SAINTE-PÉLAGIE.
The prison of Sainte-Pélagie owed its name to a frail beauty whom
play-goers in Antioch knew in the fifth century of this era. Embracing
Christianity, she forsook the stage, and built herself a cell on the
Mount of Olives. The Church bestowed on her the honours of the Calendar.
Twelve centuries later, in the reign of Louis XIV., a Madame de
Miramion, inspired by the memory, not of Pélagie the _comédienne_, but
of Sainte-Pélagie the recluse, built in Paris a substantial Refuge for
young women whose virtue seemed in need of protection. Letters-patent
were obtained from the King, and Madame de Miramion sought her recruits
here and there in the capital; gathering within the fold, it was said, a
considerable number "who had no longer anything to fear for their
virtue." But the rule of the house was strait, and one by one Madame's
young persons absconded, or were withdrawn from her keeping by their
parents. Nothing daunted, and sustained by her fixed idea of making
penitents at any price, Madame de Miramion descended boldly upon the
haunts of Aspasia herself, and there laid hands on all those votaries of
Venus who were either weary of their calling or whose calling was
wearying of them. The crown of the _joyeuse vie_ fits loosely, and the
lightest shock unfixes it. Madame's campaign in this quarter was
successful, and she was soon at the head of a battalion of more or less
repentant graces. New letters-patent were granted by a Majesty so
desirous of the moral well-being of his female subjects, the
establishment of Sainte-Pélagie was confirmed, and, thanks to the
invaluable assistance of the police, the complement of Magdalens was
maintained. Sainte-Pélagie continued its pious destiny until the days of
the Revolution, when the cloister of the Magdalens became a prison.
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As a prison, Sainte-Pélagie (which is in existence to-day as a _maison
de correction_, or penitentiary) has known many and strange guests. From
1792 to 1795, it held a mixed population of both sexes, political
prisoners and others. Between the years 1797 and 1834, debtors of all
degrees were confined there, and at one period the debtors shared the
gaol with a motley crew of juvenile delinquents. Under the Restoration
and under the two Empires Sainte-Pélagie served the uses of a State
prison. The first Napoleon had the cells in constant occupation. The
Restoration sent there, within the space of a few days, one hundred and
thirty-five individuals, arrested by the police of Louis XVIII. for
their connection, as officers, with the old Imperial Guard. Innumerable
indeed, from 1790 onwards, were the victims who found a lodging, not of
their choosing, behind the ample walls which the widow Miramion had
consecrated a shelter for tottering virtue or gallantry in mourning for
its past. The men of the Revolution found Sainte-Pélagie excellently
suited to their needs; Madame de Miramion had housed her Magdalens
strongly. In form a vast quadrilateral, the buildings were easily
converted to the uses of a prison; and at a later date the prison was
arranged in three divisions. On the west side were confined petty
offenders under sentences ranging between six months and one year. The
debtors' was the second division; and here also were imprisoned young
rogues, thieves, and vagabonds, and (up to 1867) "certain men of letters
and journalists." The east side seems to have been reserved principally
for political offenders. But the divisions were never very strictly
observed; and a political prisoner relegated by mischance or for lack of
space to the west side of the prison was treated in all respects as a
common criminal. Ordinary prisoners were kept at work, and received a
small percentage on the profits of their industry. Political prisoners,
journalists, and "men of letters" were exempted from labour; and a third
class called _pistoliers_, purchased this exemption at a cost of from
six to seven francs a fortnight.
It was by order of the Convention that Sainte-Pélagie was transformed
from a convent-refuge into a prison, and during the revolutionary period
a crowd of unknown or little-known suspects passed within its keeping
before being summoned to the bar. Not a few quitted it only for the
scaffold.
Madame Roland was cast there on the 25th of June, 1793. Three years
earlier, Carlyle notes her at Lyons, "that queen-like burgher woman;
beautiful, Amazonian-graceful to the eye" with "that strong
Minerva-face." We shall return to Madame Roland, wife of the "King's
Inspector of Manufactures."
