BESIDES misdeeds, robberies, the division of spoils after an ambuscade,
and the twilight exploitation of the barriers of Paris, footpads,
burglars, and gaol-birds generally have another industry: they have
ideal loves.
This requires explanation.
The trade in negro slaves moves us, and with good reason; we examine
this social sore, and we do well. But let us also learn to lay bare
another ulcer, which is more painful, perhaps: the traffic in white
women.
Here is one of the singular things connected with and characteristic of
this poignant disorder of our civilization:
Every gaol contains a prisoner who is known as the “artist.”
All kinds of trades and professions peculiar to prisons develop behind
the bars. There is the vendor of liquorice-water, the vendor of scarfs,
the writer, the advocate, the usurer, the hut-maker, and the barker. The
artist takes rank among these local and peculiar professions between the
writer and the advocate.
To be an artist is it necessary to know how to draw? By no means. A bit
of a bench to sit upon, a wall to lean against, a lead pencil, a bit of
pasteboard, a needle stuck in a handle made out of a piece of wood,
a little Indian ink or sepia, a little Prussian blue, and a little
vermilion in three cracked beechwood spoons,--this is all that is
requisite; a knowledge of drawing is superfluous. Thieves are as fond of
colouring as children are, and as fond of tattooing as are savages. The
artist by means of his three spoons satisfies the first of these needs,
and by means of his needle the second. His remuneration is a “nip” of
wine.
The result is this:
Some prisoners, say, lack everything, or are simply desirous of living
more comfortably. They combine, wait upon the artist, offer him their
glasses of wine or their bowls of soup, hand him a sheet of paper and
order of him a bouquet. In the bouquet there must be as many flowers
as there are prisoners in the group. If there be three prisoners, there
must be three flowers. Each flower bears a figure, or, if preferred, a
number, which number is that of the prisoner.
The bouquet when painted is sent, through the mysterious means of
communication between the various prisons that the police are powerless
to prevent, to Saint Lazare. Saint Lazare is the women’s prison, and
where there are women there also is pity. The bouquet circulates from
hand to hand among the unfortunate creatures that the police detain
administratively at Saint Lazare; and in a few days the infallible
secret post apprises those who sent the bouquet that Palmyre has chosen
the tuberose, that Fanny prefers the azalea, and that Seraphine has
adopted the geranium. Never is this lugubrious handkerchief thrown into
the seraglio without being picked up.
Thenceforward the three bandits have three servants whose names are
Palmyre, Fanny, and Seraphine. Administrative detentions are relatively
of short duration. These women are released from prison before the men.
And what do they do? They support them. In elegant phraseology they are
providences; in plain language they are milch-cows.
Pity has been transformed into love. The heart of woman is susceptible
of such sombre graftings. These women say:
“I am married.” They are married indeed. By whom? By the flower. With
whom? With the abyss. They are fiancées of the unknown. Enraptured and
enthusiastic fiancées. Pale Sulamites of fancy and fog. When the known
is so odious, how can they help loving the unknown?
In these nocturnal regions and with the winds of dispersion that blow,
meetings are almost impossible. The lovers see each other in dreams. In
all probability the woman will never set eyes on the man. Is he young?
Is he old? Is he handsome? Is he ugly? She does not know; she knows
nothing about him. She adores him. And it is because she does not know
him that she loves him. Idolatry is born of mystery.
This woman, drifting aimlessly on life’s tide, yearns for something to
cling to, a tie to bind her, a duty to perform. The pit from amid its
scum throws it to her; she accepts it and devotes herself to it. This
mysterious bandit, transformed into heliotrope or iris, becomes a
religion to her. She espouses him in the presence of night. She has a
thousand little wifely attentions for him; poor for herself, she is rich
for him; she whelms this manure with her delicate solicitude. She is
faithful to him with all the fidelity of which she is still capable;
the incorruptible emanates from the corruptible. Never does this woman
betray her love. It is an immaterial, pure, ethereal love, subtile as
the breath of spring, solid as brass.
A flower has done all this. What a well is the human heart, and how
giddy it makes one to peer into it! Lo! the cloaca. Of what is it
thinking? Of perfume. A prostitute loves a thief through a lily. What
plunger into human thought could reach the bottom of this? Who shall
fathom this immense yearning for flowers that springs from mud? In
the secret self of these hapless women is a strange equilibrium that
consoles and reassures them. A rose counterbalances an act of shame.
Hence these amours based on and sustained by illusion. This thief is
idolized by this girl. She has not seen his face, she does not know his
name; she sees him in visions induced by the perfume of jessamine or of
pinks. Henceforward flower-gardens, the May sunshine, the birds in their
nests, exquisite tints, radiant blossoms, boxes of orange trees and
daphne odora, velvet petals upon which golden bees alight, the sacred
odours of spring-tide, balms, incense, purling brooks, and soft green
grass are associated with this bandit. The divine smile of nature
penetrates and illumines him.
This desperate aspiring to paradise lost, this deformed dream of the
beautiful, is not less tenacious on the part of the man. He turns
towards the woman; and this preoccupation, become insensate, persists
even when the dreadful shadow of the two red posts of the guillotine
is thrown upon the window of his cell. The day before his execution
Delaporte, chief of the Trappes band, who was wearing the strait-jacket,
asked of the convict Cogniard, whom, through the grating in the door of
the condemned cell, he saw passing by: “Are there any pretty women in
the visitors’ parlor this morning?” Another condemned man, Avril (what
a name!), in this same cell, bequeathed all that he possessed--five
francs--to a female prisoner whom he had seen at a distance in the
women’s yard, “in order that she may buy herself a fichu a la mode.”
Between the male and female wretch dreams build a Bridge of Sighs, as it
were. The mire of the gutter dallies with the door of a prison cell. The
Aspasia of the street-corner aspires and respires with the heart of the
Alcibiades who waylays the passer-by at the corner of a wood.
You laugh? You should not. It is a terrible thing.