The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Prose - 92. Victor Hugo "Claude loved Albin very much"

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Claude Gueux [i]

 

Seven or eight years ago, a man named Claude Gueux, a hand-to-mouth laborer, lived in Paris. He had with him a girl who was his mistress, and a child of this young woman’s. I tell things as they are, leaving the reader to pick and choose moralities as the facts broadcast themselves along our path. This day-laborer was capable, resilient, intelligent, and although much neglected by way of education, he’d been very well endowed by nature; thus, illiterate, he was still capable of reasoning things out. One winter, his sources of work dried up. There was neither food nor heat in their attic hovel. The man, the girl and the child were cold and hungry. The man stole. I do not know what he stole; I do not know from where he stole it. What I do know is that this theft resulted in three days of bread and fuel for the woman and child, and five years of prison for the man.

He was sent to do his time in the penitentiary of Clairvaux. Clairvaux, an abbey converted to a bastille, featured monk cells made into jail blocks – of which one served as a factory – and an altar transformed into a pillory. When we speak of progress, this is how some people understand and execute it. This is the thing they underline from our words.

But, let us continue.

When he arrived there, he was put in a cell for the nights, and in a workshop for the days. It is not the workshop that I blame.

 

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Claude Gueux, one-time honest worker, known as a thief thereafter, cut a figure both dignified and grave. He had a high forehead, already wrinkled although still young, some gray hair lost amid his black tufts, soft eyes powerfully shaded under well-formed brows, large nostrils, a forward chin, and proud lips. It was a striking head. We’ll see what society decided to do with it.

He rarely spoke, infrequently gestured, and yet, commanded something in his whole persona that made others want to obey him; perhaps it was his pensive air, for it appeared more serious than suffering. Although he had suffered a great deal.

 

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In the arsenal where Claude Gueux was under lock and key, there functioned a director of the sweatshops, a sort of civil servant unique to prisons, because he holds simultaneous roles as teller, accountant and jailor, one who gives a workorder at the same time he threatens a prisoner; one who puts the tool in your hands while he slaps the irons on your feet. This particular superintendent was himself a subset of the species, for although a short, tyrannical man – obedient to his preconceived notions – he always came up short on authority. Moreover, on occasion, he made for a fair workmate, a good joker, even being jovial when mocking with glibness. He was hard rather than firm, equivocating to none, not even himself; a good father – no doubt, a good husband, which is not a virtue but a duty – so, he was in a few words, not dastardly, but amoral. He was one of those men who have nothing vibrant or elastic in their natures, who are composed of inert molecules, who fail to resonate to the blast of new ideas, who permit no contact of feelings, who have icy angers, dull hatreds, emotionless outbursts; ones who catch fire without heating up, whose thermal capacity is nil, and whom one would often say are made like matchsticks; they flare up at one end while staying cold at the other.

The principal feature, the very backbone of this man’s character, was his tenacity. He was proud to be pugnacious, and compared himself to Napoleon. But such was an optical illusion. And there are many fooled like this, who, from a distance, confuse doggedness for willpower, as if mistaking a candle for a star. When this man, therefore, had once hitched his so-called will to an absurd thing, he went to absurd lengths to see it through the undergrowth. For stubbornness without intelligence is stupidity for stupidity’s sake. It propels itself far. And when a private or public catastrophe has befallen us in general, if we examine the rubble strewn upon the ground, we invariably discover it came about because of a mediocre and obstinate man who had an unreasonable admiration for himself.

There are many of these headstrong little dead-ends in the world who believe themselves to be wide-open providences. So it was with the director of the workshops of the penitentiary at Clairvaux. This is the steel with which society strikes the prisoners every day to get sparks out of them. Yet, the spark such steel rips from such flint often starts conflagrations.

 

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As we said, once Claude Gueux arrived at Clairvaux, he was shackled to a numbered workbench in the manufactory. Once the superintendent saw he was a good worker, he tried to butter him up and become friendly with the man. He even went so far as to play a joke on him one day – seeing how Claude was always downcast, thinking about the one he called his woman – the superintendent told Gueux the girl had had to resort to streetwalking to make ends meet. [ii]

Claude asked coldly what had become of the boychild.

No one knows, he was told.