In the same month, if not on the same day, were sent to Sainte-Pélagie
the Comte de Laval-Montmorency, and the Marquis de Pons. In August of
the same year went to join them (not now with popular acclamation, as
when, in 1765, Mademoiselle Clairon and her fellow players were haled to
the Châtelet) nine ladies of the Théâtre-Français. After the 9th
Thermidor (July 27, 1794), which saw the sudden downfall and death of
Robespierre, Sainte-Pélagie received most of the victims of the
reaction,—the _Tail_ of Robespierre,—including the Duplaix family.
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Madame Roland had known the indignities of a revolutionary prison before
her sojourn at Sainte-Pélagie. Imprisoned first in the Abbaye, it was
from there that she wrote:
"I find a certain pleasure in enforcing privations on myself, in
seeing how far the human will can be employed in reducing the
'necessaries' of existence. I substituted bread and water for
chocolate, at breakfast; a plate of meat with vegetables was my
dinner; and I supped on vegetables, without desert."
But having "as much aversion from as contempt for a merely useless
economy" (_autant d'aversion que de mépris pour une économie inutile_),
Madame Roland goes on to say that what she saved by the retrenchments of
her own cuisine she spent in procuring extra rations for the pauper
prisoners of the Abbaye; and adds: "If I stay here six months I mean to
go out plump and hearty [_je veux en sortir grasse et fraîche_] wanting
nothing more than soup and bread, and with the satisfaction of having
earned certain _bénédictions incognito_."
Transferred to Sainte-Pélagie, this heroic woman of the people saw
herself confounded with women of the town (the descendants of the widow
Miramion's Magdalens), thieves, forgers, and assassins. She made the
best of the situation, cultivated flowers in a box in the window of her
cell, and wrote incessantly. When told that her name had been included
in the process against the Girondins, she said: "I am not afraid to go
to the scaffold in such good company; I am ashamed only to live among
scoundrels." Her friends had contrived a plan for her escape, but could
not induce her to profit by it: "Spare me!" she cried. "I love my
husband, I love my daughter; you know it; but I will not save myself by
flight." When the axe fell on the heads of the twenty-two Girondins,
October 31, 1793 (10th Brumaire of the Republican calendar), Madame
Roland was removed to the Conciergerie. Knowing well the fate that
awaited her, she lost neither her courage nor her beautiful
tranquillity; and used to go down to the men's wicket of the prison,
exhorting them to be brave and worthy of the cause. In the tumbril, on
her way to the guillotine, she was robed in white, her superb black hair
floating behind her; and at the place of execution, bending her head to
the statue of Liberty, she murmured: "O Liberty! what crimes are done in
thy name!"—_O Liberté! que de crimes on commet en ton nom!_
It was not Madame Dubarry's to show this sublime fortitude in death; but
after all one dies as one must. Sainte-Pélagie will tell us that poor
Dame Dubarry was the feeblest and most faint-hearted of its recluses of
the Revolution. She wept, and called on heaven to save her, and shuffled
and cut her cards, and consulted the lines in her hand; and when her
name was called at the wicket on the fatal morning, she swooned on the
flags of the prison, and was carried scarcely animate to the tumbril.
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The story of governor Bouchotte, who had charge of Sainte-Pélagie at
this terrible epoch, is a noble one. The September massacres had begun,
and the red-bonnets in detachments were sharing the butchery at the
prisons. The Abbaye, the Carmes, the Force, and the Conciergerie had
given them prompt entrance; the turnkeys saluting the self-styled
judges, say MM. Alhoy and Lurine, as the grave-digger salutes the
hangman. Not so governor Bouchotte of Sainte-Pélagie. The mob swarmed at
the doors, but to their clattering on the panels no answer was
vouchsafed. Pikes, hammers, and axes resounded on the solid portals, but
silence the most complete reigned behind them.
"Can citizen Bouchotte have been beforehand with us?—_Le citoyen
Bouchotte, nous aurait-il devancés?_" cried one. "Not an aristocrat
voice to be heard! Bouchotte has perhaps finished them off himself."
The neighbouring houses were ransacked for tools proper to effect an
entrance, and the doors were burst open. The mob poured in; and there,
bound hand and foot on the flags in the courtyard of the prison, they
found the governor and his wife.
