When my consciousness returned it was night: I was lying on a truckle
bed; a lamp which swung from the ceiling enabled me to see a line of
beds similar to mine, and I therefore judged that I had been taken to
the Infirmary. I remained a few moments awake, but without thought or
recollection, totally engrossed by the happiness of being again in a
bed. Certainly, in former days, this prison-hospital bed would have made
me shrink with disgust; but I am no longer the same individual. The
sheets were brown, and coarse to the touch, the blanket thin and ragged,
and there was but one straw mattress.
No matter! I could stretch my limbs at their ease between these coarse
sheets; and under this blanket, thin as it was, I felt the gradual
decrease of that horrible chill in the marrow of my bones, to which I
had lately been accustomed.--I slept again.
A loud noise awakened me at daylight. The noise came from without; my
bed was beside the window, and I sat up to see from what it arose. The
window looked into the large Court of the Bicêtre, which was full of
people. Two lines of veterans had difficulty in keeping the crowd away
from a narrow passage across the Court. Between this double rank of
soldiers, five long wagons, loaded with men, were driven slowly jolting
at each stone; it was the departure of the convicts.
These wagons were open, and each gang occupied one. The convicts, in
consequence of their iron collars being attached to the centre chain,
are obliged to sit back to back, their feet hanging over the sides of
the wagon; the centre chain stretched the whole length of the cart, and
on its unfastened end the Sergeant stood with his loaded musket. There
was a continual clanking of the prisoners’ chains, and at each plunge of
the wagon their heads and pendant limbs were jolted violently. A quick
penetrating rain chilled the air, and made their wet slight vesture
cling to their shivering forms. Their long beards and short hair
streamed with wet; their complexions were saturnine; they were
shivering, and grinding their teeth with mingled rage and cold. But they
had no power of moving: once riveted to that chain, each becomes a mere
fraction of that hideous whole which is called the Gang. Intellect must
abdicate,--the fetters condemn it to death; and the mere animal must not
even hunger but at certain hours. Thus fixed, the greater part half
clad, with bare heads, and no rest for their feet, they begin their
journey of twenty-five days; the same sort of wagons, the same portion
of dress being used in scorching July as in the cold rains of November.
One would almost think that man wishes Heaven to take a part in his
office of executioner.
Between the crowd and the convicts a horrible dialogue was
maintained,--abuse on one side, bravadoes on the other, imprecations
from both; but at a sign from the Captain I saw the sticks of the Guard
raining indiscriminate blows into the wagon, on heads or shoulders, and
all returned to that kind of external calm which is called “order.” But
their eyes were full of vengeance, and their powerless hands were
clenched on their knees.
The five wagons, escorted by mounted gendarmes and guards on foot,
passed slowly under the high arched door of the Bicêtre. The crowd
followed them: all vanished like a phantasmagoria, and by degrees the
sounds diminished of the heavy wheels, clanking fetters, and the yells
of the multitude uttering maledictions on the journey of the convicts.
And such was their happy beginning!
What a proposition my counsel made! The Galleys! I was right to prefer
death; rather the Scaffold than what I had seen!