 

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After a few months, Claude became acclimated to the prison air and appeared to think of nothing particular anymore. A certain severe serenity, proper to his character, had taken over.

By the end of this same span of time, Gueux had acquired a singular superiority over all his associates. As if by tacit agreement, without anyone knowing why – least of all Claude – these men all consulted him, listened to him, looked up to him and imitated him, which is the highest form of admiration. And it was no mediocre achievement to be obeyed by so many discordant natures; all while this empire had come about without his scheming for it.

Perhaps it had to do with the look they saw in Claude’s eyes. They say the eye is the window through which we see the thoughts of a person come and go in their head.

Put someone who germinates ideas amongst those who do not, and after a given period, seemingly by an irresistible law of attraction, all the dark brains will meekly and adoringly gravitate towards the radiant mind. There are men who are iron, and men who are loving. Claude was loving.

Therefore, after only three months, Claude became the lifeblood – as well as the law and order – of his workshop. All hands turned on his dial to the degree that he must have wondered if he were a king or captive. Certainly he seemed to be a sort of pope conclaved among his cardinals.

And, by quite predictable reaction, on the balance scales weighing out his love by the prisoners, the jailors chose to hate him in equal measure. Favor can never expect to be gained without disfavor, and the love amongst slaves can be reasoned doubled by the hate coming from their masters.

 

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Claude Gueux was a hearty eater. It was the idiosyncrasy of his bodily organization. His stomach was such, the food of two ordinary men was barely enough for him to eke out his day. The Lord of Cotadilla had one of these appetites, and laughed about it; but what can be occasion for gaiety from a Grand Duke of Spain – one with five hundred thousand head of sheep, no less – is a sore burden for a workman, and a downright affliction for an inmate.

Claude Gueux, while free to live in his attic hideaway, had always worked throughout the day to earn his four pounds of bread, and ate it. Claude Gueux, while trapped in the penitentiary, worked all day and invariably received a pound-and-a-half of bread, plus four ounces of meat, as part of his punishment. Such a ration is meant to be inescapable. So Claude was consistently starved in the prison of Clairvaux.

He was hungry, and that was what it was. He didn’t complain about it. Such was his nature.

One day, Claude having just devoured his meager pittance, went back to his bench, thinking he could stave off famine by working hard at his task. While the other prisoners were still eating contentedly, a young man – pale, blond and slight – came and stood near him.

In his hands he held a table knife and his dinner ration, which he had yet to touch. He stood there, close to Claude, looking as if he wanted to say something, but somehow didn’t dare.

This young man, and his bread and his meat, were disturbing to Claude.

“What do you want, kid?” he finally said curtly.

“I’d like you to do me a favor,” the shy young man replied.

“What?!”

“Help me eat this. It’s too much for me.”

A tear welled in Claude’s too-proud eye. In time, he took the knife, divided the food into two portions, and claimed one half as his own. They began to eat.

“Merci,” said the young man. “If you would wish, we can continue to share like this every day.”

“What is your name?” asked Claude Gueux.

“Albin.”

“Why are you here?”

“I stole.”

“And I did as well,” said Claude.

They indeed continued to parse out their food every day.

 

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Claude Gueux was thirty-six years old, but so stern in his thinking and usual aspect that at times he appeared fifty. Albin was twenty years old, but one would have taken him for seventeen; much innocence still resided in the looks of this petty larcenist. A close relationship developed between these two men, based on an affection closer to that of father and son, rather than brother to brother. Albin was almost still a child; Claude was nearly an old man.

They worked in the same workshop, they slept under the same keystone, they exercised in the same enclosed yard, they bit into the same loaf of bread. Each of the two friends was the universe to the other. It seems they were able to make each other happy. [iii]

 

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We have already spoken of the director of the workshops. This man, so hated amongst the prisoners, often had to bend low and seek help to make them compliant from Claude, who was beloved by them. On more than one occasion, when it had been a question of preventing tumult or open rebellion, the egalitarian authority of Claude Gueux had lent legitimacy to the official non-authority of the superintendent. Indeed, to contain the prisoners, ten words from Claude were worth more than ten armed guards. Gueux had provided this service to the director many times. So the superintendent harbored a cordial hatred for the man. His was a jealousy for this convicted thief. At the bottom of his heart lived a bitter, envious, insuppressible animosity for Claude, the loathing of a lackey monarch for a duly invested sovereign; of temporal force for spiritual power.

