# The Count of Monte-Cristo/Volume 5/François Picaud

Contents
FRANÇOIS PICAUD
A PIECE OF CONTEMPORARY HISTORY
translated by
HUGH CRAIG
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS
LONDON AND NEW YORK
1888
Copyright, 1887, by Hugh Craig
The few pages which are herewidth appended to "The Count of Monte-Cristo" relate the story on which Dumas' admirable romance was founded.
FRANCOIS PICAUD
A PIECE OF CONTEMPORARY HISTORY
N the year 1807 a working shoemaker of the name of François Picaud lived in Paris. This poor devil, who did his work at home, was a young and good-looking fellow, and was on the point of marrying a neat, pert, lively girl, whom he loved as common people do love the brides they choose, that is, alone among all women; for common people know only one way of loving a woman, that is, marrying her. With this fine project in his head, and dressed in his Sunday's best, François Picaud went to the keeper of a coffee-house, a man who was his equal in age and station but richer than the cobbler, and known for his extravagant jealousy of everybody and everything that was prosperous.
Mathieu Loupian, a native of Nîmes like Picaud, kept a coffee and wine shop, well patronized, near the Place Sainte-Opportune. He was a widower with two children; three regular customers, all from the department of the Gard, and all acquainted with Picaud, were with him.
"What's up?" said the master of the house. "Why, Picaud, you are so smart that one would think you were going to dance las treillas!" This is the name of a popular dance in Lower Languedoc.
"I am going to do better, my friend,—I am going to be married."
"Whom have you chosen to plant your horns?" said one of the company named Allut.
"Not your mother-in-law's second girl, for in that family they plant them so clumsily that they stick through your hat."
In fact Allut's hat had a hole in it, and the laugh was on the cobbler's side.
"Joking aside," said the landlord, "whom are you about to marry?"
"The Vigouroux girl."
"Thérèse the rich?"
​"The same!"
"Why! she has a hundred thousand francs!" cried the astonished landlord.
"I will repay her in love and happiness! Now, gentlemen, I invite you to the mass, which will be celebrated at Saint-Leu, and to the dance after the wedding banquet, which will take place at the sign of the 'Bal Champêtre' in the 'Bosquets de Vénus,' Rue aux Ours, at the rooms of M. Lasignac, dancing-master, fifth floor back."
The four friends could scarcely reply with a few meaningless words, so dumfounded were they with the good luck of their companion.
"When is the wedding?" asked Loupian.
"Next Tuesday."
"Tuesday!"
"I reckon on you. Good-bye. I am going to the mayor's office."
He left, and the rest stared at each other.
"He is lucky, the rogue!"
"It is witchcraft!"
"Such a fine, such a rich girl!"
"To a cobbler!"
"The wedding is on Tuesday."
"Yes, three days hence."
"I'll lay a bet," said Loupian, "I'll put it off!"
"How will you do that?"
"Oh, a joke!"
"How?"
"An excellent bit of fun. The commissary is coming; I'll tell him I suspect Picaud of being an English spy; then he will be summoned and questioned; he will be terrified, and for eight days at least the marriage will have to wait."
"Loupian," said Allut, "that's a mean trick. You do not know Picaud: if he finds it out, he is a man to take hard vengeance."
"Bah!" cried the others, "we want to amuse ourselves in carnival time."
"As much as you like! But I must tell you I am not in it. Every man to his taste."
"Ah," cried the café-keeper, bitterly, "no wonder you wear horns!"
"I am an honest man, you are envious. I shall live in peace, you will die miserable. Good-night!"
When he had left, the trio encouraged each other not to give up such an amusing idea, and Loupian, the inventor of it, promised his two friends that he would make them laugh till they had to unbutton. On the same day, two hours afterward, the commissary of police, to ​whom Loupian had been chattering, did his duty as a vigilant officer. He made out of the landlord's gossip a report in his best official style, and forwarded it to the higher powers. The fatal letter was taken to the Duke of Rovigo; it agreed with the information received respecting the movements in La Vendée. Beyond doubt, Picaud was the connecting link between the South and the West. He must be some important person; his professed trade disguised a gentleman of Languedoc. In short, in the night between Sunday and Monday, the unfortunate Picaud was taken from his room so mysteriously that no one saw him go. After that day, all trace of him was lost completely; his relatives and his friends could not obtain the slightest information of what had befallen him, and he was forgotten.
