Observe the word inculpe, incriminated, or suspected of crime.  The French Code has created three essential degrees of criminality —­inculpe, first degree of suspicion; prevenu, under examination; accuse, fully committed for trial.  So long as the warrant for committal remains unsigned, the supposed criminal is regarded as merely under suspicion, inculpe of the crime or felony; when the warrant has been issued, he becomes “the accused” (prevenu), and is regarded as such so long as the inquiry is proceeding; when the inquiry is closed, and as soon as the Court has decided that the accused is to be committed for trial, he becomes “the prisoner at the bar” (accuse) as soon as the superior court, at the instance of the public prosecutor, has pronounced that the charge is so far proved as to be carried to the Assizes.

Thus, persons suspected of crime go through three different stages, three siftings, before coming up for trial before the judges of the upper Court—­the High Justice of the realm.

At the first stage, innocent persons have abundant means of exculpating themselves—­the public, the town watch, the police.  At the second state they appear before a magistrate face to face with the witnesses, and are judged by a tribunal in Paris, or by the Collective Court of the departments.  At the third stage they are brought before a bench of twelve councillors, and in case of any error or informality the prisoner committed for trial at the Assizes may appeal for protection to the Supreme court.  The jury do not know what a slap in the face they give to popular authority, to administrative and judicial functionaries, when they acquit a prisoner.  And so, in my opinion, it is hardly possible that an innocent man should ever find himself at the bar of an Assize Court in Paris—­I say nothing of other seats of justice.

The detenu is the convict.  French criminal law recognizes imprisonment of three degrees, corresponding in legal distinction to these three degrees of suspicion, inquiry, and conviction.  Mere imprisonment is a light penalty for misdemeanor, but detention is imprisonment with hard labor, a severe and sometimes degrading punishment.  Hence, those persons who nowadays are in favor of the penitentiary system would upset an admirable scheme of criminal law in which the penalties are judiciously graduated, and they will end by punishing the lightest peccadilloes as severely as the greatest crimes.

The reader may compare in the Scenes of Political Life (for instance, in Une Tenebreuse affaire) the curious differences subsisting between the criminal law of Brumaire in the year IV., and that of the Code Napoleon which has taken its place.

In most trials, as in this one, the suspected persons are at once examined (and from inculpes become prevenus); justice immediately issues a warrant for their arrest and imprisonment.  In point of fact, in most of such cases the criminals have either fled, or have been instantly apprehended.  Indeed, as we have seen the police, which is but an instrument, and the officers of justice had descended on Esther’s house with the swiftness of a thunderbolt.  Even if there had not been the reasons for revenge suggested to the superior police by Corentin, there was a robbery to be investigated of seven hundred and fifty thousand francs from the Baron de Nucingen.