Such hatreds are the worst.

Claude loved Albin very much, and never considered the director. [iv]

Then, one day – one morning – when the turnkeys were transferring the inmates two by two from their cells to the workshop, a guard called to Albin, who was next to Claude, and warned the boy that the superintendent was asking around for him.

“What could he want from you?” asked Claude.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” replied Albin.

The guard took Albin away.

 

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The morning passed; Albin did not return to the factory floor. When it was time for the midday repast, Claude thought he’d encounter Albin in the enclosed yard. Albin was not in the enclosed yard. The inmates returned to the workshop; Albin did not return to the workshop. The day went on like that. At the end of the evening shift, when the prisoners were being taken back to their cells, Claude looked around for Albin, but did not see him. It appeared he was suffering greatly at that moment, because Claude spoke to a guard, which is something he never did.

“Is it because Albin’s sick?” he asked.

“No,” replied the jailor.

“So, what’s the matter then,” resumed Claude, “for he hasn’t come back today.”

“Ah—” said the turnkey far too carelessly. “That’s because he’s been relocated to another cellblock.”

Witnesses, who later testified to these facts, noticed the candle in Claude’s hand tremble at hearing this reply. The inmate continued calmly:

“By whose order?”

The guard replied:

“Monsieur D.”

The superintendent of the workshop was called Monsieur D.

The following day passed like the previous one, without Albin.

 

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At the end of the evening, when the manufactory was closing down for the night, the director, Monsieur D., came to make his usual rounds through the workshop. As soon as Claude saw him, he took off his thick woolen cap and buttoned up his gray jacket. This sad livery of Clairvaux penitentiary was considered more respectful to superiors when done up tight. Thus, Gueux stood by the end of his bench, cap in hand, waiting for the superintendent to come by. The man passed.

“Monsieur!” cried Claude.

The director stopped, but then turned away.

“Is it true,” continued Claude, “that Albin has been reassigned cellblocks?”

“Yes,” replied the superintendent.

“Sir,” Claude pleaded, “I must have Albin to live—”

He added:

“You know I don’t have enough to eat with the house ration, and you also know Albin shares his bread with me.”

“That was his affair,” said the director.

“Sir, isn’t there some way to get Albin back in the same cellblock as mine?”

“That won’t be possible. A decision had been made.”

“By whom?”

“By me.”

“Monsieur D.,” repeated Claude, “it’s a matter of life and death for me, and it all depends on you.”

“I never renege on my edicts.”

“Sir, have I ever done anything to offend you?”

“No, nothing.”

“In that case, why are you separating me from Albin?”

“Because—” This was all the explanation he gave, and then, the superintendent moved on.

Claude lowered his head and could not reply. Poor caged lion, they had taken his compliant pet away from him. [v]

 

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We regret to say this heartache of separation did not alter the prisoner’s somewhat chronic hunger. Moreover, nothing appreciably appeared to change in him. He did not speak of Albin to any of his fellow inmates. He strode alone in the exercise yard during the break intervals, and was famished. Nothing more.

However, for those who knew him best, they noticed a menacing, darker cast growing on his face by the day. But besides this, he acted meeker than ever.

Several wished to divide their ration with him, but he refused all, grinning shyly.

At the end of every evening, since the superintendent had given him the excuse of Because, Claude did an extraordinary thing for such a taciturn person as he. At the moment the director passed Claude’s workbench, having come back to do his usual rounds, the inmate raised his eyes, looked at the man steadily, and addressed him in a tone full of anger and anguish. Two words only, but they were simultaneous prayer and threat: “And Albin?”

The superintendent pretended not to hear, or shrugged his shoulders, as he strolled away. [vi]

 

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This man was wrong to shrug his shoulders, because it was obvious to all the spectators of these strange scenes that Claude Gueux was inwardly determined on some course of action. The whole prison waited anxiously for the outcome of this struggle between pigheadedness and resolve.

