SAINT-LAZARE
Towards the end of December 1907, after I had been about one month in
prison, I had a long conversation with Maître Aubin and also with M.
Desmoulin. I told them all I knew about the dreadful mystery.
When M. Desmoulin heard all the details concerning the mysterious
personage whom my late husband and I had always called the "German," the
pearl necklace given me by President Faure, and about the "documents,"
he eagerly said to me: "I will speak to the Prime Minister about this,
and within a few days you will be a free woman again!"
Days went by. M. Desmoulin came frequently, but alas! instead of good
tidings he gradually broke the news to me that an immediate release was
out of the question!
I questioned my counsel. He, too, saw clearly that the pearls and the
documents were the keys to the mystery, or, at any rate, one of the
keys, but he hesitated as to the advisability of drawing attention to
these facts.... "The whole affair is already so complicated," he
explained, "it would perhaps be unwise to add new difficulties to... You
have not spoken about the necklace and Faure's Memoirs to M. Leydet,--at
any rate, not explicitly--you have not mentioned them so far to M.
André... It is always dangerous and even suspicious to come forward with
new statements.... And then, you must realise that the Government, the
Law, will be rather displeased if those facts are brought forth, if the
private life of a former President of the Republic has to be searched
and discussed.... And it is never wise to upset the Government or to
displease the Law.... After all, I will do what you decide but I am here
to advise you; I am here, above all, to get you out of prison, to
restore you to your Marthe.... Again, you have not sufficient proofs
about those pearls. You don't know their exact origin, there is a
mystery about them, the President told you so himself. It will probably
cause a great deal of unpleasantness, and probably lead to no definite
result.... _A quoi bon!_"
"I had thought that a counsel was a man who feared nothing and no one,
who, with a strong conscience, indomitable will, and unconquerable
logic, eliminated all obstacles and--at all costs--made truth triumphant
in the end."
"Truth is a two-edged tool, Madame. The first duty of a counsel is to
save his client, and I shall save you easily enough, for there are no
charges against you whatever, but you must leave everything to me, and
not complicate matters unnecessarily."
Time after time, during the twelve months I spent at Saint-Lazare, I
revolted against such half-hearted, unsatisfactory and even compromising
methods which made it possible for the prosecution to say that my
evidence was incomplete, not clear, that I kept back too much... But
Maître Aubin remained obdurate, and I feel sure that he meant well, and
did the right thing.
Thanks to his all-conquering logic and fiery eloquence, the jury
realised that I had done nothing to deserve being charged with a ghastly
double murder, and I was acquitted. I thank him and his two
secretaries--M. Steinhardt and M. Landowsky--with all my heart for their
splendid devotion, but I know they will forgive me if I say that I
regret that the whole truth did not come out at my trial.
Besides, Maître Aubin himself, time after time, told me: "I'll see that
you are acquitted, Madame. Afterwards, you can and you should, tell the
whole world all that I thought wiser not to reveal at the trial, for
your own sake!"
I have followed Maître Aubin's advice: I am doing so now.
* * * * *
Saint-Lazare! How many times have I been asked, since I left that
prison, to describe it, to describe the life I led there!
It was atrocious for a poor young woman "of the people" like Firmin,
for instance, to live in a cell, but my fellow-prisoner would perhaps
agree herself, that for a leader of society, for a woman of the world,
it was almost worse. She had been used to a small shabby room or even a
garret, to misery... and I to a vast house, servants, comfort, luxury
even. Intellectual and artistic joys were unknown to her, but they had
been the best part of my life. She was used to insults and vulgar
language; they made me ill. She did not mind very much what she ate...
nor did I, if only it were clean, but food was not, could not, be clean
at Saint-Lazare, where elementary cleanliness and hygiene were quite
unknown.