Time passed. The year 1814 arrived; the Empire fell, and about the 15th day of April, a man, bent by suffering, and aged by despair more than by time, came out of the citadel of Fenestrelles. In seven years he had lived half a century. No one could recognize him; he could not recognize himself when for the first time he looked into a mirror in the wretched tavern of Fenestrelles.
This man, whose prison name had been Joseph Lucher, had been in the service of a rich ecclesiastic of Milan, who regarded him more as a son than a domestic. The priest, indignant at his relatives, who had abandoned him in order to enjoy the income of his large fortune, concealed from them the funds he had deposited in the bank of Hamburg and in the bank of England. He had, furthermore, sold the greater part of his domains to one of the high dignitaries of the Kingdom of Italy, and the interest on these funds was payable annually at a bank in Amsterdam, which had orders to transmit the amount to the vendor.
This Italian noble, who died January 4th, 1814, left as sole heir to about seven millions of unencumbered property, the poor prisoner, Joseph Lucher, and had, too, confided to him the secret of a hidden treasure of about twelve hundred thousand francs' worth of diamonds, and three millions of coined moneys, Milanese ducats, Venetian florins, Spanish double doubloons, French Louis-d'or, and English sovereigns.
Joseph Lucher, when finally discharged, went with all speed to Turin, and thence to Milan. He acted cautiously, and at the end of a few days was in possession of the treasure which he had gone to look for, and also of a multitude of antique gems and cameos of great value. From Milan, Joseph Lucher proceeded to Hamburg, Amsterdam, and London, and collected riches enough to fill a king's treasure-house. Lucher, who had teamed from his master the secret of speculating with success, placed his funds so advantageously that, after reserving the diamonds and a million of francs in his pocket-book, he had a revenue ​of six hundred thousand francs a year, payable by the banks of England, Germany, France, and Italy.
Having made these arrangements, he set out for Paris, where he arrived on the 15th of February, 1815, eight years, day for day, after the disappearance of the unfortunate François Picaud. He was then thirty-four years old. Joseph Lucher fell sick the day after he reached Paris, and, as he had no valet or attendants, he ordered himself to be taken to a hospital. He remained sick all the time the Emperor was in Elba, and during the Hundred Days; but when the second restoration seemed to have firmly established the throne of Louis XVIII., he quitted the hospital and went to the quarter Sainte-Opportune. There he learned the following facts:
In 1807, in the month of February, there had been considerable talk about the disappearance of a young shoemaker, a decent fellow, who was going to make a wonderful marriage. A practical joke played by three of his friends destroyed his good fortune, and the poor devil ran away or was carried off. No one knew what had become of him. His intended bride mourned him for two years, then, weary of her tears, married the café-keeper Loupian, who by this marriage increased his resources, and now had on the Boulevard the most splendid and best patronized café in Paris.
Joseph Lucher appeared to listen to the story with indifference. But he asked for the names of those whose joke had caused, it was thought, the misfortune of Picaud. These names had been forgotten.
One of those whom the new-comer questioned replied, however, "There is a certain Antoine Allut who said, in my hearing, that he knew those persons."
"I knew an Allut in Italy; he came from Nîmes."
"This man also comes from Nîmes. The Allut I knew lent me a hundred crowns, and told me to hand them to his cousin Antoine, as far as I remember."
"You can remit the sum to Nîmes, for he has gone back there."
Next day a post-chaise, preceded by a courier who paid thrice the usual rates, flew rather than drove along the Lyons road. From Lyons the carriage followed the Rhône by the Marseilles road, which it left at the bridge of Saint-Esprit. There an Italian abbé alighted for the first time since the journey began.
He took a hack and got out at Nîmes at the well-known Hôtel du Luxembourg; without any concealment, he asked the people of the inn what had become of Antoine Allut. The name, very common in that district, is borne by many families differing in rank, fortune, and religion. A long time was consumed in finding the individual of whom the ​Abbé Baldini was in search, and some more was required to make his acquaintance. When some intimacy had arisen the abbé told Antoine that, while he had been a prisoner in the Castello dell' Ovo at Naples, for a state offense, he had formed the acquaintance of a comrade who arrived in 1811, and whose death he deeply regretted.
