The four hundred men of the 42nd line regiment, forming the garrison of Boulogne, were ready to proclaim the prince, and all preparations had been made in the town for a popular rising to succeed the military demonstration.{121} But, inasmuch as it was now too late to reach Boulogne on the appointed day, the expedition was one of grave hazard and difficulty. There was no use in landing at or near Boulogne until the 6th, as nothing could be attempted in broad daylight.

The prince requested each member of his improvised council to give his opinion as to what course should be pursued in the emergency. Out of twelve three of his advisers begged him to go back to London. The rest were for landing at Boulogne, and making a dash towards the barracks in order to secure the adhesion of the garrison at all hazards.

The prince asked Count Orsi what would occur if they went back to London. “It is difficult to say,” was the reply; “though if the British Government took a bad view of the matter we should most likely be arrested and tried for misdemeanour.” What, moreover, was to be done with the arms, the uniforms, the printed proclamations and other revolutionary documents, which the Custom-house officers would find when the steamer got back to London Bridge? “We steer between two great dangers,” said Orsi to the prince. “By returning to London we become the laughing-stock of everybody; and ridicule kills. If we cross the Channel we run the risk of being shot or imprisoned for a longer or shorter period. Of the two I prefer the latter. As regards yourself, nothing would be more disastrous to your future prospects than being shown up to the public as a man who, at the eleventh hour, had been acted upon by considerations of a purely personal character. Let us save, at least, our honour, if we are doomed to lose everything else.”

Napoleon, who had been showing his approval of these words by constantly nodding at the count as he spoke, now rose and said: “Gentlemen,{122} a show of hands from those who wish to be left behind and to return to London.” There was a dead silence, and then the prince, eyeing each of his auditors in succession as though he would read their inmost souls, exclaimed: “Gentlemen, a show of hands from those who are ready to follow me and share my fate.”

These words produced an indescribable outburst of enthusiasm, mingled with expressions of the most touching devotion. All sprang from their seats. For a few moments the prince was too much overpowered with emotion to vent his gratitude in words. Then he said: “Friends, I thank you for the alacrity and high spirit with which you have responded to my call. I never doubted your willingness to aid me in my projects, but the devotion you have just displayed has lent a new vigour to my mind and has bound my heart to you with a sense of deep, of eternal gratitude. Let us bear together the consequences of this enterprise, whatever they may be, with the calmness befitting men who act on conviction. Our cause is that of the country at large. Sooner or later success will be ours. I feel it. I have faith in my destiny. I look forward to the future as confidently as I expect the sun to rise this morning to dispel the darkness. We shall have obstacles to grapple with and obloquy to face; but the hour will come, and we shall not have long to wait for it.”

It was now nearly three o’clock on the morning of the 5th. The moment had arrived for a prompt decision as to the wisest method of proceeding. It was arranged that Forestier, the cousin of Count Persigny, should go at once to Boulogne, for the purpose of informing Lieutenant Aladenize of what had happened, and to prepare everything, as far as possible, for the following day. A boat, manned by two men, was with difficulty hired: Forestier stepped into it, and, crossing the Channel, reached Boulogne at eleven that same morning.

The next question was whether the prince’s party should remain at Ramsgate till night or tack about at sea until the hour arrived for the descent on Boulogne. The latter course was decided on, as the French police had already been dogging the prince’s steps very closely in London, and there was every chance of the vessel anchored off Ramsgate being inconveniently watched.

At 5.0 a.m. Count Orsi ordered the captain to put to sea, and the Edinburgh Castle was thenceforward kept well away from the land and from observation. Throughout the 5th of August she was steered hither and thither, simply to pass the time unperceived. Towards three o’clock on the morning of the 6th arms and uniforms were distributed to the prince’s adherents. Then the lights were extinguished. No light, even at the mast, was allowed, and absolute silence was maintained. It was three o’clock when the vessel stood off Wimereux, a little village near Boulogne. The landing began at once, but as there was only one boat on board the process was slow. The first boatful consisted of Viscount de Querelles and eight men. As they approached the shore a couple of coast-guardsmen shouted to them, “Qui vive?” Querelles replied: “A detachment of the 42nd from Dunkirk to join the battalion at Boulogne. Through an accident to the engine the steamer cannot get further.” As the invaders were clothed and armed exactly like the French garrison, the coast-guardsmen at once believed them. Next time the boat brought Colonel Voisin and nine men on shore. Then the Prince, General Montholon, Count Persigny, and a few others landed. At five o’clock the whole party were within fifty yards of the barracks. At the sight of this armed force the sentinel shouted, “Who goes there?” and “To arms!” One of the prince’s men, who had been in the army, was sent ahead with the watchword—which he well knew. On his pronouncing it, the gate of the barracks was thrown open, and the prince, followed by his supporters, entered the yard.

