The Prisons.
It is time now, however, to cast a glance into the Prisons. When
Desmoulins moved for his Committee of Mercy, these Twelve Houses
of Arrest held five thousand persons. Continually arriving since
then, there have now accumulated twelve thousand. They are
Ci-devants, Royalists; in far greater part, they are Republicans,
of various Girondin, Fayettish, Un-Jacobin colour. Perhaps no
human Habitation or Prison ever equalled in squalor, in noisome
horror, these Twelve Houses of Arrest. There exist records of
personal experience in them _Mémoires sur les Prisons;_ one of
the strangest Chapters in the Biography of Man.
Very singular to look into it: how a kind of order rises up in
all conditions of human existence; and wherever two or three are
gathered together, there are formed modes of existing together,
habitudes, observances, nay gracefulnesses, joys! Citoyen Coitant
will explain fully how our lean dinner, of herbs and carrion, was
consumed not without politeness and _place-aux-dames:_ how
Seigneur and Shoeblack, Duchess and Doll-Tearsheet, flung
pellmell into a heap, ranked themselves according to method: at
what hour “the Citoyennes took to their needlework;” and we,
yielding the chairs to them, endeavoured to talk gallantly in a
standing posture, or even to sing and harp more or less.
Jealousies, enmities are not wanting; nor flirtations, of an
effective character.
Alas, by degrees, even needlework must cease: Plot in the Prison
rises, by Citoyen Laflotte and Preternatural Suspicion.
Suspicious Municipality snatches from us all implements; all
money and possession, of means or metal, is ruthlessly searched
for, in pocket, in pillow and paillasse, and snatched away;
red-capped Commissaries entering every cell! Indignation,
temporary desperation, at robbery of its very thimble, fills the
gentle heart. Old Nuns shriek shrill discord; demand to be killed
forthwith. No help from shrieking! Better was that of the two
shifty male Citizens, who, eager to preserve an implement or two,
were it but a pipe-picker, or needle to darn hose with,
determined to defend themselves: by tobacco. Swift then, as your
fell Red Caps are heard in the Corridor rummaging and slamming,
the two Citoyens light their pipes and begin smoking. Thick
darkness envelops them. The Red Nightcaps, opening the cell,
breathe but one mouthful; burst forth into chorus of barking and
coughing. ‘_Quoi, Messieurs_,’ cry the two Citoyens, ‘You don’t
smoke? Is the pipe disagreeable! _Est-ce que vous ne fumez pas?_’
But the Red Nightcaps have fled, with slight search: ‘_Vous
n’aimez pas la pipe?_’ cry the Citoyens, as their door slams-to
again.[746] My poor brother Citoyens, O surely, in a reign of
Brotherhood, you are not the two I would guillotine!
Rigour grows, stiffens into horrid tyranny; Plot in the Prison
getting ever riper. This Plot in the Prison, as we said, is now
the stereotype formula of Tinville: against whomsoever he knows
no crime, this is a ready-made crime. His Judgment-bar has become
unspeakable; a recognised mockery; known only as the wicket one
passes through, towards Death. His Indictments are drawn out in
blank; you insert the Names after. He has his _moutons_,
detestable traitor jackalls, who report and bear witness; that
they themselves may be allowed to live,—for a time. His
_Fournées_, says the reproachful Collot, “shall in no case exceed
three-score;” that is his _maximum_. Nightly come his Tumbrils to
the Luxembourg, with the fatal Roll-call; list of the _Fournée_
of tomorrow. Men rush towards the Grate; listen, if their name be
in it? One deep-drawn breath, when the name is not in: we live
still one day! And yet some score or scores of names were in.
Quick these; they clasp their loved ones to their heart, one last
time; with brief adieu, wet-eyed or dry-eyed, they mount, and are
away. This night to the Conciergerie; through the Palais misnamed
_of Justice_, to the Guillotine tomorrow.
Recklessness, defiant levity, the Stoicism if not of strength yet
of weakness, has possessed all hearts. Weak women and
_Ci-devants_, their locks not yet made into blond perukes, their
skins not yet tanned into breeches, are accustomed to “act the
Guillotine” by way of pastime. In fantastic mummery, with
towel-turbans, blanket-ermine, a mock Sanhedrim of Judges sits, a
mock Tinville pleads; a culprit is doomed, is guillotined by the
oversetting of two chairs. Sometimes we carry it farther:
Tinville himself, in his turn, is doomed, and not to the
Guillotine alone. With blackened face, hirsute, horned, a shaggy
Satan snatches him not unshrieking; shews him, with outstretched
arm and voice, the fire that is not quenched, the worm that dies
not; the monotony of Hell-pain, and the _What hour?_ answered by,
_It is Eternity!_[747]
And still the Prisons fill fuller, and still the Guillotine goes
faster. On all high roads march flights of Prisoners, wending
towards Paris. Not _Ci-devants_ now; they, the noisy of them, are
mown down; it is Republicans now. Chained two and two they march;
in exasperated moments, singing their _Marseillaise_. A hundred
and thirty-two men of Nantes for instance, march towards Paris,
in these same days: Republicans, or say even Jacobins to the
marrow of the bone; but Jacobins who had not approved
Noyading.[748] _Vive la République_ rises from them in all
streets of towns: they rest by night, in unutterable noisome
dens, crowded to choking; one or two dead on the morrow. They are
wayworn, weary of heart; can only shout: _Live the Republic;_ we,
as under horrid enchantment, dying in this way for it!
Some Four Hundred Priests, of whom also there is record, ride at
anchor, “in the roads of the Isle of Aix,” long months; looking
out on misery, vacuity, waste Sands of Oleron and the
ever-moaning brine. Ragged, sordid, hungry; wasted to shadows:
eating their unclean ration on deck, circularly, in parties of a
dozen, with finger and thumb; beating their scandalous clothes
between two stones; choked in horrible miasmata, closed under
hatches, seventy of them in a berth, through night; so that the
“aged Priest is found lying dead in the morning, in the attitude
of prayer!”[749]—How long, O Lord!
Not forever; no. All Anarchy, all Evil, Injustice, is, by the
nature of it, _dragon’s-teeth;_ suicidal, and cannot endure.