A convict sentenced to hard labour for life complains of missing his evening meal. The guard sets the magistrate’s door ajar to request that the interrogation be hastened; when he turns back, the prisoner has vanished. Thus began the escape of Grison, related by Marie-François Goron, former Chief of the Sûreté, in his memoirs published in 1897. The chapter, wherein the arrests are left undated, traces first the pursuit of the fugitive near Pantin, then the arrest of Godard and his men in a hotel on the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. These are Goron’s recollections, not official records consulted here; they must be read as the retrospective testimony of an eyewitness and actor.
Grison was still young. Goron gives him barely twenty-two years, describing him as a man of remarkable physical strength, already dreaded in the milieu to which he belonged. The narrative recalls a duel with Allorto, whom he terms the assassin of Auteuil and the accomplice of Sellier. A quarrel regarding the title of leader of the thieves of La Chapelle reportedly led both men to draw their blades before their comrades. At daybreak, Allorto was discovered with eight wounds. In Goron’s eyes, this episode accounted for Grison’s authority over his fellows.
The police eventually captured Grison after a struggle, relates Goron, and the Court of Assizes condemned him to penal servitude for life for armed robbery and attempted murder, among other counts that the author does not detail. He nevertheless remained at the Grande-Roquette prison, for the magistrates still hoped to throw light upon another matter and obtain particulars regarding his accomplices. Two or three times a week, he was escorted to the Palais de Justice to be examined by the investigating magistrate, Bedorez.
One day, according to the account, Grison was waiting with a Parisian guard in the corridor outside the magistrate's chambers. Goron depicts the guard as an easy-going man, entirely unsuspecting. The prisoner spoke to him of his repentance and of the cruel strokes of fate which, he claimed, could bring a man who wished to remain honest into conflict with the law. After a lengthy wait, Grison lamented that he would miss his evening meal: upon his return to prison, the hour of the soup would have passed. He begged the guard to urge matters forward. The guard opened the chamber door slightly to ask the magistrate what was to be done with his charge. The judge replied to bring him in at once. When the guard turned back, Grison had vanished.
The fugitive had dashed down the stairs, crossed the Cour de Mai, and reached the outer gates of the Palais. On the boulevard, he collided with an elderly man, who fell to the ground and raised such an outcry as to draw the attention of passers-by. Grison, perceiving that the crowd might lay hold of him, is said to have used his fists and sprinted towards the Quai aux Fleurs. The guard, having recovered from his astonishment, raised the alarm at the guardhouse; the municipal guards searched the neighbouring streets, but their efforts bore no fruit. The narrative specifies neither the day nor the year of this flight. It dwells upon the immediate failure of the pursuit and the urgent duty thereby laid upon the Sûreté: to recapture the man who had just slipped through their fingers in the very heart of the Law Courts.
Goron asserts that Grison sought no refuge abroad. He is said to have remained in Paris and its environs, frequenting the taverns and hovels where detectives could readily mingle with the regulars. Three inspectors were entrusted with his pursuit: Tréard, Latrille, and Blanchet. The author singles out Latrille for particular praise, presenting him as a veteran of the haunts favoured by housebreakers. A few days after the escape, nocturnal assaults recommenced around Pantin. To Goron’s mind, this revival of robberies suggested that Grison had reconstituted a gang in the region where he had formerly operated.
The officers concentrated their search between Montmartre, La Chapelle, Pantin, and Saint-Ouen. After a fortnight, they picked up Grison’s trail in the drinking dens skirting the fortifications. They shadowed him for three more days, from one establishment to another, until they tracked him to a house beyond the ramparts, near the Saint-Ouen postern. Goron names it “the den of Pierre the Thief.” Grison was inside with seven or eight men. Three officers alone could not have apprehended him without grave danger; were the ringleader to step outside, the narrator explains, he might well vanish among the earthworks and ditches of the military zone. Blanchet therefore departed to summon reinforcements, while Tréard and Latrille watched the exits.