The soldiers composing the garrison were just getting out of bed. Those few who were already downstairs soon learnt who the visitors were, and rushed up to tell their comrades that the prince, whose name was so familiar to them, waited at their threshold. The soldiers were seized with enthusiasm. Some of them, looking out of the windows, cried “Vive le Prince!” Others hurried downstairs in their shirt-sleeves. Within half an hour every soldier was under arms and formed in battalion. The prince’s men stood facing it. Between the companies Napoleon and his friends took up their position.

The address which the prince now delivered to the garrison had an electrical effect, and the men were wild with enthusiasm; but just as the whole battalion, under the Pretender’s orders, were about to quit the barracks in order to excite the inhabitants to rally round the Imperial standard, a first check was experienced. A garrison officer, not in the secret of the conspiracy, had rushed to Lieutenant-Colonel Puygellier’s house to{123} inform him of what was happening at the barracks. Instantly the officer put on his uniform, and, rushing to the spot, forced his way past one of the prince’s sentinels, and dashing through the crowd at the barrack-gates, got within sight of his battalion, and waved his sword to them. Seeing the danger their chief was in—one of the Imperial party had injudiciously pointed a revolver at his head—the soldiers who, a few minutes before, had shouted “Vive le Prince!” now cried, “Vive notre Colonel!”

The tide of feeling, however, quickly turned again in favour of the prince, and Colonel Puygellier, now absolutely powerless, would have been shot had not one of his officers rushed forward and shielded him with his own body.

Quitting the barrack-yard, the prince, at the head of his friends and adherents, now endeavoured to enter the old town. They found the gate closed, nor did their united efforts suffice to unhinge it.

The enterprise had failed. The chiefs of the popular movement, who were to second the military rising, having inferred from the non-arrival of the prince on the morning of the 5th that something had occurred, either in London or at sea, to put the French authorities on the scent, had decamped from the town. Forestier, who reached Boulogne towards noon on the 5th, with the news that the prince would land next morning, had arrived too late.

Nothing now remained but to endeavour to save the prince. He himself wished to die—to be shot or cut down by his enemies; but the friends who were with him fairly dragged him down to the sea-shore in the hope of getting him safely on board the Edinburgh Castle. This vessel lay some distance out at sea, and the signals made to her to approach the land were unanswered, as though she had already been seized by the authorities.

On the sand, however, a small boat was found. “The prince,” says Orsi, “was still offering the greatest resistance. Time was precious. The ridges of the cliffs were already covered with gendarmes, followed by the National Guard. The soldiers of the 42nd regiment had been shut up in barracks. The work of pursuing us was left to the National Guard and to the gendarmes. The former behaved like savages. Firing soon began from the height of the hill, and gradually increased. We could hear the whistling of the bullets, but not one of us had yet been hit.”

The prince at last got into the boat with Colonel Voisin, Count Persigny, and Galvani, whilst Orsi and another rushed into the waves to push the little craft into deep water. Then the National Guard opened a brisker fire. Galvani and Voisin were wounded, the former in the right hip, while the latter had the elbow of his left arm entirely shattered. The boat had now in the confusion got capsized, and the prince and his friends disappeared under her. As she lay keel upwards there was a terrible discharge of musketry, which cut open the bottom of the boat and fractured the keel into matchwood. Had not the prince and his friends been at that instant immersed, they must have perished.

For some time the prince and Count Persigny remained under water, and Count Orsi began to apprehend that they might be drowning, when both appeared at a good distance from the shore swimming towards the Edinburgh Castle. The National Guard now pointed all their muskets at the prince, but by some miraculous accident failed to hit him. At last, just as he was reaching the steamer—which was already in the hands of the Boulogne authorities—a boat, with several officials on board coming out of the harbour, cut off his retreat, and both he and his fellow-swimmer Persigny found themselves prisoners. They were taken to the Vieux-Château, where all the Imperialists were confined who could anywhere be discovered.