It would be difficult to conceive a prison more hopelessly dilapidated
and insanitary than Saint-Lazare. The walls are cracked; the passages
and staircases are evil-smelling; vermin abounds everywhere; light and
air are worse than scant; the stoves of the cells are inefficient and
even dangerous, as I learned at my own expense, for twice I nearly lost
my life owing to escaping fumes. All the walls are damp and clammy;
saltpetre oozes from them; they are hastily covered with a coat of black
paint, but the saltpetre comes through again and they look as if they
had been stuck over with some repulsive, viscous substance; the ceilings
are low, except on the ground floor, where are situated the Director's
apartments and various offices. It is cold everywhere.... The steps of
the staircase are mostly broken; each step has a rotten, crumbling
wooden edge, and there is filth in every corner. I could supply
other--and worse--details, but will merely mention the baths. They are
in the vaults of the prison, and on the way to them, one passes along
the awe-inspiring dungeons where State-prisoners were kept in ancient
days. Water runs down the rough-hewn walls. The atmosphere in that cave
is icy cold all the year round. It is only lit by small air-holes. Each
"bath room" is separated from the other by low walls, and one gains
admittance to those "stalls"--for that is what they remind one of--by
lifting a curtain. There are about ten of these stalls, and when I
bathed, Firmin used to stand before the curtain to prevent the other
women from coming to see--and insult--me. The baths were so unspeakably
filthy that I was allowed to place a thick sheet inside and round the
bath, so as to avoid contagion....
The prison is in such a state that for years there have been rumours
that it would be pulled down. It will tumble down, in a few years' time.
It is a place of dirt and sloth, of abject misery and ignoble and
degrading atmosphere, a hotbed of infection for the body, as well as for
the mind.... Such is Saint-Lazare, where I spent _one whole
year_--waiting for an ever-postponed trial!--Saint-Lazare, the woman's
prison in the very heart of Paris, the City of Light!
* * * * *
Firmin worked, in order to earn a few pence. I did like her, in order to
be occupied, to kill time, and also to live like Firmin and the other
prisoners. We made sheets, towels, pillow-slips, napkins.... A part of
this was for use in the prison itself, the other--the finer work--was
sold to large Parisian stores. The days were short, and it was never
very light in the cells with the ground-glass windows, the iron-bars and
the wire-trellis. Besides the windows overlooked a yard, with high walls
all round it and we were in winter.... So we worked mostly by the light
of a candle stuck in the neck of a bottle. It was most trying to the
eyes. The tiles were so cold that we always sat with our feet on the
bars of our chairs, and our knees necessarily high up. Several times a
day, we tried, with an old rag, to get rid of some of the water which
accumulated in the crevices between the broken tiles and in all the
places where the tiles _had_ been. On rainy days, water somehow dropped
through the rotten ceiling, and trickled down the walls, and there were
small pools of water here and there around us. The walls, painted black
except for a narrow band immediately below the ceiling, were so damp
that after a few nights in prison, I felt such pains in the side of my
body nearest the wall when I lay down that I applied for permission to
pull my pallet a short distance from the wall.... I thus avoided the
dampness of the wall and... the vermin which crawled on it. Mice were
scarce, but ugh! the cockroaches!... One evening, I and Firmin, with
hands trembling with disgust, killed over a hundred each in a very
short time. At night, they ran about everywhere, climbing on our table,
on our beds.... When one crawled on my skin I had nervous fits and
screamed.... I wrapped my head up in a towel, and drew the sheet and
blanket up over it, but I could still hear the cockroaches and feel them
crawl over me.... "This woman will go mad," said the prison doctor one
day, and I obtained permission to drag my bed, at night, into the very
centre of the cell. Every day, I rubbed the legs and frame of my
wretched bed with paraffin, and then I could rest in comparative
peace... especially as Sister Léonide, by order of the doctor, gave me
every night--and until the last day of my imprisonment--a sleeping
draught, thanks to which I generally slept two or three hours.... But
when one got up during the night, it was dreadful. One literally walked
on cockroaches, and the horrible, crackling noise as their bodies were
crushed underfoot, was enough to jar any one's nerves....
I can fancy some reader saying: "Pools of water in a cell, broken tiles,
mice, cockroaches by the hundred!... She exaggerates.... She is
describing a cell in some prison of another century...." I am _not_
exaggerating; "Saint-Lazare" does not belong to another century. It is
so old and tumble-down that, more than once, when looking into some dark
room on my way to the parlour or the Director's office, I almost
expected to see the heavy chains, the thumb-screws, the rack, the
bilboes and other instruments of a torture-chamber!
Jacq left our cell at half-past six in the morning, and soon afterwards
Firmin and I rose. We first of all lit the small stove. I had to pay for
the wood and coal, of course. The coal was stacked in a corner of the
cell, and I placed the wood on my only shelf, to keep it as dry as
possible. Then we swept and cleaned the room. The door was opened to
allow us to carry the dust away and fetch some water to wash--and to
make coffee. We had to handle the coal with our hands, for a shovel
might have been used as a weapon!