"At that time," he said, "he was a young man of thirty; he died weeping for his lost country, and pardoning all who had done him wrong. He was from Nîmes, and called François Picaud."
Allut could not restrain a cry, and the abbé regarded him with astonishment.
"You knew, then, this Picaud?" he said. "He was one of my best friends. Poor fellow! he died far away. Did you know the cause of his arrest?"
"He did not know himself, and he swore to this so solemnly that I cannot doubt his ignorance."
Allut sighed. The abbé continued:
"As long as he lived, one sole idea occupied him. He would have given, he said, his share of paradise to any one who would tell him the author or authors of his arrest. This fixed idea inspired in Picaud the singular clause in his will. But first, I must tell you that Picaud, while in prison, rendered notable service to an English prisoner, who, on his death-bed, left Picaud a diamond worth at least fifty thousand francs."
"Lucky fellow!" cried Allut, "fifty thousand francs is a fortune!"
"When François Picaud lay dying, he called me to him and said, 'I shall die in peace if you will promise to fulfill my wishes; will you promise?' 'I swear I will, for I am sure you will ask nothing contrary to religion or honor.' 'Oh, nothing. Listen to me, and judge for yourself. I cannot learn the names of those who have plunged me into this hell, but I have had a revelation. The voice of God has warned me that one of my townsmen of Nîmes knows them. Go to him when you are set at liberty, and give him, from me, the diamond I received from Sir Herbert Newton; but I make this condition, that on receiving the diamond, he shall confide to you the names of those whom I regard as my murderers. When you have learned them, you will return to Naples and place them, written on a sheet of lead, in my tomb.'"
Antoine Allut at once confessed that he knew the names sought for, and repeated them, not however without a secret feeling of terror. His wife encouraged him, and the abbé wrote down the names—Gervais Chaubard, Guilhem Solari, and last, Gilles Loupian.
The ring was handed over. It was sold to a jeweler for sixty-three thousand seven hundred and forty-nine francs, eleven centimes, paid down on the spot. Four months later, to the eternal despair of the ​Alluts, it was re-sold to a Turkish dealer for one hundred and two thousand francs. This led to the murder of the jeweler, and the total ruin of the Allut family, who had to fly, and who remained in Greece in a state of poverty.
A lady presented herself at the Café Loupian and asked for the proprietor. She told him that her family was indebted for eminent services to a poor man, ruined by the events of 1814, but so disinterested that he would take no reward. He was anxious, however, to enter as a waiter in some establishment where he would be treated well. He was not young, he looked about fifty; but to influence M. Loupian to engage him, she would pay him a hundred francs a mouth, unknown to the applicant.
Loupian accepted the terms. A man came, badly dressed and not good-looking. Madame Loupian examined him attentively, and thought she saw some likeness to some old acquaintance, but could not recall anything satisfactory, and forgot the matter. Two men from Nîmes used to come regularly to the café. One day, one of them did not appear. A few jokes were made about his absence. The next day, too, passed without his appearing. Guilhem Solari undertook to discover the reason; he returned to the café about nine o'clock, and in great consternation related that on the day before, about five in the morning, the body of the unfortunate Chaubard had been found, stabbed with a dagger, on the Pont des Arts. The weapon was left in the wound, and the handle was inscribed, in printed letters, Number One.
All kinds of conjectures were made. The police moved heaven and earth, but the criminal escaped all their investigations. Some time afterward a sporting dog belonging to the landlord was poisoned, and a boy declared that he had seen a client give the poor brute some biscuits. The boy gave a description of the client.
He was set down as an enemy of Loupian, who out of spite used to come to the café, where Loupian was, so to say, at his orders. An action was brought against the malicious client, but he proved his innocence by establishing an alibi. He was a courier on the mail-coach, and on the day of the crime arrived at Strasbourg. Two weeks after this, Madame Loupian's favorite parrot met the same fate as the dog, and was poisoned with bitter almonds and parsley. New investigations were made, but without any result.