The few days which followed the seizure of the Edinburgh Castle and the arrest of the prince’s party were employed by the Boulogne judicial authorities in examining the English captain—by name Crow—and his crew as to what they had seen, known, or imagined to be the object of the expedition, and as to the particular part played by each person on board.

One morning the prisoners were all, with the exception of the prince, brought together in a room, where Captain Crow and his first mate were requested to look at every one of them, and see if they could distinguish the man who had given orders for the steamer to anchor off Wimereux. Both pointed to Count Orsi.

As soon as the preliminary judicial formalities had been gone through at Boulogne the prince was conveyed to Paris, to be arraigned with his associates before the Court of Peers on a charge of having engaged in an expedition whose object was to overthrow the existing Government. At length, two months later, the day of the trial arrived.

The prince was defended by the eloquent{124} advocate M. Berryer, assisted by M. Marie. On being called upon himself to speak he claimed the whole responsibility of the enterprise, and concluded with these magnanimous words:—

“I repeat that I had no accomplices. Alone I formed my plan. Not a soul knew beforehand what were my projects, my resources, or my hopes. If I am guilty towards anyone it is towards my friends alone. Yet let them not accuse me of lightly abusing such courage and devotion as theirs. They will understand the motives of honour and of prudence which forbade my revealing to them how wide and powerful were the reasons on which my hope of success was founded.

“One last word, gentlemen. I represent before you a principle, a cause, and a defeat. The principle is the sovereignty of the people; the cause is the empire; the defeat is Waterloo. The principle you have recognised; the cause you have served; the defeat you wish to avenge. Yes, you and myself are of one mind, and my sole aspiration now is to bear the full penalty of the defection of others.

“Representative as I am of a political cause, I cannot accept as judge of my desires and my actions a political tribunal. Your forms impose on no one. You are the victorious party. I have no justice to expect from you, and I wish nothing from your generosity.”

The sentence on Prince Louis Napoleon was imprisonment for life, that on Count Orsi imprisonment for five years; while the other conspirators were condemned to punishments which varied according to the nature of the part they had played in the disastrous expedition.

The case of the Duc de Praslin—tried, like that of Louis Napoleon, at the Luxemburg—was{125} very painful and very dramatic. The duke was a member of the Choiseul family, whose name he bore in addition to his own. Under Louis Philippe he was attached to the household of the Duchess of Orleans, and in 1845, having previously been a deputy, was raised to the peerage. In 1824 he had married the daughter of Marshal Sebastiani, and that marriage, for seventeen years, seemed a happy one. Many children were born of the union; and it was not until 1841 that any sign of disagreement manifested itself between the husband and the wife. The jealousy of the latter was then roused; not, it was afterwards said, for the first time. A young lady named Henriette Deluzy-Desportes had just been engaged as governess. She was lively, graceful,{126} and moderately pretty, and soon gained such an ascendency over her pupils as well as over the duke as to cause the duchess the greatest uneasiness. To make matters worse, the duchess was advised by her husband not to trouble herself any more about the education of her children, which was now, he said, in excellent hands. At last, after suffering the deepest vexation (of which she gave a touching account in her private diary, found after her death), she resolved to apply for a separation. Then, to avoid all scandal, the old marshal made representations to his son-in-law, while two other persons addressed remonstrances to Mlle. Deluzy. An arrangement was entered into by which the duchess agreed to abandon the lawsuit while Mlle. Deluzy was to leave the house. The marshal agreed to pay her an annuity of 1,500 francs, which was guaranteed by the duchess. The arrangement was made in the month of June, 1847; and on the 18th of July following Mlle. Deluzy left the Hôtel Sebastiani in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, where the Praslin family had taken up their residence. The duchess had gained the victory. But she was by no means satisfied with the position of things, and felt that she was still menaced by an approaching danger. Her husband, it appeared, had uttered some dark threats. “He will never forgive me,” she wrote in her diary. “The future terrifies me. I cannot think of it without trembling.” The day the governess left the Paris house the whole Praslin family started for the duke’s country place at Vaux-Praslin. They were not to return to Paris until the 17th of August. Meanwhile the duke made three journeys to Paris, remaining there each time for two or three days; and he never failed to pay a visit to Mlle. Deluzy, who had gone to live with a schoolmistress in the Rue Harlay. The valet who accompanied the duke on all these journeys remarked on one occasion that the governess saw the duke back to the railway station, and on wishing him good-bye burst into tears.