It was also reported, among other things, Claude told the director:

“Listen, monsieur, give me back my mate. It would be best for you, I assure you. Heed well, for I’m putting you on notice.” [vii]

Another time, on a Sunday when he was keeping to himself in the exercise yard, sitting on a stone, elbows on his knees, forehead in his hands – the like attitude in which he stayed for hours on end – Claude was approached by a death-row inmate named Faillette. The condemned called out to him, laughing:

“What the hell are you doing out here, Claude?”

Claude, slowly lifting his head, said:

“I’m sitting in judgment.”

 

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At last, late in the evening of the 25th of October 1831, Claude loudly broke a watch crystal underfoot while the superintendent was making his rounds; it was one he’d found in the corridor that morning. The director of the workshop demanded to know where that sound had come from.

“It’s nothing,” said Claude, “only me. Monsieur le Directeur, return to me my partner.” [viii]

“Impossible,” replied the superintendent.

“Nevertheless, you must,” Claude said in a strong, firm bass. And then, holding the superintendent’s eyes, he added:

“Consider it well. Today is the 25th of October. I’ll let you have until the 4th of November.”

A guard brought to Monsieur D.’s attention that Claude was threatening him; that this was a situation calling for the dungeon.

“No, not the dark hole,” said the director with a hate-filled leer. “One must show a little pity for men of this type.”

 

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The following day, another sentenced inmate named Pernot approached Claude. Gueux had been pacing alone and pensive, leaving the other prisoners to cavort in a small patch of sunshine at the other end of the enclosed yard.

“All right, now. Claude! What are you mulling over so deeply? You look miserable.”

“I’m afraid,” said Claude, “that some misfortune will soon befall our good Monsieur D.”

Nine full days exist between October 25 and November 4, and not a one of them went by without Claude gravely warning the superintendent of the increasingly painful state in which Albin’s disappearance was placing on him. The director, tired of the prayers sounding like a summons as well, imposed twenty-four hours of solitary confinement, and this was the only thing Claude obtained from him.

 

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The 4th of November arrived. On that day, Claude awoke with a serene expression to his countenance, one not seen since the day of Monsieur D.’s decision to separate him from his love. On rising, he rummaged in a sort of footlocker; a wooden box, faded in white paint, in which he’d gathered his few prison rags. He withdrew a little pair of embroidery scissors. It was, along with a mismatched volume of Emile, the only things he had left of the woman he’d been very fond of, whose child was like his own; of his happy little household in the past. The book could only be read by a scholar. The scissors, only used by a woman. Claude could neither read nor sew. [ix]

As he passed along the desecrated, whitewashed, former monks’ cloistered walkway – used now as a wintertime exercise ground – he came upon the sentenced man Ferrari looking intently through the huge bars blocking a window to the outside world. Claude kept the pair of little scissors in his big hand, showing them to Ferrari as he said:

“Tonight I will cut these bars with this.”

Ferrari, incredulous, laughed – and so did Claude.

That morning, he worked with more fire than was his usual. He had never operated so quickly or precisely before. He appeared determined to complete a straw hat by noon that an honest businessman in Troyes, a certain Monsieur Bressier, had paid him for in advance.

 

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A little before midday, Claude fabricated an excuse to go down to the carpenters’ shop, located on the ground level, right below where Claude toiled away. The man was loved here, just like everywhere he went, although he scarcely had reason to visit with them. Thus:

“Hello! It’s Claude!”

They gathered around him. It was a celebration. Claude took a quick glance through the room. Not a single guard was present.

“Who has a hatchet they can lend me?”

“What for?” he was asked.

“To kill the director of the workshop tonight.”

Presented with several to choose from, he took the smallest hatchet – which was extremely sharp – slipped it into the waistband of his trousers, and exited the room. He didn’t bother to swear them to secrecy. They’d all keep it anyway.

They didn’t even discuss it among themselves. Everyone waited off to the sides for what would happen. The situation was terrible, but it was straightforward and simple. For Claude could neither be counseled nor turned in.

An hour later, Claude approached a young convict of sixteen, who was loafing a-yawn in the cloister’s walkway, and advised him to learn how to read. It was at this precise moment that condemned inmate Faillette overtook them and asked what in the hell was bulging from Gueux’s trousers. Claude said:

“It’s an axe to kill Monsieur D. tonight.”

Then, he added:

“Why? Does it show?”

“A little—” replied Faillette.