Loupian had a daughter of sixteen years of age by his first maiTiair: she was beautiful as an angel. A swell saw her, became crazy about her, and spent immense sums in buying over to his interest the people of the café and the girl's maid; he thus had numerous interviews with her, and seduced her, under the pretense that he was a marquis and a ​millionaire. The girl did not think of her folly till she had to let out her stays. Then she confessed her weakness to her parents. They spoke to the gentleman. He boasted of his fortune, agreed to marry her, and showed his title-deeds and pedigree. Joy returned to the Loupian household. In brief, the marriage took place, and the bridegroom, who would have everything in good style, ordered for the evening a dinner of one hundred and fifty covers at the Cadran Bleu.
At the appointed time the guests assembled, but the marquis did not appear. A letter, however, arrived announcing that by order of the king the marquis had gone to the Tuileries; he begged to be excused for the delay, and requested them to dine without him; he would be back at ten o'clock. The dinner took place without the son-in-law. The bride was in a bad temper, in spite of the congratulations on her husband's distinguished position. Two courses had been dispatched. At dessert, a waiter laid a letter on the plate of each guest, informing them that the bridegroom was an escaped convict and had run away.
The consternation of M. and Mme. Loupian was terrible, but they did not see clearly into the cause of this misfortune. Four days afterward, one Sunday, while the whole family was on a trip into the country, fire broke out in nine different spots in the rooms below the café; a crowd gathered, and under pretense of assisting, stole, robbed, broke, and destroyed; the flames gained possession of the house, which was consumed. The owner sued Loupian; he was utterly ruined, and the unfortunate couple had nothing left but a small sum belonging to the wife. All their cash, all their effects and furniture had been stolen or destroyed in the disastrous fire.
The Loupian family, in consequence, were deserted by their friends; the old servant, Prosper, alone remained faithful; he would not leave them; he followed them without wages, content to share their bread. He was lauded and admired, and a modest little café was set up in the Rue Saint-Antoine. Solari became a visitor there; but one evening, on returning home, he was seized with violent pains. A doctor was summoned, who declared Solari poisoned, and, in spite of all efforts, the unfortunate man died in terrible convulsions. Twelve hours after, the bier was, according to custom, exposed at the door of the house where Solari lived, and on the black cloth that covered the coffin a paper was found, on which these two ill-omened words were inscribed by means of printed letters, Number Two.
Besides the daughter whose fate had been so unhappy, Loupian had a son. This lad, falling in with bad companions of both sexes, after a few struggles, ended by plunging into reckless dissipation. One night his comrades proposed a "racket," to break into a liquor-store, take a ​dozen bottles, drink them, and pay next day. Eugene Loupian, already half drunk, gleefully accepted the proposal; but just when the door had been forced, and the bottles selected, two for each member of the gang, the police, warned by a traitor, came on the scene; the six offenders were arrested, tried, and condemned for burglary, and young Loupian had to undergo twenty years in prison.
This catastrophe completed the ruin and ill-fortune of the family. The beautiful and rich Thérèse died of grief, and as she left no children, the remains of her dowry had to be restored to her family. The wretched Loupian and his daughter were thus left without resources; but the faithful waiter, who had a few savings, offered to advance some money to the young woman, but attached a price to these services, and made improper proposals to Mademoiselle Loupian. The girl, in hopes of saving her father, and in the depths of want, accepted the shameful condition, and sank from concubinage to the lowest stage of degradation.
Loupian could be hardly said to live; his misfortunes had shaken his reason. One evening, while he was walking in a dark alley in the garden of the Tuileries a man in a mask stood before him.
"Loupian," he cried, "do you remember the year 1807?"
"Why?"
"Do you know what crime you committed at that time?"
"A crime!"
"An infamous crime! Out of jealousy, you flung into a dungeon your friend Picaud,—do you remember?"
"God has punished me severely!"
"No, not God, but Picaud himself. To allay his vengeance, he stabbed Chaubard on the Pont des Arts; he poisoned Solari; he gave your daughter a convict for a husband, and wove the net into which your son fell; his hand killed your dog and your wife's parrot; his hand set fire to your house and urged on the robbers; he has caused your wife to die of sorrow; your daughter is his concubine. Yes, in your waiter, Prosper, recognize Picaud; recognize him at the moment when he will complete his Number Three!"
Furious with rage, he plunged his dagger into the heart of his victim, with such a well-directed blow that Loupian fell dead without uttering a cry. Having accomplished this last act of vengeance, Picaud turned to leave the garden, when an iron hand seized him by the neck and flung him to the ground beside the corpse, and a man, taking advantage of his surprise, tied his hands and feet, thrust a gag into his mouth, and, wrapping him up in his own cloak, carried him off.