On the 17th of August the Praslin family returned to Paris, intending to go on to Dieppe for the sea-bathing. The duke at once drove to the school where Mlle. Deluzy was staying. She wished, it seemed, to be engaged in this school as teacher; but before signing the engagement the schoolmistress thought it necessary to have from the Duchess de Praslin a letter recommending Mlle. Deluzy, and at the same time denying the truth of certain reports which had got abroad respecting her conduct while governess in the ducal family.

The duke promised to get the required letter from his wife, and it was arranged that Mlle. Deluzy should call on the afternoon of the following day at the Hôtel Sebastiani, in order, in the first place, to express her regret to the duchess, and afterwards to ask for the letter,{127} which, according to the duke, Mme. de Praslin would be sure, under the circumstances, to give. It was already late in the evening, and when, at eleven o’clock, the duke got home, the duchess was in bed. After wishing his daughter good-night the duke went to his room, which, like his wife’s, was on the ground floor, the two communicating with one another by a corridor. The house was dark, except in the duchess’s room, where she was accustomed to keep a lamp burning all night.

At half-past four in the morning shrieks were heard; and at the same time the duchess’s bell rang violently. The duke’s valet and the duchess’s maid were awakened by the noise. They got up, dressed hurriedly, and were soon outside their mistress’s room, which, contrary to custom, they found bolted. Shrieks, groans, and other sounds, as of blows, were still heard. Then someone seemed to be rushing across the bedroom, interrupted here and there, as if by an obstacle. The two servants tried to get through another door communicating with the drawing-room, but this also was fastened.

They cried out “Madam!” “Madam!” but received no answer. Nothing was to be heard but gasps and groans. They hurried into the garden; but the windows, both of the duchess’s bedroom and of her boudoir, were closed, as they generally were. At one point, however, they found open the door of a staircase leading to the antechamber which separated the duke’s apartment from that of the duchess. The servants entered. It was quite dark; but on lighting a lamp they found the duchess lying on the ground, her head resting on a settee, with nothing on but a chemise, and bathed in blood. In a few moments the alarm was given throughout the house. The duke came out of his room. He wore a grey dressing-gown. There was a wild expression in his eyes, and, striking his hands against the wall and against his own head, he kept repeating, “What is it?” “What is it?” Then, casting his eyes upon his wife, he uttered cries of despair. The duchess was still living; but soon breathed her last without being able to utter one word. In a short time two commissaries of police arrived, who proceeded to a preliminary examination. The body was examined by three doctors, when five wounds were discovered at the back of the head and neck, and eight on the forehead and breast. The jugular vein and the carotid artery had both been cut, and blood was still flowing from these wounds. There were wounds, too, on both hands, evidently caused by the edge of a sharp instrument at which the unhappy victim had clutched. The face was marked with scratches round the mouth, indicating a struggle in which the duke had attempted to stifle his wife’s cries. This struggle had evidently been of the most violent kind. All the furniture had been upset. Both the bed and the carpet were covered with blood; and the door leading to the drawing-room was, all round the lock and the bolts, marked by bloodstained fingers.

Who were the assassins? Traces of blood were found in the corridor leading from the apartment of the duchess to that of the duke. A loaded pistol, too, was picked up in the duchess’s room, with spots of blood on the barrel, and with hairs, evidently those of the victim, sticking to it. The duke, when questioned on the subject, said that he had himself brought the pistol into the bedroom on hearing the duchess’s first cries, and that the traces of blood might have been produced by him after he had raised the body of his wife and was going back to his own room.