It was not easy to dress. All I had at my disposal was a very small
stone basin, a jug--bought from the prison for fourpence--a brush and
comb, a tooth brush, a piece of mottled soap, a penny looking glass
less than three inches in diameter, and a hard rough towel. There was no
bucket or pail, and we had to leave the cell--on the two or three
occasions when the door was opened for a few minutes--to empty the
basin. I had to do my washing-up in the very basin in which I used to
wash... my face!
My daughter several times brought proper soap and toothpaste for me, but
the warder near the parlour invariably decreed: "You can't take these
in; they are luxuries, and luxuries are prohibited here."
I wore a plain black dress, which I made myself in one afternoon in
prison, and when I left my cell I threw a black hood over my shoulders.
I wore my hair parted in the centre and fastened at the back with a
piece of ribbon and a few hair-pins. That was the simplest coiffure, and
the lightest to my ever-aching head.
I only wore the dress in which I had come to Saint-Lazare when I went to
the Palace of Justice for the _Instruction_, and, of course, when, a
year later, I was tried in the Assize Court.
Owing to illness and the complete lack of exercise--I was entitled to go
round the yard for an hour every day, but when I did so, once, the other
prisoners insulted and even hit me, and I had to give up that hour of
exercise--I became very weak. Shoes hurt my feet, and I made a pair of
slippers for myself with bits of cardboard, velvet, and fur given me by
the sisters.
I also made a basket with plaited paper, to keep my bread clean.
After breakfast--coffee and bread--I usually opened the window to air
the room and to look outside.
Below was the yard, with its few trees and its basin. I saw women
washing or walking. Many of these prisoners were mothers, and held
babies in their arms. Many had two or three children. There were little
boys and girls--the oldest being about five--and they played with the
rubbish on the ground, cried, fought, or hung to their mother's skirts.
All were terribly unkempt and slovenly, and all were in tatters. The
majority of these mothers ill-treated their children and abused them in
the vilest language.
Foul and obscene language, indeed, is the rule at Saint-Lazare, when the
scum of the feminine population of Paris, the lowest and most degraded
of "gay women," the vilest viragoes of the slums, and thieves and
vagabonds are brought day after day, the majority for a short time only.
How they loathed one another, and how they fought!... The Sisters hardly
dared interfere, and it was only on rare occasions that the male warders
were called upon to put an end to fierce quarrels and free fights. On
one occasion I saw, through the bars of my window, two women literally
tearing one another to pieces. They were gipsies, known at Saint-Lazare
as "_les noires_" ("the black ones"). Their hair was loose, their
clothes in shreds; they ploughed each other's face with their nails.
Their mouths were torn and blood streamed over their cheeks and chins,
giving them the appearance of demons. One had picked up a piece of sharp
flint, and with it slashed the face of her enemy. Other women watched
the fight and yelled with joy. The Sisters were powerless, and at last a
warder was sent for.... He came, quietly. He was an old man who knew....
In each hand he held a bowlful of thick yellowish soup. Without a word,
he handed one to each combatant.... Like beasts, they instantaneously
forgot their battle, and eagerly started gulping down the soup, spooning
it out with their hands.
I never dared remain very long at the window, for when the prisoners saw
me, they invariably hurled at me shouts of execration.
I helped Firmin with the sewing, and by sewing all day and a great part
of the night, managed to earn seven or eight francs a _month_. The work
was paid for at the rate of one halfpenny per towel, napkin, or slip
(one franc for two dozen), twopence per tablecloth and threepence for
large sheets, but you had to pay for your cotton and needles, and when
the work was not "perfect," it was refused, or no more work was given to
you! With what I earned, I bought food from the canteen for Firmin, and
my poor companion repaid me with such real devotion, such touching
attentions as I had never received from any one, except from my Mother
and Marthe.
The Sisters were so pleased with my work that they gave me the more
difficult sewing to do--piles of fine napkins and tablecloths for the
Spring sale at the _Printemps_ and the _Bon Marché_.... No wonder those
vast stores can sell beautiful table-linen at low prices which make
purchasers exclaim, as I had so often done myself: "How can they do it!"
