In the great dormitories, there may be witnessed each morning such a
scene as that reproduced in the illustration, the prayer addressed to
the image of the Virgin on the wall, decked out with faded artificial
flowers and with tapers in front of her; following the example of the
Sister, all stoop with more or less reverence before this symbol and
utter with more or less sincerity from impure lips the prayer for a pure
heart. This grand dormitory is a great hall containing more than eighty
beds arranged in four rows. The red tile floor is of irreproachable
cleanliness, the eighty beds, with their gray blankets and white
bolsters, are arranged with military symmetry. But this cleanliness and
this good order, it is claimed, count but for little in the amelioration
of these unfortunates, gathering contamination from each other in this
indiscriminate herding together.
According to the law, those merely accused, the _prévenues_, and those
actually convicted, are kept apart from each other, but in each of these
two classes no distinctions are made,--the homeless unfortunate,
arrested for _délit de vagabondage_, is associated with the criminal
guilty of infanticide or assassination. Even the little girls of ten and
twelve years are kept together in the same promiscuousness, those
already hardened in criminal ways corrupting the more innocent.
The prévenues enjoy certain privileges; they are not obliged to work,
though it is but seldom that they refuse to take up some of the light
sewing which occupies their leisure and brings them in small sums of
money; they are not obliged, when they take their exercise, to walk
round and round in a circle in the préau, forming in line only at the
entrance and the exit. The formalities of search and interrogation, upon
entering the prison, are the same for all, as are the general
regulations and the discipline. All rise at five o'clock in summer, and
at six or half-past six the rest of the year, and all go to bed at
eight; all receive meat with their bouillon only on Sundays. The
children are more favored in this respect, being furnished with eggs,
roast meat, etc.
[Illustration: SAINT-LAZARE: MORNING PRAYER IN THE SECTION DE FEMMES DE
MAUVAISE VIE. After a drawing by G. Amato.]
Everywhere are seen in these gloomy and unwholesome halls and corridors
"the austere and consoling figures" of the Sisters of Marie-Joseph. They
wear a dark robe, sometimes with a white apron, a white _cornette_ under
a black veil which has a blue lining, and they supervise all the details
of the monotonous life of the prison. Rising in the dawn, a half-hour
before any of the prisoners, they perform their devotions, and one of
them rings the bell which summons all to leave their beds; they direct
the workrooms in which the prisoners sew, a Sister sitting upright in a
high chair, like a teacher presiding over her class, and they keep a
watchful eye during the night on all the sleepers, in all the
dormitories, great and little. Their hours of service as guards are from
five or six o'clock in the morning to ten o'clock in the evening. After
this hour, until the morning again, two Sisters remain on watch in the
first section of the prison and one in the second. Their sole comfort
and recompense is found in prayer and meditation in the mortuary chamber
of Saint Vincent de Paul, now transformed into an oratory for their use.
There is also a chapel for the use of the inmates, as well as a
Protestant oratory and a synagogue.
The historical interest attaching to the buildings of this institution
is very considerable. As far back as the time of Clovis, there was a
hunting-lodge on this site; this was transformed, under the
Carlovingians, into a debtors' prison. About the commencement of the
twelfth century, this collection of ancient buildings was used as a
hospital for lepers, under the appellation of Saint-Ladre [Saint Leper],
standing near the road from Paris to Saint-Denis. In the year 1147,
Louis VII, setting an example followed nearly a century later by
Saint-Louis, visited this lazaretto, before setting out for the
Crusades. "This was an action praiseworthy and very little imitated,"
says the chronicler. The hospital counted among its revenues the profits
arising from an annual fair, known as that of Saint-Ladre;
Philippe-Auguste, in 1183, annexed the proceeds of this fair to the
royal revenues, and transferred it to the interior of Paris, where it
became famous under the name of Saint-Laurent. In return, he provided
the hospital with an annual revenue. Among the buildings attached to the
hospital was one known as the _Logis du Roi_, where the sovereigns were
in the habit of halting to receive the oath of fidelity from their good
citizens of Paris before making their solemn entry into the capital.
This was also the principal halting-place for the royal funeral
cortèges on their way from Paris to Saint-Denis; and as late as 1793,
when it was demolished by the all-demolishing Revolution, a Gothic tower
standing here perpetuated the first rest made by Philippe le Hardi in
his pious transportation on his shoulders of his father's coffin to its
final resting-place.