Towards eight o’clock the prefect of police, the procureur-general, the procureur of the king, and the examining judge of the district appeared. General Sebastiani, brother of the marshal and uncle of the murdered woman, also arrived, and turned faint at the sight before him. The duke’s valet hurried to his master’s bedroom for a glass of water, and found the place in strange disorder. The mantelpiece was covered with fragments of papers just burned, and on a table in the middle of the room was a bottle containing water. The valet was about to pour out a glass when the duke stopped him, and going to the window, poured the contents of the bottle into the garden, saying that the water was dirty. All the servants were called in, when the valet observed that it would be well to make a search in the duke’s own room. In the pockets of his dressing-gown were found various objects stained with blood, the remains of papers, burnt, and of a handkerchief, partly consumed. The dressing-gown had in various places been recently washed. It was only now that the law officers seemed to suspect the duke. After interrogating M. de Praslin, whose explanations were clumsy and incomplete, they again visited his room, where they found a knife with blood-stains on the handle, a dagger, a yataghan, and a hunting-knife. His hands were examined, and several scratches found upon them. On his right arm was a recent bruise, such as might be produced by the violent{128} impress of a finger; on his right hand a wound, which apparently had been produced by a bite; on the first finger of this hand another wound of the same kind; on the left hand several scratches, apparently made by human nails; on the left leg a deep contusion. At the same time no sign of robbery or of housebreaking could anywhere be seen.

Doubt was no longer possible. The Duc de Praslin was the assassin of his wife. As regards the moral evidence, it appeared that for a long time past there had been a grave misunderstanding between the duke and the duchess, and that there had been intimate relations between the duke and Mlle. Deluzy. The governess was arrested and interrogated, when she denied absolutely that there had been any relations of an improper character between herself and the duke. Her answers, however, threw light on the terrible drama that had been enacted in the Praslin family. M. de Praslin, she said, had entrusted her exclusively with the education of his children, and this confidence on his part wounded the duchess both as a wife and as a mother. She threatened to apply to the court for a separation, and, according to Mlle. Deluzy, the perpetual menaces of the wife exasperated the husband to such a point that he at length lost all self-control. In spite of her explanations, Mlle. Deluzy was placed in solitary confinement under the accusation of being the duke’s accomplice. It was proved that she had kept up a correspondence with him since leaving the house, and that he had been to see her on the evening before the night on which the crime was committed.

As regarded the duke, the law officers held that his privilege as a peer exempted him from arrest, though he had been taken as nearly as possible in flagrante delicto. It was thought sufficient to have him watched in his own house, under the surveillance of police agents; and as King Louis Philippe was at Eu, a special messenger was sent to him, begging him to convoke the Chamber of Peers as a high court of justice.

But already a change had taken place in the condition of the Duc de Praslin, who was suddenly attacked with fits of vomiting, followed by an ardent thirst and complete prostration. The doctors thought at first that he was suffering from cholera, but they afterwards believed that he had taken poison. Meanwhile the order{129} convoking the Court of Peers reached Paris on the 20th of August. The President, Duke Pasquier, at once issued a warrant against M. de Praslin; but it was not thought advisable to execute it forthwith. The Duc de Praslin’s house was now surrounded by angry crowds; and of so deadly a character was the rage manifested against him that it was not until three days afterwards, at five in the morning, that the authorities considered it safe to remove him to the prison attached to the Luxemburg Palace.

Just as he was leaving his house the police found upon him a little flask containing a mixture of laudanum and arsenical acid, of which he had drunk half. Notwithstanding his enfeebled condition, President Pasquier, assisted by a commission of six members of the Court of Peers, subjected him to an interrogatory. Neither a positive confession nor a formal denial could be obtained from him. His physical condition, meanwhile, became worse and worse. On the second day he was delirious, and on the third he expired. The analysis made by Orfila and Ambroise Tardieu showed the presence in the stomach of a great quantity of arsenic.

A few days afterwards the Court of Peers met in secret conclave, when it received from the chancellor and president a report of the examination through which the accused had passed. The whole tendency of the report was to establish the guilt of the accused. “This presumption,” concluded Duke Pasquier, “was, unhappily, only too well founded. The prisoner has pronounced judgment and condemnation on himself. He succumbed seven days and a half after the moment when, with atrocious barbarity, he immolated the most innocent, the most pure, the most interesting of victims. This interval, however, was sufficient to enable the ordinary judges, pursuing their inquiry on the part of the Chamber of Peers, to bring completely to light the guilt of the accused, and the horrible circumstances which, from day to day, have made it still more clear.{130}”

The death of the criminal brought the labours of the court to an end. “But yet,” said the president, as he concluded his communication of the report, “it was to be desired that the reparation should have been as complete as was the crime itself. In such an affair as this the principle of equality before the law should have been proclaimed more forcibly than ever.”

