CHAPTER VIII: "MONSIEUR NOËL, IF YOU PLEASE"
The diligence stopped almost at once. Patrice was saved. But the heavy little portmanteau with the two hundred thousand francs was gone. There was nothing left in the coach but Patrice, half-swooning, on the top and, inside, the contractors' agent, who, when M. de Meyrentin's detectives at last joined the phantom diligence, had just enough strength left to tell them how he had been robbed in the simplest fashion by a gentleman in a black mask who had sprung upon him and calmly placed the muzzle of a revolver to his forehead. The agent had not had the pluck to resist him. Besides, the man had already flung the portmanteau on the road and jumped out after it.
The clerk had hardly finished his short and distressful tale, when old Switch came running up. The driver was safe and sound. He related, with great excitement, how he had suddenly felt himself lifted from his box by an irresistible force. And, before he could say a word, he was up in the trees, in the arms of a masked gentleman, who had let him down without ceremony, but very carefully, in the road and, taking off his hat, had wished him a good journey, whereupon Switch had hurried to take a cross-road and catch the diligence at the top of the hill. As for the detectives, they were in dismay. They declared that they would never dare return to duty nor even go back to the prefecture. They were condemned to, public ridicule for all time.
The reader will not be surprised to hear that, on learning of the failure of his expedition, M. de Meyrentin was so much upset that he was promptly laid up with jaundice. And it was while he was keeping his room that, by the irony of fate, the Three Brothers were arrested!
The thing happened in the stupidest fashion. The most monstrous and also the most mysterious tyranny that a small district was ever doomed to undergo seemed — I say, "seemed" — to have come to an end because two gendarmes happened to pass along the road at the moment when the Messieurs Vautrin were sending the dirty soul of Bazin the process-server to the great hereafter. . . . Say what you will, there was nothing ill-natured about the Three Brothers; and, as long as you did not resist them, they did you no harm! But you mustn't resist them! That fool of a process-server would have been living to this day if he had handed over his money-bag nicely and quietly. A blow is so soon given. They had not measured the consequences. And Bazin the process-server died of the blow.
It was very unlucky for him that the Three Brothers were not carrying their guns that day when he met them. He would have given them anything without protest and would still be serving his writs. It was unlucky for the Vautrins too, who had to yield before the threat of the gendarmes' revolvers without making the least show of a fight.
The Three Brothers were sent to Riom for trial; and the proceedings were hastened. Now that they were no longer feared, everybody rose up against them and they were charged with all the crimes committed in the department during the past ten years, all the crimes that had not been brought home to their authors. The murders of Lombard, Camus and Blondel were ascribed to them, of course. And it was partly their own, doing, for they defended themselves slackly, not feeling at all sure that one of them was not the culprit and refusing at any cost to accuse one another.
For the rest, they adopted an heroic and cynical attitude, boasting of the misdemeanours which they had committed beyond a doubt and parading their contempt for humanity in general and the government in particular. They could not forgive the government for not finding some quibble to save them from the assizes; and they loudly proclaimed that, if ever they recovered their liberty, they would not be such fools again and would vote for the King. And so they were closely watched.
The question of an accomplice was raised at the trial. The public prosecutor would not hear of it, the presiding judge neither, both of these luminaries considering that the case was quite clear without an accomplice and both agreeing with the prisoners, who themselves swore that they had never had an accomplice.
But M. de Meyrentin urged the other point of view. And he spoke of a certain Bilbao.
Patrice also, who of course was called as a witness, timidly mentioned the name of Bilbao, without, however, insisting when the prosecuting counsel strongly suggested that he must have dreamt it or made some mistake.