My Memoirs Part 47

I questioned my counsel. He, too, saw clearly that the pearls and the doc.u.ments 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.

Andre... 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 Maitre 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, Maitre 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 Maitre 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 pa.s.sages 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 pa.s.ses 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 ign.o.ble 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-gla.s.s 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 acc.u.mulated 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 c.o.c.kroaches!... 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 c.o.c.kroaches 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 Leonide, 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 c.o.c.kroaches, 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, c.o.c.kroaches 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 gla.s.s 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 a.s.size Court.

Owing to illness and the complete lack of exercise--I was ent.i.tled 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 sc.u.m 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 Marche_.... 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 Leonide then kindly taught me to make the "_frivolite_"

(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 "_frivolite_!"... Did they not think it an extremely funny and eloquent omen that in the days of my childhood, I rode a mare called "_Cleopatre_"!

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 n.o.ble heart, she craved my forgiveness--as though I had anything to forgive her!--and came to me at last.

Maitre 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, Maitre Jousselin, several times, for I had to "emanc.i.p.ate" my daughter to enable her to sign certain doc.u.ments and "represent" me in various circ.u.mstances.

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 Leonide, 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 grat.i.tude. I could have knelt before her. I asked Sister Leonide 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 pet.i.tes_" ("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 Sur_, 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 Mere_--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 Mere, 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."