For the remainder of the day, things were as usual. At seven o’clock in the evening, after their meal, the inmates were locked in the manufactory, each standing by his assigned bench to continue their work shift. The guards had left them to partake in their own supper, as it was customary for them to reappear only after the superintendent had completed his rounds at nine.

Claude Gueux was therefore pent up with the rest of his coworkers in the factory.

 

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What followed is the type of scene beyond the ability of storytelling to convey, for it was one unique in its extraordinary elements of majesty and terror.

According to the official judicial investigation, which has subsequently taken place, there were eighty-two inmates present in the chamber, including Claude.

As soon as the guards had left them on their own, Claude clambered on top of his workbench and announced he had something to say to the whole room. Everyone fell silent.

Claude then raised his voice and told them:

“You all know Albin was my partner. I can’t survive on what they feed us here. Even if I spent all of the little extra money I make on the side to buy bread, it wouldn’t be enough for me. Albin split his rations with me; at first I loved him because he fed me, but then I loved him because he loved me in return. The superintendent, Monsieur D., separated us. Our being together didn’t bother him, I know it, but he is a wicked man who delights in tormenting others. I asked for my Albin again. And you all saw! He refused. I gave him until November 4 to return Albin to me. He replied to my asking for this by putting me in the hole. But since then, I have tried him and sentenced him to death. Today is the 4th of November. In less than two hours, he will appear here to make his inspections. I warn you now that I will kill him when he does. However, I ask, do any of you wish to say something before I do?” [x]

All kept silent.

Claude continued. He spoke, it appears, with a singular eloquence that was entirely natural to him. He said he understood he was about to do something violent, but he did not believe he was in the wrong. He appealed to the consciences of the eighty-one other inmates gathered to listen to him:

That he was in dire straits;

That the need to take justice into one’s own hands was an inevitable dead-end, but that sometimes a person was duty-bound to follow it;

That he, in truth, could not take the director’s life without sacrificing his own, but that he found it noble to give his life for a just cause;

That he had been ruminating upon it, and only it, for the last two months;

That he felt he was not allowing himself to be carried away by bitterness, but that if he were, he wanted to be warned away from it;

That he had sincerely relayed his motivations to the righteous men who listened to him now;

That he was therefore determined to kill Monsieur D., but that if anyone had an objection to make to him, Claude was ready to entertain it.

A solitary voice spoke up, saying that before killing the superintendent, Claude should try one last time to talk to the man; to try and bend him to Claude’s will.

“You’re right,” said Claude, “and I shall.”

 

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The great clock struck eight. The director was to come at nine.

Once this strange court of appeals had, as it were, ratified the sentence he’d passed, Claude regained his serenity. He spread his bench with all he owned by way of linens and clothes, the poor remains of a captive, calling over the fellows he cared the most for after Albin, and handed everything out. He kept only the small embroidery scissors.

Then he kissed them all. A few wept, and for those he offered a tender smile.

There then passed moments, in this final hour, where he chatted with such tranquilly – and even jollity – that several of his intimates secretly hoped, as they later testified, that Claude might yet set aside his decision. He even distracted himself by blowing out one of the few rancid candles lit in the workshop by huffing on it with his nostrils. He had vices of upbringing that disturbed his inherent dignity more than they should have. On occasion, nothing could prevent this old street urchin from smelling the gutters of Paris.

He noticed a young convict staring at him with unblinking eyes. The boy was pale and no doubt trembling in anticipation over what he was about to witness.

“Come on, be brave, young man,” Claude told him gently. “It’ll be over before you know it.”

Once he had distributed all of his worldly goods, said all of his goodbyes, and shaken all of their hands, he interrupted some of the uneasy chatter happening here and there in the dark corners of the factory, and commanded everyone to take up their regular stations. All obeyed in silence.

 

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The manufactory where this took place was an oblong room, a long parallelogram pierced with windows on the two lengths, and a pair of doors facing each other from either end. Equipment ranged on each long side below the windows, the workbenches touched these at right angles, and the clear floorspace left between the end of the benches formed an aisle, running straight through the entire space from one door to the other. This was the long, fairly narrow path the manager traveled making his inspections; entering through the south portal and exiting at the north end, after looking right and left at the workers. He made this trip quite quickly more often than not, and usually without stopping.

