My Memoirs Part 54

"But she was acquitted...."

"Yes, yes... quite so!... All the same, beware of this person, Madame, should you meet her again...."

Since then, I have often been in that drawing-room; the host, the hostess, and all their friends know now who I am, and I believe that although I am not a "fatal" woman, they would give their own life for me. To win them to me, I had merely to be--myself. They knew me, and yet I have only told them a very small part of my life-story. I hope and believe that all those who once condemned me without hesitation, and thought that I was guilty, just because "the French newspapers said so,"

will, after reading this painful account of my life and my "case," learn at last to forget the "Tragic," or "Red Widow," and to know, and, I trust, sympathise with, a woman who suffered unjustly the worst of martyrdoms.

Firmin left Saint-Lazare a short time after my last _Instruction_.

When she heard the great, the wonderful news, Firmin exclaimed: "Oh!

Madame.... And I hoped so much you would be free long before me!" She was sorry, intensely sorry; not to leave the prison, of course, but to part from me. She packed her few belongings silently, then, when the moment of saying good-bye had come, Firmin came to me and said: "Madame, say you will grant me something... something I want to ask you and yet don't like to ask."

"Yes, Firmin, I promise."

The poor young woman, with whom, for so many weeks, I had lived in the same cell, eaten the same food, shared the same thoughts, the same sorrows and the same hopes, hesitated a long time, and then at last, turning a little paler, muttered: "I would like to kiss you before I go, Madame."... She kissed my cheek, and I kissed hers, and then she hurried away. The heavy door which had been opened was shut; I was alone in that terrible cell, and I fell on my knees, and sobbed, crying that word which I repeated day after day: Why?... why?...

Another prisoner took Firmin's place. She was a woman whom misery and an awful illness had made sour, hypocritical, and treacherous. She remained only a few weeks with me, but when she left Saint-Lazare I heard that she went about selling samples of my work--which I had not given her--and had also tried to sell "stories" about me....

A few hours after that poor woman's departure, Sister Leonide entered my cell.

"I have good news for you," she began. "Your future companion, whose name is Juliette, is a kind, able, active woman. She will be here with you this afternoon. I know Juliette well. She is a good woman, full of excellent qualities, but she is a thief. I suppose it is in her blood.

She has been here very often, and I can a.s.sure you that you will have never been looked after so well as you will be by Juliette. She was a teacher once. She can talk, and she is well read and well mannered. And then, she has plenty of courage. She will not bewail her fate night and day like our poor little Firmin, but will try to cheer and comfort you.

Juliette was recently sentenced to several years' imprisonment. They put her downstairs, but the other women hated her and even threatened to kill her, because she said she was convinced of your innocence. That did not stop her. Day after day since her arrival here she has asked to share your cell, and her request has been granted. And now, please, thank Sister Leonide, Madame!"

She spoke these last words in that loud, deep voice which she a.s.sumed when she wished to make me laugh.

Juliette came in. I had quite a surprise. Jacq and Firmin were small and slim; Juliette was very tall and stout. One could see at a glance that she was a clean woman. She looked about thirty-six years old. Her thick dark hair was perfectly tidy, her nails well kept. Her complexion was fresh and healthy. She was not beautiful, but there was a pleasant, winning expression in her face. She exchanged a few remarks with Sister Leonide, and I at once realised that Juliette had education and even refinement. How could such a woman have become a thief!...

[Ill.u.s.tration: MY CELL

(Juliette, my fellow-prisoner, seated on her bed)

A sketch by Mme. Steinheil]

She read the question in my eyes, and after the Sister had left the cell, she said to me: "Madame, don't think too badly of me. You don't know... you cannot imagine... I was brought up by parents who worshipped me. They were not rich, but they were able to give me a good, sound education, and I became a teacher."... She told me the names of a few of the families by whom she had been employed, and among them was that of a Director at the Ministry of Finance whom I knew very well.... She had a daughter of fifteen who was her all in all.