"Citizens," cried Bouchotte, "you arrive too late! My prisoners are
gone. They got warning of your coming, and after binding my wife and
myself as you see us, they made their escape."
Bouchotte was taken at his word, he and his wife were released from
their cords, and the red-bonnets went off to wreak a double vengeance at
Bicêtre. At the risk of his own and of his wife's life, the admirable
Bouchotte had tricked the cut-throats. He had uncaged his birds and
given them their liberty through a private postern, and had then ordered
his warders to tie up his wife and himself. Honour to the brave memory
of Bouchotte! The history of the French Revolution has few brighter
passages than this.
Nougaret gives us a curious picture of the interior of Sainte-Pélagie
under the bloody rule of Robespierre.[18] The prison itself he describes
as "damp and unwholesome" (_humide et malsaine_). There were about three
hundred and fifty prisoners, detained they knew not why, for they were
not allowed to read the charges entered on the registers.
Footnote 18:
_Histoire des Prisons de Paris et des Départements._
To each prisoner was allotted a cell six feet square, "with a dirty bed
and a mattress as hard as marble." The turnkey's first question to a
new-comer was: "Have you any money?" If the answer was, Yes, he was
supplied with "a basin and a water-jug and a few cracked plates, for
which he paid triple their worth." If the prisoner entered with empty
pockets, it was: "So much the worse for you; for the rule here is that
nothing buys nothing" (_on n'a rien pour rien_). In this plight, says
Nougaret, the prisoner was obliged to sell some poor personal effect in
order to obtain the strictest necessaries of life. "A citizen who
occupied, in the month of Floréal, cell number 10 in the corridor of the
second story, sacrificed for twenty-five francs a gold ring worth about
£20, to procure for himself those same necessities." The rations at this
date consisted of "a pound and a half of bad bread and a plate of flinty
beans [_haricots très-durs_], larded with stale grease or tallow."
Prisoners who could afford it paid an exorbitant price for a few
supplementary dishes. Later, the diet was rather more generous.
Although communication between the prisoners was forbidden, they had
invented a sort of club; perhaps the most singular in the annals of
clubdom. The "meetings" were at eight in the evening, but no member left
his cell. Despite the thickness of the doors, it was found that, by
raising his voice, a prisoner could be heard from one end of the
corridor to the other; and by this means the members of the club
exchanged such news as they had gleaned during the day from the warders
on duty. In order that no one might be betrayed or compromised (in the
event of the conversation being overheard by the gendarmes posted under
the windows), instead of saying "I heard such-and-such a thing to-day,"
the formula was, "I dreamt last night."
[Illustration: A TURNKEY.]
When a candidate presented himself (that is to say, when a new prisoner
arrived), the president inquired, in behalf of the club, his name,
quality, residence, and the reason of his imprisonment; and if the
answers were satisfactory he was proclaimed a member of the society in
these terms: "Citizen, the patriots imprisoned in this corridor deem you
worthy to be their brother and friend. Permit me to send you the
_accolade fraternelle_!"
Two circumstances excluded from membership of the club,—to have borne
false witness at Fouquier-Tinville's bar, and to have been concerned in
the fabrication of false _assignats_. The club held its "meetings"
regularly, until the date at which the prisoners were allowed to
exercise together in the corridors.
We saw Madame Roland, "brave, fair Roland," at the men's wicket of
Sainte-Pélagie, passionately exhorting them; and Comtesse Dubarry
answering her summons to the guillotine by a swoon.
Another woman, not famous yet, but destined to fame, was on the women's
side of Sainte-Pélagie in 1793: Joséphine de Beauharnais, who was to
stand one day with Napoleon on the throne. A tradition of the prison
affirmed that Joséphine left her initials carved or traced on a wall of
her cell.
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The Terror seems almost to have emptied Sainte-Pélagie, and it is not
until the days of the Empire that we find its cells once more in the
occupation of political prisoners. Prisoners of that quality were not
lacking there in Buonaparte's despotic era; but (and this may have been
of design) the registers were not too well kept, and prisoners' names
and the motives of their imprisonment are hard to arrive at. Had we the
lists in full, however, they would excite small interest at this day.