Claude had resumed his station and gone back to work, in this way resembling Jacques Clément returning to prayer before he murdered King Henri III.

Everyone bided their time; the moment was approaching. Suddenly, the bell rang out. Claude said:

“It’s quarter of nine.“

So he got up, solemnly crossed the room and took up a position leaning against the corner of the first machine to the left of the front door. His face was perfectly calm and free of malevolence.

Nine o’clock struck. The door opened. The superintendent entered.

That moment was greeted with statuesque silence in the workshop.

The director was alone, as was his habit.

Entering self-satisfied and breezy, his immovable face failed to notice Claude standing there with his hand in his waistband. He walked past the first workbenches shaking his head and chewing his words, casting a disappointed look here and there, without noticing all other eyes were fixed on a terrible idea about to be played out.

In a moment, he turned around. A footstep behind him had caught him off guard. It was Claude who had been following in silence for a few moments.

“What do you think you’re doing?” said the superintendent. “Why aren’t you at your station, Claude?”

Because a prisoner is regarded as no longer a man but a dog, he’s treated on a first-name basis by his superiors.

Gueux replied respectfully:

“I must speak with you, Monsieur le Director.”

“What about?”

“Albin.”

“Again?” said the superintendent.

“Always!” replied Claude.

“That so,” said the director, continuing his tour. “Twenty-four hours in the dungeon not enough for you, eh?”

Claude repeated, following on his heels:

“Monsieur le Director, return to me my partner.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Monsieur le Director,” said Claude in a tone plaintive enough to soften the devil himself. “I beg of you, let Albin and me be together again; you’ll see then how much harder I’ll work. You don’t understand, you, who are free to come and go, you don’t know what it’s like to have a mate, for I have nothing but four walls otherwise. You can be free outside, while I can only have Albin. Give me back my Albin. He nourished me, you know that. It would only cost you the price of one ‘yes.’ What does it matter to you that there is a man called Claude and a man called Albin living together in the same room? Because the issue is no more complicated than that, Monsieur le Director. My good Monsieur D., I entreat you to relent, in the name of all that’s good!”

Claude had never before spoken so much to one of his captors. Afterwards, he was drained, but patiently waited.

The superintendent stopped again, turning with a gesture of annoyance.

“That’s not going to happen. What’s done is done. Now, come on, and stop talking about it. Your chatter is boring me.”

He resumed walking, doubling his pace. Claude did as well, and soon they were nearing the exit door. The eighty-one inmates watched and listened with bated breath.

Claude lightly touched the superintendent’s arm.

“Then at least tell me again why you subject me to this living hell. Tell me why you have separated him from me.”

“I’ve already told you,” replied the director. “Because.”

Turning his back on Claude, the man reached for the door lever.

At that response from the superintendent, Claude took a step back. The eighty-one statues there saw his right hand emerge from his waistband with the hatchet. This hand rose, and without the director even uttering a sound, three accurate blows of the axe – dreadful to relay – landed in the exact same place; the gaping wound created in the man’s skull. Just as he fell backwards, a fourth slashed his face. And then, as a fury launched is a fury hard to rein back in again, Claude Gueux split the man’s right thigh open with a fifth, pointless blow. The superintendent was dead.

Claude threw the hatchet down and shouted:

“Now, to dispatch the other!”

The other was him. For he was seen withdrawing the scissors of ‘his woman’ from his jacket, and without anyone dreaming of stopping him, he thrust them into his breast. But, the blades were short, and his chest deep. So he stabbed for a long time – more than twenty blows – crying, “Heart of the damned, why can’t I find thee!” [xi]

At last he collapsed unconscious, bathed in his own blood, on the body of the dead man.

But how to tell which of these two had fallen victim to the other?

 

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When Claude regained consciousness, he was in bed, covered by linens and bandages, and cradled with attention. Some good Sisters of Charity nursed by his bedside, while an investigative magistrate asked him with the greatest of care:

“How are you feeling?”

Although he had lost a great deal of blood, the scissors with which he had tried to do away with himself, chosen through touching sentimentality, had done a disservice to him; none of the strikes he’d inflicted were critical. Nothing had been fatal to him except the wounds made to Monsieur D.

The interrogation began. Was he the one who had killed the superintendent of the workshop at Clairvaux penitentiary? He answered yes. Asked why, he replied:

“Because.”