The body of the Duc de Praslin was buried secretly at night on the 26th of August, in the southern cemetery, his grave not being marked even by a cross.

Mlle. Deluzy was taken before a police magistrate, when, on a proof of alibi, the case was dismissed, and she was set at liberty.

This terrible affair had beyond doubt a political effect, from the conviction with which it inspired the French people generally that there existed in France one law for the poor and another for the rich. The Court of Peers did its duty, and, in its desire to show how fully it recognised the principle of equality before the law, it communicated every document connected with the trial to the public press. But the duke, in spite of the crushing evidence against him, had been allowed to remain in his own house, when an ordinary criminal would have been at once taken to prison. No ordinary criminal, again, would have been in a position to obtain poison. The circumstances, moreover, under which the duke had been buried were suspicious; and many believed that he did not die at all of the poison—so slow in its action—but that he was enabled to cross the Channel and reach England, where, at the moment of his death being publicly announced in the Chamber of Peers, he was quietly living.

So much for the remarkable trials of which the Luxemburg has been the scene.

When, in 1848, the Republic was for the second time established in France, the Chamber of Peers was abolished; and in the spring of the great revolutionary year the members of the commission for the organisation of labour, wearing their blouses, seated themselves on the softly-cushioned benches of what had been formerly known as la chambre haute. It was on the recommendation of this commission that “national workshops” were opened, in order to satisfy the claims of the unemployed, who loudly asserted their “right to labour”; and it was on the closing of the national workshops, whose cost the Government was at last unable to meet, that the formidable insurrection of June, 1848, broke out. With the re-establishment of the Senate, under the Second Empire, the Luxemburg Palace became once more its place of meeting.

Let us now take a glance at the gardens in which the palace stands. With the parks and gardens of London they will scarcely bear comparison; though a French descriptive writer declares that they combine, with the ordinary attractions of the garden, the beauty of the park and even, in certain solitary corners, the wildness of the forest.

The Luxemburg Gardens are, in any case, adorned by two beautiful fountains. They are enlivened, too, every afternoon by the music of a military band; and they enclose at one end a most interesting museum, the Musée de Minéralogie, forming part of the National School of Mines.

The admirable picture gallery in the Luxemburg Palace is occupied by the works of living masters alone. It is not until an artist is dead that his paintings are held worthy of being transported to that national Walhalla of pictorial heroes, the Louvre.{131}

CHAPTER XX.

THE PRISONS OF PARIS.

First, there is a lock-up, or maison de dépôt, at the prefecture of police. Then there are three “preventive” prisons—Mazas and La Santé for men and the Conciergerie for both sexes. One portion of Saint-Lazare is also set apart for the accommodation of the fair sex. Sainte-Pélagie and Saint-Lazare—the first for men and the second for women—are houses of correction for prisoners sentenced to one year or less. It is at Sainte-Pélagie that political prisoners are for the most part confined. In La Roquette are lodged prisoners under sentence of death and offenders condemned to more{132} than one year. Clichy, once the debtors’ prison, has already in these pages been amply described.

Nor should we omit to mention the military prison of the Rue du Cherche-Midi; the prison of the National Guard; the dépôt of Saint-Denis where mendicants are locked up; and La Petite Roquette, where, until 1865, were imprisoned, and subjected to the rigorous régime of cell confinement, children and youths guilty for the most part, as M. Jules Simon well expresses it, of having had unnatural parents.

In taking a leisurely survey of the principal Paris prisons, we may begin with La Roquette as the most formidable in character. Situated in the street and place of the same name, it was built towards 1837, and on such a perfect plan that there has hitherto been no example of any prisoner’s escape or even attempted escape from it. This gaol, therefore, is to criminals one of the most redoubtable. The gloomy impressions, however, which it may well produce on a stranger are somewhat relieved by the fact that the courtyard by which it is approached is adorned with a fountain, and that the prison boasts a well composed library of some two thousand volumes; nor, since crime is so often the outcome of ignorance, could a wiser means of recreation for the convicts be devised. The librarian is usually a convict who has received a certain education, and who has earned this post of confidence by repentance and good behaviour. It has been found, indeed, that the inmates prefer reading to any other diversion, and statistics of the books lent out show that each prisoner gets through nearly one volume a week. The library is divided into various sections; and the books most eagerly read are said to be works of science.{133}