Between 1811 and March, 1814, when the records were more precise, two
hundred and thirty-four persons were confined in this prison for causes
more or less political. In April, 1814, we have the Russian Emperor
giving their freedom to some seventy of the prisoners of Napoleon. The
Restoration sends the officers of the old Imperial Guard to
Sainte-Pélagie. The record of the Hundred Days, so far as this prison is
concerned, is a clean one; but Charles X. continues the use of
Sainte-Pélagie as a prison of State, and Béranger, Cauchois-Lemaire,
Colonel Duvergier, Bonnaire, Dubois, Achille Roche, and Barthélemy are
amongst the names on the gaoler's books. The Constitutional Monarchy
from 1830 to 1848, the Republic succeeding it, and the reign of Napoleon
III. (who swept into it five hundred citizens in the space of a few
days) kept alive the political tradition of Sainte-Pélagie. M.
Rochefort, who had his turn there from 1869-1870, was one of the last of
Napoleon III.'s prisoners, to whom the revolution of the 4th of
September gave back their liberty. From that date, the "political
boarders" of Sainte-Pélagie were few, the governments of MM. Thiers and
De Broglie preferring rather to suppress newspapers than to pursue their
editors.
Under the Empire and the Restoration the organisation and administration
of Sainte-Pélagie evidently left much to be desired. It was not rare,
says one chronicler, for accused persons to remain six or seven months
without being interrogated.
A certain M. Poulain d'Angers lay there a quarter of a year quite
ignorant as to the cause of his arrest. Another accused, a certain M.
Guillon, who had been attached to the Emperor's Council, weary of the
perpetual shufflings of the police of the succeeding reign, constituted
himself a prisoner _de facto_ without having received judgment; and
remained six months a captive, although there was no entry against his
name: one morning, they showed him the door, _malgré lui_. An adventure
which befell this gentleman attests sufficiently the disorder which
reigned in the prison service.
Being to some extent indisposed, the doctor had given M. Guillon an
order for the baths. Not knowing in what part of the prison the
infirmary was situated, he presented his order to a tipsy turnkey, who
promptly opened the door which gave on the Rue du Puits-de-l'Ermite. M.
Guillon, a free man without being aware of it, took the narrow street to
be a sentry's walk, and went a few paces without finding any one to
direct him. Returning to the sentry at the door, he inquired where were
the baths. "What baths?" said the sentinel.—"The prison baths." "The
prison baths," said the sentinel, "are probably in the prison; but you
can't get in there."—"What? I can't get into the prison! Am I outside
it, then?"—"Why, yes; you're in the street; you ought to know that, I
should think." "I did not know it, I assure you," said M. Guillon; "and
this won't suit me at all." He rang the prison bell, and was readmitted;
and the recital of his adventure restored to sobriety the turnkey who
had given him his freedom.
It was related that under the Directory a criminal condemned to
transportation managed to conceal himself in Sainte-Pélagie, persuaded
that there at all events he was safe, nor were his hopes deceived.
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It appears to have been after the Revolution of 1830—that brief week of
July which "paragons description"—that some kind of method was attained
or attempted in the management of Sainte-Pélagie. A new wing had been
built, which was reserved for the politicals,—but the builder had
reckoned without his guests, and without the King's Attorney. It was
considered that thirty-six beds in ten chambers, to say nothing of a
small spare dormitory, would be accommodation enough for prisoners of
this class. At the same epoch, a droll idea took possession of the
administration. It was, that if the _gamins_ and 'prentice-thieves raked
into the police-courts were mixed pell-mell with the political
prisoners, the former might get a polish on their morals, and the latter
an agreeable distraction! As a scheme of reform for the artful dodger it
was perhaps elementary, but it shewed at least a kindly anxiety on the
part of the administration to prepare diversions for political
offenders. Alas! it was a dream; for there were presently so many
political delinquents to be accommodated, that the question was no
longer how to distract their captivity, but how to lodge the new-comers.
The artful dodger was exiled.