He returned with four peace officers, who took up positions at the doors, sabres drawn. The three inspectors burst into the room and threw themselves upon Grison. The latter discharged his revolver at point-blank range; his companions likewise drew their weapons. A furious volley erupted within the narrow tavern. One officer had his hand pierced by a bullet, and another had his hat carried away. Grison, having emptied the six chambers of his weapon, seized a long Catalan knife and escaped through a window towards a waste ground. Tréard vaulted out in pursuit and fired; the ball struck Grison in the right thigh.
When the officer overtook him, the wounded man was still brandishing his knife. Tréard ordered him to drop it, covering him with his revolver. Goron relates that Grison hesitated for an instant, then complied and held out his hands. The other men were secured within the tavern. The leader was subsequently conveyed to the Sûreté. He entered, Goron remarks, demanding to know where Goron was and threatening to strike him down; yet the agony of his wound soon put an end to his bravado. He refused to have a physician fetched, demanding that the officers themselves extract the ball, on the grounds that they had fired it. Gaillarde removed it with a penknife before the physician of the Dépôt attended to the prisoner. Shortly thereafter, according to the memorialist, Grison appeared once more before the Assizes and was sentenced a second time to penal servitude for life.
This outcome concludes the first narrative, but Goron immediately turns to another arrest in which he claims to have witnessed and taken part. According to his investigation, Godard and his gang, who had recently plundered a jeweller’s shop in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, were lodging in a small hotel on the Rue Traversière. Goron knew that the men kept revolvers and knives beside their beds. He presented himself at five o’clock in the morning with several officers, leaving the carriages at a distance so as not to give the alarm.
Goron posted Girodot and a few men in the street, with orders to fire into the air should their weapons be required. He then entered the hotel with Rossignol and the remaining officers, summoning the occupants to open in the name of the law. Instead of an answer, an oath was heard. The officers battered down the door, but not swiftly enough, writes Goron, for otherwise they would have faced a furious fusillade of revolver shots. The first balls fired by Godard and his associates lodged in the woodwork. When the door gave way, the men inside threw down their arms, save for Godard, who straddled a window, caught a drainpipe, and hoisted himself onto the roof.
Down in the street, Girodot and his men caught sight of a figure upon the roof. They discharged their pieces into the air as instructed, yet Godard received two balls in the buttocks. Rossignol pursued him into an attic and overpowered him after a struggle. The clamour had attracted the workmen crossing the district; a crowd gathered and at first accused the officers of firing upon poor, defenceless folk. Goron affirms that he explained to the protesters that the arrested men were local thieves, whereupon public sentiment shifted in favour of the police. The appearance of Rossignol, his hands drenched in Godard’s blood, provoked a fresh surge of fury. The Chief of the Sûreté relates that he was obliged to shield the prisoners from the threat of lynching before conveying them to the station on the Avenue Daumesnil.
Goron finally relates that he interrogated Godard, who flung at him that he had taken aim twice, but had stayed his hand upon thinking of his mother. Wounded, the prisoner was attended to by Goron’s own physician. The memorialist interprets Godard’s astonishment at not being finished off as a mark of the dread which the police inspired in the criminal classes; this construction remains the author’s own. He notes that one ball was successfully extracted, while the other had lodged in the bladder. Godard recovered and was sentenced to twelve years’ penal servitude. Goron claims to have argued before the judge that the injuries Godard had sustained constituted sufficient punishment, and that it was unproven whether the men had heard the formal summons before the door was battered down. He makes no claim to the formal prerogative of demanding a penalty.
Thus the chapter sets side by side two methods of capturing men deemed desperate: tracking down a fugitive amidst tavern dens, and laying siege to a gang within its quarters. It concludes with a reflection from Goron, who explains that he chose these reminiscences to illustrate the perils braved by his officers, while regarding the cases of Grison and Godard as anomalies among criminals who, for the most part, surrendered with little resistance. This final assessment reflects the vantage point of the author: a former Chief of the Sûreté narrating the exploits of his own men and the wisdom of his own decisions. The names, scenes, and penalties recorded here are drawn entirely from his memoirs; the precise dates and the formal particulars of the judicial dockets remain to be verified by other records.