Nothing could equal the rage and astonishment of Picaud when he found himself thus bound and hurried away. It was certain he had ​not fallen into the hands of the police, for even a single gendarme would not have taken such extraordinary precautions, as a shout would have brought to his aid the sentinels stationed near. Was it a robber who was carrying him off? What a strange robber! It could not be a joke. In any case, Picaud had fallen into a trap; this was the only conclusion that could be drawn by the murderer Picaud.
When the man on whose shoulders he was borne finally stopped, Picaud estimated that about half an hour had elapsed. Picaud, still wrapped in the cloak, had seen nothing of the road traversed. When he was released, he found himself laid on a truckle-bed with a straw mattress; the atmosphere of the place was thick and heavy; he thought he recognized it as a subterranean passage belonging, to all appearances, to an abandoned quarry.
The almost total darkness of the place, the natural agitation of Picaud, the change that ten years of want and despair had effected in the stranger's look, did not permit the murderer of Loupian to recognize the individual who had appeared so like a phantom. He examined him in dull silence, waiting for some word to explain the fate he had to expect. Ten minutes thus passed before a single word was uttered.
"Well, Picaud!" he said, "what name do you go by now, the one your father gave you, or the one you assumed when you quitted Fenestrelles? Are you the Abbé Baldini or the waiter Prosper? Cannot your ingenuity supply you with a fifth? You think that revenge is a good joke, I suppose; it is a furious madness, which you yourself would hold in horror if you had not sold your soul to the devil. You have sacrificed the ten last years of your life to the pursuit of three wretches whom you ought to have spared. You have perpetrated horrible crimes. You are lost forever; and you have dragged me, too, into the abyss!"
"You! you! Who are you?"
"I am your accomplice, a scoundrel who, for money, sold the life of my friends! Your money was deadly; the cupidity which you kindled in my soul has never been extinguished. The greed of riches made me mad and wicked. I slew the man who deceived me. I and my wife had to fly; she died in our exile, and I, arrested, tried, and condemned to the galleys, have endured the pillory and the branding-iron, and dragged the ball and chain. At length, when in my turn I escaped, I resolved to punish that Abbé Baldini who knew so well how to punish others. I hastened to Naples; no one knew him there. I looked for the grave of Picaud; I heard Picaud was alive. How did I learn that fact? Neither you nor the pope will tear the secret from me. I resumed my pursuit of the feigned dead man; but when I found him, two murders had already marked his vengeance; the children of Loupian ​were ruined, his house burned, and his fortune destroyed. This evening I was about to address the unhappy man and tell him all; but once more you anticipated me; the devil gave you the start of me, and Loupian fell beneath your blows, before that God who was guiding me permitted me to save from death your last victim. What matter, after all? I have you now! I, in my turn, can prove to you that the men of our country have arms as good as their memories! I am Antoine Allut!"
Picaud made no reply, but strange emotions shook his soul. Sustained up to that moment by the giddy drunkenness of revenge, he had forgotten his immense fortune and all the pleasures it placed within his reach. Now, when his vengeance was accomplished, when he was about to plan a future life of wealth, he had fallen into the hands of a man as implacable as he remembered he had been himself. These thoughts flitted through his brain, and a convulsion of rage made him bite the gag that Antoine Allut had had the foresight to use.
"Can I not," he reflected, "rich as I am, by fine promises, and if necessary, by even a real sacrifice, get rid of this enemy? I gave fifty thousand francs to learn the names of my victims; will not an equal amount, or even twice the amount, free me from the peril I am in?"
But the dense fumes of avarice obscured the clearness of this thought. Although he possessed sixteen millions, he shrank from having to surrender the sum that might be demanded. Love of gold choked the cries of his carnal self that longed to purchase its liberty, yet could plead only feebly. "Oh!" he said in the inmost recesses of his soul, "the poorer I pretend to be, the sooner I shall get out of this prison. No one knows how much I possess; I will feign to be on the verge of beggary; he will let me go for a few crowns, and then, once out of his hands, I will soon get him into mine."