More buildings were called for, and another court; and the
political wing of Sainte-Pélagie became a colony by itself. A
colonist of the early thirties bestowed on it the following
appreciation:—"Sainte-Pélagie is death by wasting (_le supplice par la
langueur_), torture by ennui, homicide by process of decline. It is a
sort of pneumatic machine applied to the brain, which saps and exhausts
it by inches. It is not an active irritation, and it is nothing
resembling repose. It is not Paris, and it is not a desert solitude. It
is a _mélange_ of everything: air, a modicum; elbow-room, rather less;
friends, one or two; bores, any number. It is a prison with a mirage of
the world; a world not made for a prison. It is not severe, and it is
infinitely wearisome. It is a kind of civilised police; it is a
prodigious and perpetual paradox.... Sainte-Pélagie is insupportable!"
Here is another appreciation of about the same date:—"Sainte-Pélagie is
a hurly-burly (_pêle-mêle_) of all imaginable ideas and opinions; a
species of political Pandemonium. The _Caricature_ runs foul of the
_Quotidienne_, the _Courrier de l'Europe_ elbows the _Revolution_, the
_Gazette_ pirouettes between the _Tribune_ and the _Courrier
Français_.... All colours and all races, all ages and all tongues are
confounded. It is a Babel; it is a common camp in which friends and foes
are flung together after a general rout. As a huge anomaly it is curious
to see, but it has the depressing effect of a monster!"
Let us turn to the debtors' side. Dulaure quotes in this connection a
description given by De la Borde in his _Memoirs_, which is worth
translating:
"The debtors' wing of Sainte-Pélagie, which is intended to accommodate a
hundred, has one hundred and twenty and sometimes one hundred and fifty
tenants. The building is in three stories, each story consisting of one
narrow corridor, the rooms in which receive no light except from
loopholes beneath the roof. There are no fire-places in the rooms, some
of which are cruelly cold, whilst in others the heat is unbearable. With
proper space for three persons at the most, they are generally made to
hold from five to six; and the dirt everywhere is revolting. The
wretched occupants can only take exercise in a corridor four feet wide,
and a courtyard thirty feet square. For years they have asked in vain
for some contrivance which would give them a proper current of air;
there is not a decent ventilator in the place. In winter they are locked
in from eight P.M. until seven A.M.; and, whatever his necessities, not
one of the five or six cell-mates can possibly quit his cell between
those hours. The dirtiest and worst-kept part of the whole prison is the
infirmary. Two or three patients are put into one bed,—an excellent
means of spreading the itch, and other maladies."
The reproach of this unseemly state M. de la Borde laid upon the chiefs
of the prison service for their indifference, and the subordinates for
their wholesale negligence.
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To obtain leave to visit a friend on the debtors' side, you climbed the
dingy staircase of the Préfecture de Police, to the office marked
_Bureau des Prisons_, where orders were issued for the principal gaols;
and you took your place in the waiting-room amongst a very motley crowd
whose relatives or acquaintances had been "put away" for murder, arson,
forgery, house-breaking, or a simple difficulty with a creditor.
Furnished with the necessary passport, a literary Frenchman made the
pilgrimage to Sainte-Pélagie seventy years ago, and wrote a most
interesting account of his visit. The authors of _Les Prisons de Paris_
transferred it to their entertaining pages, and I cannot do better than
translate from them. It chanced to be pay-day in the prison, that is to
say, the day on which the debtors received the stingy pittance which
their creditors were compelled to pay them once a month,—an excellent
opportunity of observing the stranded victims of the most nonsensical
law in the universe. To clap into prison a man who could not satisfy his
creditors, and thereby to encourage the indolent debtor in his indolence
and to dry up for the industrious debtor all possible sources of
industry, was perhaps, in this country as in France, the summit of folly
ever attained by legal enactment.
"I found myself in a world of which those who have described it only
from the other side of the wall have given us an entirely false
notion. Where were all the gaieties which the novelists and the
rhymesters have depicted for us? Where were the bevies of fair women
who, as we have been assured, flock here by day to scatter the cares
of the forlorn imprisoned debtor? I strained my ear in vain for any
note of those bacchic concert-parties and mad festivities (_ces
bruyants éclats de l'orgie_) which are to be met with in the novels.