After a few months, my fingers became sore, and bled constantly--for
besides the sewing, I had to scrub the cell, to prepare the fire, to
wash up, to iron my own things (which I did by pressing them against the
stove-pipe!) and all this soon ruins hands which have been used chiefly
to play the piano, to embroider, or to write... Firmin, and later Jacq,
wanted to do all the rough work for me, but that would not have been
fair, and I insisted on taking my turn at it.
Sister Léonide then kindly taught me to make the "_frivolité_"
(tatting), for which no needle was required, and for a time, I did no
other work.
I have often thought of the sarcastic remarks certain newspapers and
probably the Prosecution would have made, had they known that in prison
I spent weeks making "_frivolité_!"... Did they not think it an
extremely funny and eloquent omen that in the days of my childhood, I
rode a mare called "_Cléopâtre_"!
There was a library at Saint-Lazare, but I could not read, for reading
gave me neuralgia. Firmin read to me sometimes, very slowly and
monotonously, of course, but I was very thankful to her.
Marthe came twice a week, and later, after I had been very ill for a
time, she was allowed to come to the prison three times a week. Those
visits were, need I say it, the one great solace in my misery. Poor
little Marthe, how courageous she was, and how well she found the words
that would comfort me and help me to live on until her next visit....
And to think that after my trial, after I had been acquitted, she was
kept away from me for nearly two years, by kind souls who, thinking that
I had not yet suffered enough, told her such fearful things about her
mother and threatened her with so many calamities if she dared to come
to me, that the poor child, who suffered as much as I did, alas, found
it impossible to disobey those strict and inhuman orders, until, having
married the man she loved, a young Italian painter, poor, but with a
noble heart, she craved my forgiveness--as though I had anything to
forgive her!--and came to me at last.
Maître Aubin also came two or three times a week, and not only gave me
excellent legal advice, but did his utmost to comfort me in my awful
predicament. His devotion, and that of his two secretaries, was truly
admirable. And there were the visits of M. Desmoulin and of Pastor
Arboux. I saw my notary, Maître Jousselin, several times, for I had to
"emancipate" my daughter to enable her to sign certain documents and
"represent" me in various circumstances.
The hours I liked best in the day were eight in the morning and
half-past seven at night. Those were the hours of the Sisters' Service,
in their own little chapel, which was exactly opposite my window. That
chapel had been the cell of St. Vincent de Paul, and the spot where the
altar stood was the very spot where the great man had died in 1660. I
loved to hear the Sisters sing their beautiful Latin hymns, and Sister
Léonide, who knew this, and who stood at the back of that chapel, that
is, close to the window, opened the window just a little, so that I
might hear the singing better.... And Sister Emmanuel, who was
seventy-eight years old, and had been at Saint-Lazare for over fifty
years, one day whispered in my ear: "You know, I have not sung in chapel
for years. I am so old, but I sing now... for you, my poor child!"... I
was so unhappy and so sensitive that this simple and sublime remark made
me cry with emotion and gratitude. I could have knelt before her. I
asked Sister Léonide what I could do for Sister Emmanuel, and she said:
"Make her slippers. I'll give you everything to make them. It is so cold
in this prison."... I never did anything in my life with so great and so
radiant a joy.
What a wonderful person, this old, old Sister Emmanuel! When a woman who
was being put into a strait-jacket screamed hysterically the presence
of Sister Emmanuel was enough to calm her. She called all the prisoners
"_mesdames_" or "_mes petites_" ("my little ones"). In the sewing-room
she read aloud to the prisoners at work, but frequently her strength
failed, the book fell from her hands, and she went to sleep. There
reigned absolute silence then in the vast room, for the women respected
her sleep. When Sister Emmanuel awoke she shouted from habit: "Now then,
_mesdames_, silence, please!" And every one laughed....
She gave courage to all, took an interest in every prisoner, and
invariably advised them to "appeal," without even knowing whether the
woman had yet been tried! Nothing disheartened or wearied her; her
temper was always even. She was Serenity itself, ever smiling and
comforting.
She was full of quaint expressions. Once when a prisoner stared at her
she gaily said: "I am very plain, am I not, with my nose like a potato!
Well, I've always been like that!" Another time, when I had just seen
her preventing a woman--a new arrival--who had vilely abused her, from
being punished, I could not help exclaiming: "Oh! _ma Soeur_, you are
sure to go straight to heaven!" She laughed and replied: "Well, if I go
there, it will really not have been difficult!"