In 1515 the canons of Saint-Victor established themselves at
Saint-Lazare, and for more than a century here maintained a rich abbey,
flourishing at the expense of the hospital. By 1623 their abuses had
become too flagrant, and the direction of the institution was confided
to Vincent de Paul, already renowned for his virtue. After having
re-established order and discipline, he here installed the headquarters
of his congregation of the _Missions_, created in 1624, and which became
more generally known as the _Congrégation des Lazaristes_. The authority
of the Archbishop of Paris compelled the new possessors of Saint-Lazare
to continue to receive the lepers of the city and its suburbs. To these
were gradually added those ecclesiastics and laymen who here sought a
voluntary retirement, and certain youth here confined unwillingly by
their parents or guardians that they might recover from the effects of a
life of dissipation. Ten years before the Revolution, before the
expulsion of the Lazaristes in 1792, and the appropriation of their
property by the Revolutionary government, the use of Saint-Lazare as a
temporary prison had become well established; Beaumarchais was confined
here for three days after the first representation of the _Mariage de
Figaro_. On the 13th of July, 1789, the day before the taking of the
Bastille, a band of pillagers invaded the enclosure of the buildings,
destroyed the tomb of Saint Vincent de Paul, and nearly set fire to the
whole quarter by the burning of one of the store-houses of the
establishment. During the Terror, it was crowded with the victims
destined in advance for the scaffold; and under the Consulate it became
definitely a jail, _prison civile_, _prison administrative et maison de
correction_, to which was added a special hospital, as if to preserve
the souvenir of the lazaretto of former times.
Of the buildings still standing, the superstructures mostly date from
the reign of Louis XIII. The remains of the church built by Saint
Vincent de Paul, in which he was buried at the foot of the high altar,
may still be distinguished. The very extensive grounds surrounding the
establishment, divided up and sold during the Revolution as _biens
nationaux_, have now disappeared under the buildings and streets of the
quarter. The chapel constructed by Saint Vincent is now a store-room;
the crypt, with its tombs of bishops, is a bath-house; the low apartment
on the ground-floor was reproduced by the painter Charles Muller in his
_Appel des Condamnés_, formerly so popular at the Luxembourg; in the
_Passage du Massacre_, between two courts, the victims of the Terror, in
1793, found death when they had expected liberty; and the bells which
sound the hours in the clock-tower are the same which rang under Louis
XIII.
Saint-Lazare encloses also the general magazines, the store-houses of
linen, and the central bakery, for all the prisons of the department of
the Seine. It is here that is effected the panification for five
thousand prisoners. In common with the general victualling of these
penal establishments, this bakery is not managed by the State, but by
private enterprise. In the prisons of the Seine, with the exception of
Saint-Lazare, the food of a prisoner costs the administration daily 59.9
centimes, about twelve cents.
The Prison de la Santé (Maison d'Arrêt et de Correction), in the Rue de
la Santé, has been devoted to three classes of prisoners,--those
condemned to periods of from one day to one year, prévenus whose
sentences have been appealed, and convicts and prisoners condemned to
solitary confinement. The régime cellulaire adopted is known as the
_système de Philadelphie_; this absolute solitary confinement is
reserved for convicts awaiting their departure for New Caledonia, for
other grave offenders, and also for minor offenders serving short
sentences. The prisoner thus isolated leaves his cell only for an hour's
exercise in _promenade cellulaire_; he is allowed to see no one and to
receive no communication from outside, but the ingenuity of the
prisoners contrives to modify these regulations. There is also a section
in which the inmates pass the day together, but sleep in solitary cells.
This _Quartier Commun_ is to disappear in the reorganized prison which
is to take the place of Mazas, and which will be specially devoted to
prévenus, to those whose cases have been appealed and to those condemned
to death. Among the numerous light industries to which the
short-sentence prisoners are compelled to devote their time, that of the
manufacture of dolls is one of the most important; designers, painters,
and carvers, of sufficient artistic excellence, are all found among the
inmates.
This prison was constructed to replace that of the Madelonnettes,
destroyed by the opening of the Rue Turbigo. In the Protestant chapel
attached to the institution, which serves also as a school for one hour
a day, the prisoners accused of various offences appear each morning at
ten o'clock--as in all the prisons of the Seine--in the "prætorium," the
three judges of which, the director, the comptroller, and the inspector,
sit under an immense open Bible displayed on the wall and surmounted by
the somewhat incongruous text: "Man may not live by bread alone, but by
every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God."
[Illustration: SAINT-LAZARE: SECTION DE FEMMES DE MAUVAISE VIE, UNDER
SURVEILLANCE OF A SISTER.