means crime. Few prowlers
were so dreaded as Montparnasse. At eighteen, he had already
numerous corpses in his past. More than one passer-by lay
with outstretched arms in the presence of this wretch, with his
face in a pool of blood. Curled, pomaded, with laced waist,
the hips of a woman, the bust of a Prussian officer, the murmur
of admiration from the boulevard wenches surrounding him,
his cravat knowingly tied, a bludgeon in his pocket, a flower
in his buttonhole; such was this dandy of the sepulchre.
2.M.7.4. COMPOSITION OF THE TROUPE
THESE four ruffians formed a sort of Proteus, winding like
a serpent among the police, and striving to escape Vidocq's
indiscreet glances "under divers forms, tree, flame, fountain,"
lending each other their names and their traps, hiding in their
own shadows, boxes with secret compartments and refuges for
each other, stripping off their personalities, as one removes his
false nose at a masked ball, sometimes simplifying matters to
the point of consisting of but one individual, sometimes
multiplying
themselves to such a point that Coco-Latour himself
took them for a whole throng.
These four men were not four men; they were a sort of
mysterious robber with four heads, operating on a grand scale
on Paris; they were that monstrous polyp of evil, which inhabits
the crypt of society.
Thanks to their ramifications, and to the network
underlying
their relations, Babet, Gueulemer, Claquesous, and Montparnasse
were charged with the general enterprise of the
ambushes of the department of the Seine. The inventors of
ideas of that nature, men with nocturnal imaginations, applied
to them to have their ideas executed. They furnished the
canvas to the four rascals, and the latter undertook the
preparation
of the scenery. They labored at the stage setting.
They were always in a condition to lend a force proportioned
and suitable to all crimes which demanded a lift of the
shoulder, and which were sufficiently lucrative. When a crime
was in quest of arms, they under-let their accomplices. They
kept a troupe of actors of the shadows at the disposition of all
underground tragedies.
They were in the habit of assembling at nightfall, the
hour
when they woke up, on the plains which adjoin the Salpetriere.
There they held their conferences. They had twelve black
hours before them; they regulated their employment accordingly.
Patron-Minette,
— such was the name which was bestowed
in the subterranean circulation on the association of these four
men. In the fantastic, ancient, popular parlance, which is
vanishing day by day, Patron-Minette signifies the
morning,
the same as entre chien et loup — between dog and wolf
— signifies
the evening. This appellation, Patron-Minette, was
probably derived from the hour at which their work ended,
the dawn being the vanishing moment for phantoms and for
the separation of ruffians. These four men were known under
this title. When the President of the Assizes visited Lacenaire
in his prison, and questioned him concerning a misdeed
which Lacenaire denied, "Who did it?" demanded the President.
Lacenaire made this response, enigmatical so far as
the magistrate was concerned, but clear to the police: "Perhaps
it was Patron-Minette."
A piece can sometimes be divined on the enunciation of the
personages; in the same manner a band can almost be judged
from the list of ruffians composing it. Here are the
appellations
to which the principal members of Patron-Minette
answered, — for the names have survived in special memoirs.
Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille.
Brujon. [There was a Brujon dynasty; we cannot refrain
from interpolating this word.]
Boulatruelle, the road-mender already introduced.
Laveuve.
Finistere.
Homere-Hogu, a negro.
Mardisoir. (Tuesday evening.)
Depeche. (Make haste.)
Fauntleroy, alias Bouquetiere (the Flower Girl).
Glorieux, a discharged convict.
Barrecarrosse (Stop-carriage), called Monsieur Dupont.
L'Esplanade-du-Sud.
Poussagrive.
Carmagnolet.
Kruideniers, called Bizarro.
Mangedentelle. (Lace-eater.)
Les-pieds-en-l'Air. (Feet in the air.)
Demi-Liard, called Deux-Milliards.
Etc., etc.
We pass over some, and not the worst of them. These
names have faces attached. They do not express merely
beings, but species. Each one of these names corresponds to
a variety of those misshapen fungi from the under side of
civilization.
Those beings, who were not very lavish with their
countenances,
were not among the men whom one sees passing along
the streets. Fatigued by the wild nights which they passed,
they went off by day to sleep, sometimes in the lime-kilns,
sometimes in the abandoned quarries of Montmatre or Montrouge,
sometimes in the sewers. They ran to earth.
What became of these men? They still exist. They have
always existed. Horace speaks of them: Ambubaiarum
collegia, pharmacopolae, mendici, mimae; and so long as
society
remains what it is, they will remain what they are. Beneath
the obscure roof of their cavern, they are continually born
again from the social ooze. They return, spectres, but always
identical; only, they no longer bear the same names and they
are no longer in the same skins. The individuals extirpated,
the tribe subsists.
They always have the same faculties. From the vagrant to
the tramp, the race is maintained in its purity. They divine
purses in pockets, they scent out watches in fobs. Gold and
silver possess an odor for them. There exist ingenuous
bourgeois,
of whom it might be said, that they have a "stealable"
air. These men patiently pursue these bourgeois. They
experience
the quivers of a spider at the passage of a stranger
or of a man from the country.
These men are terrible, when one encounters them, or
catches a glimpse of them, towards midnight, on a deserted
boulevard. They do not seem to be men but forms composed
of living mists; one would say that they habitually constitute
one mass with the shadows, that they are in no wise distinct
from them, that they possess no other soul than the darkness,
and that it is only momentarily and for the purpose of living
for a few minutes a monstrous life, that they have separated
from the night.
What is necessary to cause these spectres to vanish?
Light.
Light in floods. Not a single bat can resist the dawn. Light
up society from below.