I threw a glance into the courtyard, and calculated the amount of
space which each man could claim in the only spot in the whole
prison where there is any circulation of air; I came to the
conclusion that, when the prisoners were assembled here of an
evening, after their friends had left, each might possess for
himself a fraction of a fraction of a square yard of mother earth."
The debtors trooped down to the office to finger their doles.
"I watched a procession of artisans and labourers, whose speech and
costume contrasted oddly with the title of 'merchants'
(_négociants_), under which their creditors had filched them from
the workshops and yards to which they belonged; next, some
physiognomies of men of the world, some representatives of the
middle classes, and a crowd of young bloods (_étourneaux_).
"One of the first comers was an officer, decorated and seamed with
wounds, who had been four times in Sainte-Pélagie to purge the same
debt. After five months' captivity he came to an arrangement with
his creditor, to whom he owed a couple of thousand francs, agreeing
to pay him in ninety days five hundred more. He was let out, failed
to redeem the debt, and returned to take up his old quarters in
Sainte-Pélagie. At the end of a year, he acknowledged a debt of
three thousand francs to the same creditor, and obtained six months'
grace. He paid a thousand on account, could not furnish a penny
more, and went back to prison for the third time. Thus, after nearly
three years in prison, the captain owes one-third more than he did
on first coming in, and has paid a thousand francs to boot,—to
encourage his creditor.
"The old fellow who followed him was a monument of the speculative
spirit of a certain class of creditors. He was half-blind, and had
lost his left arm; his whole debt amounted to £20. Eight days before
the King's birthday his creditor cast him into Sainte-Pélagie, in
the hope that one of the civil-list bonuses would fall to the old
man. Unhappily, the hope was not realised, and the creditor is now
looking forward to next year's list.
"Amongst the swarm of debtors, I recognised my old water-carrier,
who needed little coaxing to tell me the story of his imprisonment.
"Léonard was a native of Auvergne. After hawking water in buckets
for several years, his ambition rose to a water-cart; and behold him
now with his sphere of operations extended from the Rue du
Faubourg-Poissonnière to the Marais. Unluckily for Léonard the
water-cart was not yet his own property, and he began to fall into
arrears with his monthly payments. When the arrears had become what
the bailiffs call an 'exploitable' sum, Léonard was haled to the
bar. Here he suddenly ceased to be a water-carrier; they promoted
him to the rank of 'merchant,' and under that style and dignity they
condemned poor Léonard for debt. In this strait Léonard thought,
"Why not become bankrupt at once?" but when he went to deposit his
balance-sheet they told him he was not a 'merchant' at all, but a
mere water-carrier. Fifteen days later, Léonard had joined the ranks
of the impecunious in Sainte-Pélagie.
"His next idea was to lodge an appeal, and his brother was willing
to bear the costs; but Léonard's debt was a bagatelle of £12, and
the lawyer whom he consulted said that the blessings of appeal were
reserved for persons owing £20 and upwards. The code of the Osages,
if they have one, probably does not contain such exquisite burlesque
as this.
"I asked Léonard what had become of his wife. 'Oh,' he said, 'poor
Jeanne has gone back to Auvergne; otherwise they'd have had her too,
for they made Jeanne a "merchant" also' (_elle était aussi
négociante_).
"I gave Léonard a trifle, and he went off to drink it. It is the
commonest recreation, when it can be indulged; and the majority of
the debtors, when their day of liberation comes, return to their
homes with the two incurable habits of idleness and liquor."
Another who came to touch his allowance was a tradesman whose clerk had
robbed him of one thousand crowns. "The tradesman being unable in
consequence to meet his engagements is condemned to spend five years in
Sainte-Pélagie, and from the grating of his cell he can see in the penal
wing the scoundrelly clerk, who gets off with six months' imprisonment!"
Another comes
"tripping cheerfully through the crowd; he is receiving his last
payment; in a few days he will be a free man. An anonymous letter
has loosed his bonds with the happy tidings that his creditor has
been dead a year, and that a speculative bailiff has been prolonging
his captivity on the chance of the debt being paid into his own
pocket."