However, quite soon, his injuries grew much worse, and he was seized by a high fever from which he nearly died.

November, December, January and February went by in treatment and preparations. Doctors and adjudicators rushed about Claude in a whirl: some to heal his wounds; some to erect his gallows.

 

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In abbreviated fashion, March 16, 1832, he was tried before Troyes’ court of assizes, being perfectly sound. A small crowd of locals showed up.

Claude maintained an impeccable demeanor before the bench. He appeared clean-shaven, went about capless, but had to wear the dreary uniform of a prisoner of Clairvaux, in its two tones of gray.

Moreover, the King’s prosecutor had crowded the sides of the chamber with every bayonet-wielding soldier in the district, “in order,” he assured the audience, “to subdue the many scoundrels slated to appear as witnesses in this affair.”

When it was necessary to begin testimony, a singular difficulty arose. None of the men present on the 4th of November wanted to speak against Claude. The presiding judge threatened them with disciplinary action, but it was in vain. Then Claude called on them to lay out the truth. After this, every tongue was loosened, and all told what they had seen.

Claude listened with rapt attention. When one of them, through either forgetfulness or affection for Gueux, omitted facts pertinent to incriminating the accused, Claude would remind them.

Statement after statement, the facts emerged before the court, and of which we have been developing here.

A moment arose that made the ladies present at the proceedings weep. The bailiff called for the prisoner known as Albin to appear. It was his turn to give testimony. He staggered in; he was sobbing. The guards could not prevent him from falling into Claude’s arms. Claude held onto him, saying with an ironic grin for the King’s prosecutor:

“And here is your scoundrel, the one who shares his bread with those who are hungry.”

He kissed Albin’s hand.

 

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When the list of witnesses had been exhausted, the King’s prosecutor rose to his feet and spoke in these terms:

“Gentlemen of the jury, society would be shaken to its very core if public outrage failed to encompass egregious culprits like the one before you, who—” and on and on.

After this momentous discourse, Claude’s defense attorney spoke. Arguments for and against got bandied about, each in the convolutions which, as run by legal professionals, they are accustomed to making around the arenas of criminal trials.

 

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Claude, listening with care, ascertained that not all of the pertinent facts had been stated. So, much to the astonishment of those not used to hearing him orate, delivered the final nails into his own coffin.

It was clear this poor day-laborer was more of a lecturer than a life-taker. He spoke with a straight backbone, with a well-regulated, perspicacious voice, an eye fully clear and wide open, and with a physical presence that hardly wavered – yet full of majesty. He stated facts as they were, simply, soberly, without equivocation or dismissal. He agreed to all of the charges, looked his death sentence in the face, and bowed his noble head. He soared in moments of undeniable eloquence to put the lawyers to shame, and ring in the crowd’s ears as stirring echoes to be remembered.

Their gasped murmur was enough to cause Claude’s breath to catch. He shed a proud look down on his legal ‘assistants.’

At certain other moments, as the proceedings rolled to a conclusion, this man who could neither read nor write was accommodating, picky, or pedantic; and at other times, demure, reserved, thoughtful, permitting the step by step business of the court to unfold in a way that allowed his benevolence to settle upon those presiding in his judgment.

 

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Only once did Claude let a bolt of anger slip. The King’s prosecutor attempted to say in his closing arguments that Gueux had killed the superintendent without any provocations, for that man had neither assaulted or rained violence upon the defendant’s head.

“What!” exclaimed Claude. “I acted unprovoked!? Oh, yes. That’s correct. I understand your message. Say a drunk punches me; I kill him. I have been provoked. Then in your judgements, I can either be pardoned or sent to the guillotine. But a man with no drinking problem, one with all of his reasoning ability intact, crushes my heart for four years, humiliates me for four years, picks on me every day for these four years, every hour, every minute, hitting me where the blows will not show, for four years! I had a woman I stole for; he tortures me by talking about her. I had a child for whom I stole; he tortures me with this child. I don’t have enough to eat, a mate shares his food with me; he takes away both my friend and my bread. I ask him again for my partner; he puts me in the hole. I call him ‘Sir’, and he rats me out for it, slurring me as ‘Claude.’ I tell him how I suffer; he replies that I bore him to tears. So, what do you expect a person to do? I killed him. There; I’m a monster. I killed this man, but I was not ‘provoked,’ so cut my head off. Let it happen!”