"Living in contact with wealthy people when I was a young governess,"

Juliette explained navely, "and belonging myself to a good family, I grew used to comfort and luxury, and I wanted comfort and luxury not only for myself, but also for my husband and my daughter. Then, one day while I was shopping, I saw a well-dressed woman slip some lace into a pocket hidden in her wide sleeves.... That lace must have been worth several pounds a yard.... I told this to a woman I knew, to whom I sold things when I needed money.... She said at once to me: 'I'll pay you handsomely for anything you bring me.' I tried; I was successful. In one week I had earned twenty times the amount I could have earned in one year as a teacher.... Then there was the joy of lavishing pretty things on my daughter, and the awful and wonderful fascination, too, of stealing."...

Juliette read consternation on my face, but went on: "I a.s.sure you, Madame, I am not a bad woman.... And think of the awful risks I have to take! I have been caught. I am away from those I love, and I shall be here for years!"

Sister Leonide was right when she said Juliette would prove a most devoted companion. The _Instruction_ had worn me out, and the prison doctor was seriously alarmed about my health.... Juliette saw at once that I was in a bad way, and when, the next morning, I started washing our cell, she s.n.a.t.c.hed the cloth from my hand, carried me bodily to my bed, rolled up her sleeves over her mighty arms and, without a word, started scrubbing the tiles. Then she scrubbed the tables and cleaned the shelves on the wall. Afterwards, she carried me to another bed, looked at my sheets, and said: "You can't sleep in these!"

"There are no others in the prison, Juliette."

"Oh! yes there are! Just let me arrange things. I have been here so often.... I know the place only too well, unfortunately!"

At Sister Leonide's next visit, Juliette asked if she might change my sheets in the linen-room.

"But all the prison sheets are alike!" said the Sister.

"I know that, _ma sur_. Only some are new and some are old. I want to find the oldest pair there is. The older sheets are the thinner and the smoother they are." And she added mischievously: "I know all about sheets, I have stolen so many in my life!"...

Juliette soon returned with a pair of sheets that were full of holes.

She mended them, and when I went to bed, later on, she said triumphantly: "Well, what does it feel like now, Madame?"

The change was indeed wonderful; I told Juliette so, and she clapped her hands with delight.

Juliette was intelligent, but by living in contact with somewhat suspicious characters she had acquired a strange personality: she sometimes spoke like a lady of high intellectual attainments, but as a rule her remarks were those of a woman without much education or instruction. She would read aloud a chapter from some book--yellow and grimy with the marks of hundreds of hands, for it was borrowed from the prison library--Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame," for instance, and express original views on life in the Middle Ages; then, for the rest of the day, she would tell fortunes by cards. She raved about cards, and was amazingly superst.i.tious.... With bits of paper and a pencil she had made for herself a pack of "cards," and would spend hours reading her fortune in them! She grew so feverish over those cards that I smiled sometimes.

"Ah! Madame," she exclaimed: "Don't laugh! Cards know everything and tell everything.... You look! I'll start over again. Just now they said there is a fair woman near my husband and that he is going to travel....

Well, watch.... You see, this is my husband.... Now, there is that fair woman again, with him!... I wonder who the wretch is!"...

She disliked going to ma.s.s on Sundays, but loved to listen to Pastor Arboux when he visited me in my cell.

She talked to me about her daughter, and I told her about my own Marthe, whom I saw twice a week. I taught Juliette all kinds of needlework, so that, later on, she might spoil her daughter with pretty things without stealing them. She was quick and clever, and soon learned not only to do nice work, but to do it rapidly.

Meanwhile I did "tatting," or painted. The Sisters had supplied me with some colours and brushes, and I painted for them flowers and landscapes on scores of handkerchief-cases, cushions, glove-cases, and lamp-shades.... This was far less of a strain to my eyes, but it seemed strange to paint flowers in prison, where I never saw any.

The chaplain (Catholic) of the prison came often to see Juliette, whom he, too, had known for many years. I had seen him before, on one or two occasions when he had visited Firmin.

