When I arrived here the hand of force was laid on me, and numerous
precautions were taken: neither knife nor fork was allowed for my
repasts; and a strait-waistcoat--a species of sack made of
sail-cloth--imprisoned my arms. I had sued to annul my sentence, so the
jailors might have for six or seven weeks their responsibility; and it
was requisite to keep me safe and healthful for the Guillotine!
For the first few days I was treated with a degree of attention which
was horrible to me,--the civilities of a turnkey breathe of a scaffold.
Luckily, at the end of some days, habit resumed its influence; they
mixed me with the other prisoners in a general brutality, and made no
more of those unusual distinctions of politeness which continually kept
the executioner in my memory.
This was not the only amelioration. My youth, my docility, the cares of
the Chaplain of the prison, and above all some words in Latin which I
addressed to the keeper, who did not understand them, procured for me a
walk once a week with the other prisoners, and removed the
strait-waistcoat with which I was paralyzed. After considerable
hesitation they have also given me pens, paper, ink, and a night-lamp.
Every Sunday after Mass I am allowed to walk in the Prison-court at the
hour of recreation; there I talk with the prisoners, which is
inevitable. They make boon companions, these wretches. They tell me
their adventures,--enough to horrify one; but I know they are proud of
them. They also try to teach me their mystic idioms,--an odious
phraseology grafted on the general language, like a hideous excrescence;
yet sometimes it has a singular energy, a frightful picturesqueness. To
be hung is called “marrying the widow,” as though the rope of the
gallows were the widow of all who had been executed! At every instant
mysterious, fantastic words occur, base and hideous, derived one knows
not whence; they resemble crawling reptiles. On hearing this language
spoken, the effect is like the shaking of dusty rags before you.
These men at least pity me, and they alone do so. The jailors, the
turnkeys,--and I am not angry with them,--gossip and laugh, and speak of
me in my presence as of a mere animal.