Crime crowned once again

“Crime crowned once again” is a recurring expression for the book’s reversal of expected moral justice: perpetrators rise while the virtuous endure suffering. It takes concrete form when Thérèse reads that Rodin, who had cruelly punished her for trying to prevent him from murdering his daughter, has been appointed First Surgeon to the Empress of Russia. His promotion turns her private experience of injustice into a public emblem of crime rewarded.

The Expression in Context

The expression appears as Thérèse considers the news of Rodin’s success. A gazette reports that he has received the prestigious appointment, together with substantial emoluments. The announcement follows her escape from the dungeon at the Château de Gernande and her arrival in Lyon, where she is recovering before intending to continue toward Grenoble. Against this backdrop, the report makes her survival feel less like a moral correction than another episode in a pattern of impunity.

Rodin’s Promotion and Thérèse’s Response

Rodin’s advancement is especially bitter because Thérèse had suffered his cruelty while attempting to spare him the murder of his daughter. The news does not merely show that he has escaped punishment: it presents him as publicly honored and materially rewarded. Thérèse responds by wishing him prosperity for as long as Providence permits it, while accepting suffering as the terrible share assigned to virtue. Even as she voices that bleak judgment, she insists that she will not lose her attachment to virtue.

A Recurring Moral Reversal

The phrase also prepares for Thérèse’s renewed encounter with Monsieur de Saint-Florent, whom she recognizes as another man responsible for grave injuries to her. His message presents him as eager to make amends and able to demonstrate gratitude, now that he has attained eminence in Lyon’s commercial circles. The juxtaposition extends the expression’s force: the people associated with Thérèse’s suffering appear to flourish, while she remains weak and dependent on recovery. Later, while imprisoned at Roland’s château, she interprets Roland’s financial success and further order for counterfeit money as another sign that prosperity belongs to crime and indigence to virtue. The expression thus connects separate episodes into a pattern, rather than describing Rodin’s promotion alone.

Narrative and Thematic Significance

The wording “crowned” gives prosperity the shape of an award, making Rodin’s appointment a public coronation of conduct that should, in a just moral order, bring condemnation. Yet Thérèse’s statement remains framed by Providence: she regards the triumph as real, but not necessarily final or beyond divine permission. The expression holds that tension open. Across the episodes, worldly outcomes seem to vindicate wrongdoing and punish virtue, while Thérèse’s continuing commitment to virtue prevents that apparent rule from becoming her own moral conclusion.