To this victim of a negligent law succeeded two who had made the law
their dupe. One was an officer who had had himself arrested for debt to
escape joining an expedition to Morea. The other was a tradesman "who
was nobody's prisoner but his own, and who had arranged with a friend to
deposit the monthly allowance for food. He was speculating on the
article of the code which gave a general exemption from arrest for debt
to all who had passed five consecutive years in the gaol."
A new-comer, "with his face all slashed," was
"recounting the details of the siege he had sustained in his house
against the bailiff's men. He had wanted to give himself up without
fuss, but was told when he presented himself at the office that a
person condemned for debt must be forcibly arrested (_doit être
appréhendé au corps avec brutalité_), and pitched into a cab under
the eyes of all the loungers on the foot-way,—who no doubt often
imagine that they are assisting at the capture of some eminent
criminal. This enterprise on the part of the bailiff and his men is
charged to the unfortunate debtor, and the field of battle is as
often as not some public thoroughfare."
But by far the most interesting and sympathetic personality on the
debtor's side of Sainte-Pélagie at this date was the American Colonel
Swan. The nature and amount of the colonel's debt are not set out, but
the interest seems to have been the main cause of offence, and he had
made it a matter of conscience to refuse payment.
"The French law had ordered his temporary arrest, and, twenty years
after his incarceration, he was still 'temporarily' in confinement.
Compatriot and friend of Washington, Colonel Swan had fought in the
War of Independence with Lafayette, and the grand old French
republican often bent his white head beneath the wicket of the gaol,
on a visit to his brother-in-arms."
His own private means, the aid of wealthier friends, or even a
successful project of escape, might have restored him to the free world;
but so greatly had he used himself to his captivity, that no thought of
liberty seems ever to have crossed his mind.
"It was not altogether without emotion that one saw this comely
veteran—whose features were almost a copy of Benjamin
Franklin's—pacing the narrow and sombre passages of the prison,
drawing a breath of air at the loop-hole above the little garden.
His long robe of swanskin or white dimity announced his coming, and
it was both curious and touching to see how the groups of prisoners
made way for him in the corridors, and how some hastened to carry
into their cells the little stoves on which they did their cooking,
lest the fumes of the charcoal should offend him."
This respect and love of the whole prison the old colonel had justly
won; not a day of his long confinement there but he had marked by some
service of kindness, for the most part mysterious and anonymous. No
hungry debtor went in vain to the door of the colonel's little cell; and
often, seeking a supper, the petitioner went away with the full price of
his liberty.
There were two classes in the debtors' wing; those with certain
resources of their own to supplement the miserable allowance of their
creditors, and those who were dependent for their daily rations on the
handful of centimes allowed them by law.
These last used to hire their services to the others for a gratuity, and
were among the regular suitors of Colonel Swan's inexhaustible bounty.
They were known in the prison as "cotton-caps" (_bonnets de coton_). One
of these, hearing that the American had lost his "cotton-cap," went to
beg the place. The colonel knew all about the man, a poor devil with a
large family, stranded there for a few hundred francs. He asked a salary
of six francs a month.
"That will suit me very well," said the colonel; and, opening a little
chest, "here is five years' pay in advance." It was the amount precisely
of the man's debt,—and a fair instance of the colonel's benefactions.
Towards the year 1829, prisoners taking their airing in the garden saw
an old man strolling an hour or two in the day on the high terrace or
gallery at the top of the prison. It was Colonel Swan, for whom, in
failing health, the doctor had demanded that privilege. He had accepted
it gratefully, but—as if admonished from within—he said to the doctor:
"My proper air is the air of the prison; this breath of liberty will
kill me."
A few months later, the cannon of the 27th of July was belching in the
streets of Paris. On the 28th, the doors of the "commercial Bastille"
were thrown open, and the prisoners went out.
Colonel Swan, who went out with them, died on the 29th.