A sublime moment, in our humble opinion, for suddenly raised above the systemic concept of material provocation – upon which disproportionate weight is applied to the righteous scales – the blind-eye justice turns to the whole theory of moral provocation is exposed.

 

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After the statements were concluded, the presiding justice presented his glossy, ‘impartial’ summation for the jury. To wit: a villainous existence. A monster indeed, Claude had begun his life of crime by living in sin with a woman of the streets; followed by theft; followed by murder. It was all elementary.

When it was time to send the jurors to their chambers, the bench asked the defendant if he had anything to say about the deposition of questioning.

“One thing,” said Claude. “Here it is. I am a thief and a murderer; I stole and I killed. But why did I steal? Why did I kill? Ask yourself these two questions, gentlemen, alongside your debating of the evidence.”

After a quarter of an hour, the findings of these local bumpkins cobbled together to play jury, condemned Claude Gueux to death. Without doubt, several of them had noted how the accused was called Gueux – “beggar” – and took it to heart.

Once the decision was read out, Claude contented himself to merely say:

“It is just. But as to why this man stole, why this man killed, these two questions remain unaddressed.”

Returned to his jail cell, Claude was heard to sigh ironically:

“Ah, thirty-six years of ‘facts.’”

 

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He did not wish to appeal the court decision. However, one of the Sisters of Charity who had nursed him to health, arrived in tears, begging him to reconsider. He refused for days, but through sympathy for her feelings, granted her wishes. Waiting until the last moment, he made his mark on the registry to lodge a formal request, not knowing the legal limit of filing within three days of conviction had passed by a few minutes.

The miserable young woman was so relieved, she tendered five francs to help pay his legal costs. He took the offering and thanked her.

 

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While the appeal was pending review, opportunities to escape were offered him by the prisoners of Troyes jail. They were all devoted to him, but Claude refused.

Successive prisoners threw things down the shaft into his cell: a nail; a length of wire; the bail handle of a bucket. Any one of these items could have proved tool enough for someone as intelligent as Claude to set himself free. He turned the handle, the wire and the nail over to his guard.

 

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On June 8, 1832, seven months, four days after the deed, the appeal decision arrived. At 7 o’clock in the morning, a clerk of the court entered Claude’s cell and announced he had one hour to live.

“So be it,” said Claude unemotionally. “I slept well last night, never suspecting how much better I’d sleep tonight.”

It seems the words of strong men are bound to achieve a distinct majesty at the approach of death.

A priest arrived followed by the executioner. He was humble with the former and gentle with the latter. He’d not refuse access to either his spiritual or corporal self. However, he resolved to keep the unbound freedom of his mind for himself. [xii]

To this end, half of the scissors he had hurt himself with had been returned to his personal effects. He begged the warden to see this half – the other part of it was still lodged in Claude’s breast – be passed along to Albin. He also requested that the equivalent of his uneaten final day’s meals be given to him.

Claude asked those who bound his hands behind him to place the five francs the sister had given him there. This was the last thing he owned in the world.

 

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At a quarter to eight in the morning, he left the jail as part of the predictable, slowing-moving cortège unique to the condemned. He was on foot; ashen, but firm of step with his eyes trained on the priest’s crucifix.

The powers that be had chosen this time for the spectacle because it was market day and there would be plenty of eyes around to witness the affair. It seems there are still places in France where, when society decides to kill a man, the locals will rejoice in having it happen there so they might brag about it.

He mounted the temporary scaffold solemnly, with his eyes locked on the gibbet of Christ. He wanted to kiss the priest. And then the executioner too. He thanked the one and forgave the other. As an assistant lashed him to the hideous guillotine mechanism, facedown, he signaled to the priest to take the five francs from his right hand. He told him:

“Give it to the poor.”

But, eight bells began to sound at just that moment, masking his voice. The man’s confessor answered he could not hear Claude.

Gueux waited for an interval of two strikes, and repeated softly:

“Please give it to the poor.”

Before the eighth stroke had a chance to strike, that intelligent, noble head had been felled.

—Victor Hugo, [xiii]

1834

 

 

[AC Benus, translator]