Such were the absurd imaginations of Picaud, such the mess he made of hopes and mistakes, while Allut was removing the gag.
"Where am I?" he asked.
"No matter! you are in a place where you can expect neither aid nor pity; you are in my power, in mine alone, understand, and are the slave of my will and my caprice."
Picaud smiled disdainfully, and his old friend ceased to speak. He left him still lying on the truckle-bed, where he had flung him down, and did not loosen his bonds. Allut even added to the severity of the restraints which held the prisoner, and passed around his waist a large, thick girdle of iron, fastened by a chain to three huge rings riveted to the wall. Having done this, Allut sat down to supper; and as Picaud saw that Allut did not offer him a portion, he said:
"I am hungry!"
​"What will you pay if I give you some bread and water?"
"I've no money."
"You have sixteen millions and more," rejoined Allut; and he gave Picaud such details respecting the deposits of his funds in England, Germany, Italy, and France, that the miser felt his whole body shiver.
"You are dreaming!"
"You may dream, then, that you are eating."
Allut went away and remained absent all the night; about seven in the morning he returned and had breakfast. The sight of the viands redoubled Picaud's torments of hunger.
"Give me something to eat!" he said.
"What will you pay if I give you some bread and water?"
"Nothing."
"Well, we'll see who is tired first!"
And he went away again.
He returned at three in the afternoon; Picaud had had no food for twenty-eight hours, and implored pity from his jailer, to whom he offered twenty sous for a pound of bread.
"Listen!" said Allut, "here are my terms. I will give you something to eat twice a day, and you will pay for each meal twenty-five thousand francs."
Picaud groaned, and writhed on his bed, while the other remained motionless.
"This is my last word. Choose; take your time. You had no pity on your friends; I will be pitiless toward you!"
The wretched prisoner passed the rest of the day and the following night in the rage of hunger and despair; his moral anguish reached its climax; hell was in his heart. His sufferings were such that he was seized with tetanus, as if the nerves were torn; his head wandered, the rays of heavenly intelligence were extinguished beneath this flood of passions carried to their furthest limit. Allut, pitiless as he was, was quick to perceive that the human frame could be tortured too much; his old friend was no longer capable of discernment; he was a mere machine, still sensible to physical pain, but incapable of fighting against it or repelling it. He had to renounce his hope of getting a word from him. Allut fell into despair at the thought that if Picaud died no means were left by which he could get hold of his victim's immense property. In his rage he struck himself, but detecting a diabolical smile on the livid face of Picaud, he flung himself on him like a wild beast, bit him, stabbed his eyes, disemboweled him, and then, rushing from the spot, left Paris and crossed to England.
In that country he fell sick, in 1828, and confessed to a French Catholic priest. In his repentance for his crimes he dictated to the ​clergyman all the details of this terrible history, and signed each page. Allut died in peace with God, and received Christian burial. After his death, Abbé P——— sent to the Paris police the valuable document from which the strange facts above recorded have been derived. He wrote also the following letter:
"MONSIEUR LE PRÉFET:
"I have had the happiness of bringing to repentance a very great sinner. He believed, and I agreed with him, that it would be advisable to communicate to you a series of horrible events in which the unhappy man had been at once actor and victim. By following the indications furnished in the note annexed to this sheet, you will discover the subterranean chamber where the remains of the wretched and unfortunate Picaud, the victim of his own passions and hate, may still be found. God grants pardon. Men, in their pride, wish to do more than God; they pursue vengeance, and vengeance crushes them.
"Antoine Allut sought in vain for the spot where his victim's treasures were deposited. He entered his room secretly by night, but no book, deed, or document, and no sum of money fell into his hands. I inclose the addresses and instructions how to find the two lodgings which, under his two assumed names, Picaud occupied in Paris.
"Even on the bed of death Allut refused to tell me how he had obtained his knowledge of the facts related in the document, or who informed him of the crimes and wealth of Picaud; only, just before expiring, he said: 'Father, the faith of no man is more living than mine, for I have seen and heard a soul that had left the body.'
"Nothing then indicated delirium on the part of Allut. He had just made his solemn profession of faith. The men of this age are presumptuous; in their ignorance, their refusal to believe seems to them wisdom. The ways of God are infinite. Let us adore and submit.
"I have the honor, etc., etc."
(Archives of the Police Department.)