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There were a few clever escapes, _evasions_ as the French call them,
from Sainte-Pélagie. What was known as the _procès d'Avril_, 1835,
resulted in the condemnation of Guinard, Imbert, Cavaignac, Marrast, and
others, who were lodged in the political wing. Forty of them joined in a
scheme of evasion, and a subterranean passage was dug from the
north-east angle of the prison into the garden of No. 9, Rue Copeau. The
tunnel, nearly twenty yards in length, was completed on the 12th of
July, and of the forty prisoners twenty-eight made good their escape
from Sainte-Pélagie the "insupportable."
The excitement of a well-conducted escape is contagious, and in
September of the same year the Comte de Richmond, who gave himself out
as the son of Louis XVI., with his two friends in durance, Duclerc and
Rossignol, broke prison ingeniously enough. By bribery or some other
means, Richmond procured a pass-key which gave admission to the
sentry-walk; and, head erect and a file of papers under his arm, he
walked boldly out, followed by Rossignol and Duclerc. To the sentinel
who challenged them, the Count with perfect _sang-froid_ introduced
himself as the director of the prison; "and these gentlemen," he added,
"whom you ought to know, are my chief clerk, and my architect." The
sentry saluted and let them pass, and M. de Richmond and his friends
opened the door and walked out.
In 1865, an Englishman named Jackson, condemned to five years' hard
labour, managed to get himself transferred to Sainte-Pélagie. On a wet
wild night in the last week of January, he squeezed out of his cell,
crawled over the roof to a convenient wall, and by the aid of a cord and
grappling iron let himself down into the street. The night was pitchy
black, rain was falling in torrents, the sentry was in his box, and
Jackson footed it leisurely home.
Better than these, however, was the escape of Colonel Duvergier, one of
the State prisoners of Charles X. Colonel Duvergier had been condemned
to five years' "reclusion" for no apparent reason except that he was one
of the most distinguished soldiers of his day. The story of his escape
is one of the happiest in the romantic annals of prison-breaking, but
the credit of the affair rests principally with a young littérateur, a
certain Eugène de P——.
Colonel Duvergier was on the political, and Eugène de P—— on the
debtors' side of Sainte-Pélagie, but they had succeeded in establishing
a correspondence by letter; and Eugène, not over-eager for his own
liberty, seems to have taken upon himself to procure the colonel's. With
Colonel Duvergier was one Captain Laverderie, and the colonel refused to
go out unless the captain could share his escape. Eugène de P—— said the
captain should go also, and the plot went forward.
The first step was to get the colonel and his friend from the political
to the debtors' side of the prison, and this was contrived at the
exercise hour. When the political prisoners were being marched in, to
give place to the debtors—there being but one exercise yard for the two
classes—Duvergier and Laverderie escaped the warder's eye, and hid in
the garden, until the debtors came out for their constitutional.
Nowadays, the warder would have counted his flock, both on coming out
and on going in; but the colonel and the captain seem to have had no
difficulty, either in attaching themselves to the debtors or in taking
refuge, after the exercise hour, in the cell of a debtor who was a party
to the scheme.
So far, however, the fugitives had succeeded only in changing their
quarters in the prison; and the next step was to procure for them two
visitors' passes. These passes, deposited with the gate-warder when
visitors entered, were returned to them as they left the prison. How to
place in the warder's hands passes bearing the names of two "visitors"
who had not entered the prison? The adroit Eugène thought it not too
difficult.
He had a friendly warder at the gate who was much interested in some
sketches which Eugène was making in the prison, and went down to him one
day with his portfolio in his hand. "A few fresh sketches you might like
to look at." While the Argus of the gate was amusing himself with
Eugène's drawings, Eugène himself feigned astonishment at the number of
visitors to the prison, as evidenced by the quantity of passes lying
loose on the table. He expressed no less surprise that the warder should
have so little care of them; why not keep the passes in a handy case,
such, for example, as Eugène used for his drawings?
The warder thought he would ask the governor for one. "You needn't
trouble the governor," said Eugène; "take mine. Look, what could be
better!" and in filling the portfolio with the visitors' passes, he
slipped in two others.
At that psychological instant, Duvergier and Laverderie presented
themselves at the gate.
"Your names, messieurs?" and they gave the names which were entered on
Eugène's passes.
The passes were turned up, the warder handed them over, and—still
thanking Eugène for his present—bowed the fugitives out of the prison.
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