"I love 'my women,'" she once said to me, in her tremulous voice, "and
the worse they are the more they need love, and the more I love them."
The prisoners all worshipped her like a Saint, and even the fiercest and
most degraded woman would obey her, whatever the order was and at once.
Sister Emmanuel had only to look at the woman.... I often wondered how
it was that everybody bowed to and gladly obeyed this aged, bent Sister
of Mercy with the emaciated and trembling body, so small that when she
was sitting her feet were off the ground, until one day I looked into
her eyes.... There was the Holy Spirit in those eyes.
The Sister Superior, _Ma Mère_--My Mother--as every one called her, a
tall, strong woman of about fifty, with large blue eyes shining with
kindness, came from time to time to see me--which was a very great
favour. At first, she was cold and almost distant, but gradually she
changed and became more and more affectionate, and remained a little
longer in my cell.
Sisters Superior from all parts of France came to see her when they were
in Paris and they always visited me, not out of curiosity but out of
sympathy, for My Mother had evidently spoken to them about me.
I remember the Sister Superior of a prison at Rouen. She came from time
to time to Paris, and always spent a long while with me. This sainted
woman spoke to me with so much profound sympathy that I once said to
her: "But, Ma Mère, I am sure you must despise me.... I have not been a
faithful wife; I have accused a man without having absolute proofs that
he was guilty...." She took my hands in hers and replied: "No creature
on earth is despicable; we don't know what a being is, has been, or
might have been."
* * * * *
There were four small tables in our cell--three feet by one and a
half--and Sister Léonide on a day when I was more profoundly dejected
than usual gave them names to try to make me laugh: the _drawing-room
table_ (also called _dressing-table_) on which stood the mimosa in its
ink-bottle and the photographs of my daughter and my mother; the
_dining-room table_ used for our meals; the _library table_ on which we
wrote our letters and the _work-table_ for our sewing. Marthe once
brought me some material to repair a petticoat, but there was more than
necessary, and with the extra material I made a cover for the
drawing-room table; and Sister Léonide occasionally gave us some sheets
of white or brown paper to lay on the "dining-room" table.
After each meal we opened the window, whatever the weather might be, and
gave crumbs of bread to the sparrows and the pigeons. When for some
reason or other, we were late in doing so, the birds would knock at the
window with their beaks through the wire-trellis.
At night, besides the cockroaches, there were the cats to prevent one
from sleeping. Saint-Lazare is so infested with rats that scores of cats
are kept to destroy them. Moreover, almost every Sister has a cat as a
companion.
In the evening before the cells were locked and bolted for the
night--after the prisoners had emptied their basins and filled their
jugs with water--one or the other of the Sisters, and sometimes two or
three of them, came to spend five minutes, at most, with me.... I looked
forward all day to those five minutes.
After that, I used to go to the end of the Boulevard of the Cells, to
watch the Sisters go to evening prayer. I loved those Sisters. Their
life was like that of the prisoners; they lived in similar cells, ate
the same food, were insulted by the women just as I and others were, but
they remained quite unruffled and patient.... The mere sight of them did
me good.
I watched the night procession through the bars of the gate.... The
_abbé_ came first, followed by the Sister Superior and then all the
Sisters.... They went in single file, their heads bent down, their arms
hanging by their sides, slowly, silently. The only noise was the soft
jingling of the bunches of keys hanging from their waists, of their
large ebony crosses, and of the beads of their rosaries....
In the shadow I could not see their black gowns; I only saw their white
cornettes, which looked like the white wings of birds, and under each
cornette there was a serene face, beautiful because the eyes were pure
and the soul was filled with charity and the love of God.
Sixty Sisters passed thus, and as they went by the heavy iron gate
through which I was watching, each Sister raised her head and faintly,
divinely smiled at me as if to say: "I will pray for you in the
chapel...."
I forgot my misery; I forgot that I was accused of murder;... I returned
to my cell and from behind the bars of my open window, I listened to the
songs and prayers.... Then I lit my candle, went to bed and read a page
of the Bible....
Firmin, afterwards, would talk with me. We whispered.... But sometimes
we forgot, and spoke too loudly... and in the night we heard the voice
of the Sister on duty in the Boulevard of the Cells, saying slowly,
monotonously: "Silence... silence... silence...."