He was a man of about seventy-five, tall and handsome, still erect, and he spoke in a soft, kind voice. "It is not so much what he says that I like," Juliette once remarked, "as the way he says it." But what the chaplain, M. Doumergue, said was well worth hearing.

He had travelled in the Near East, and knew Palestine well. Sometimes after telling Juliette--and me, for I eagerly listened--one of the parables, he would describe the place where the Son of Man had probably spoken it.

I talked of music with him, for he had told me that he loved sacred and cla.s.sic music. He called J. S. Bach the "father of music," and seemed to know every oratorio worthy of the name. I told him how much I loved the singing of the Sisters, and once paid him quite unconsciously a compliment: I remarked that the organ music on Sunday mornings in the large Catholic chapel of the prison, though pleasant, was quite different from the splendid, inspiring music I heard every Sunday afternoon after vespers. Surely it could not be the same organist.

The old chaplain replied very simply. "The organist, Madame, is the Sister of the _guichet_ (wicket). She plays while I say Ma.s.s, but at the close of the afternoon I go to the chapel, and all alone there I play, improvising and letting myself go at the organ."

From that day the kind old chaplain played in the chapel whenever he could spare a moment, and thus gave me back one, at least, of the joys I was deprived of in prison--the intense joy of hearing good music.

He talked to me of the Catholic religion sometimes. He knew that my daughter had become a Catholic, and, in a broad-minded manner, told me about the greatness, the unity, and the moral power of the Catholic religion....

Under his influence and M. Arboux's, I gradually found some peace of mind. Nothing could deaden my grief, but those two men killed all bitterness in me. I could not resign myself to the awful thought that I was accused of murder, but I considered it right that I should suffer for my past weaknesses, and for having denounced men without having real proof against them.

The wonderful example of the Sisters turned the pity I felt for the wretched women, who had so long insulted me, into sympathy and almost affection.... And a miracle--or at least I look upon it as a miracle--took place: The women soon ceased calling me a murderess, and shouting "Guillotine, guillotine!" at me.... They felt that I never returned their insults, and they gradually began to respect me. One day, one of them, while walking round the yard, cried: "I hope you will soon be free--you, up there!" Then another made a kind remark, then a third.... Another day a gypsy woman shouted: "Why don't you come down into the yard, we won't hurt you! Why should you rot in your cell, poor woman!" And another added: "We made a mistake about you, that's all!"...

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN THE PRISON YARD AT SAINT LAZARE]

The trees were budding, the sparrows and the pigeons were more cheerful; sun sometimes visited my cell. I had never realised so keenly the extraordinary comfort that Light means. The cell was less cold, the days were longer.... The women in the yard below came more frequently to do their washing in the basin, and there was no longer any ice to smash.

The children had learned to know me. Through the iron bars of my window I sent those little gypsies little paper packets containing tiny bits of chocolate which Marthe brought me, and they shouted: "Morning, Madame,"

and then threw kisses. Sometimes, on my way to the room where I saw Marthe or my counsel, I met some of those little bronzed, dark-haired children... their big eyes looked bigger than ever as they watched me.

They followed me, and touched my dress, and said: "We love you, Madame."

The doctor ordered me to take an hour's exercise in the yard every day.

I trembled a little when I went down. The fresh air intoxicated me and I faltered, but two or three prisoners rushed to my a.s.sistance. They spoke kindly to me and made me sit on the edge of the basin.... And these were the women who only a few weeks back had hurled shouts of execration at me whenever they saw me! After a few days I knew the story of each of them. One had sung and begged in the streets without a licence, another had stolen bread for her children, a third had stolen because she had been ordered to, a fourth had stabbed a policeman in order to save her "man" and give him a chance to escape....

Sometimes, a woman who had been arrested only a day or two before started insulting me when she was told who I was, but the others at once stopped her, and soon afterwards the new prisoner came to me, timidly apologised, and, to my intense surprise, started telling me the latest news about my case. She had read the newspapers, she knew what was being said and rumoured.... And invariably the woman made things out to be brighter than they really were, just to give me hope and courage!