The régime imposed at La Roquette is uniform, and applies without distinction to all classes of offenders. Everyone within the walls rises at 5.0 a.m., does ten hours’ work relieved by intervals for food and recreation, and goes to bed at half-past seven, passing the night in a strongly bolted cell, of which the sole furniture is an iron bedstead. An exception, however, as regards sleeping, is made in the case of prisoners liable to epileptic fits, or who have attempted to commit suicide. These sleep in special dormitories under the careful inspection of warders. One room, moreover, is set apart for fever patients. Another is reserved for those prisoners who have softened the rigour of their confinement by particularly good behaviour or—what some will think less admirable—by informing against their accomplices. It frequently happens that the accomplices so betrayed find their way to the same gaol, and if the informers were not isolated deeds of vengeance might sometimes be committed. The administration of La Roquette consists of a governor, a chaplain, a physician, two clerks (senior and junior), a brigadier, an under-brigadier, fourteen warders, a dispenser, a laundress, and a sutler. Nearly two dozen prisoners, moreover, are employed about the establishment as auxiliaries.

At certain periods gangs of convicts are transferred from La Roquette to provincial state prisons or houses of correction. Before their departure, however, they are most rigorously searched lest they should have upon them any sort of instrument which might assist them to escape from their future residence. One tool in particular, the invention of inveterate criminals, is always an object of apprehension with the authorities on such occasions. This consists of a kind of diminutive fret-saw, which by a miracle of patience can be made out of scraps of metal, and with which thick iron bars can sometimes be cut through. It was a saw of this{134} family that Ainsworth’s prison-hero employed to sever the bar of his Newgate cell.

Since 1851 the Paris executioner has been accustomed to perform his grim functions in front of La Roquette. A number of massive stones which, forming a square, are let into the pavement outside, serve as basis for the temporary erection of the guillotine whenever a head is to fall. The surface of these stones is level with that of the pavement, and many a pedestrian walks over them without dreaming of their sinister utility. The guillotine is usually put up during the night; but despite the early hour at which, thanks to this precaution, executions take place, the spectacle of decapitation always draws a crowd of curious persons, consisting, it is sad to say, largely of women and youths, who will brave all the rigours of a winter’s night in order to witness from the front rank the death of some wretch, notorious or obscure. It was on the Place de la Roquette that Verger (assassin of the Archbishop of Paris), Orsini (the would-be destroyer of Napoleon III.), La Pommerais (the poisoning doctor), and many other criminal celebrities, were executed. “Perhaps,” says a fanciful French writer, “during the fatal night which preceded their last hour they heard the nailing-down of the guillotine planks; for La Roquette is the gaol where those under death-sentence are lodged in a special cell.” This cell is cold and gloomy: a bed and a table constitute its furniture. It is here that the condemned man gets his last snatch of sleep, if indeed he can sleep at all; it is hence that, after a last “toilette,” he steps forth to make his exit by that prison doorway which to him is the threshold of eternity.

The Conciergerie is the gaol of the department of the Seine. It gained a sinister celebrity during some of the most sanguinary periods of French history. This sombre prison abounds in recollections of those strifes and miseries by which royal epochs were too often characterised, and of that vengeance and blind fury which distinguished the Revolution. Every political movement, every religious passion, has contributed to the horrors which mark the annals of this institution.

The Conciergerie is an appendage to the Palais de Justice; and when this palace, which was originally a fortress, became the residence of the French kings, it served as prison. It would appear to have been built about the same time as the palace, though it has undergone sundry alterations and enlargements during successive ages.

Reconstructed by Saint Louis, the Conciergerie, as its name indicates, included the residence of the prison-governor. The “concierge” of the palace was no unimportant personage. He was in a certain way the governor of the royal mansion, and all royal prisoners were under his charge. He could administer petty justice in the palace and its surroundings, and he appointed a bailiff to carry out the law in his name. His privileges were extensive enough. It was he whom merchants had to pay for the right of exposing their wares for sale at the Palais Royal. In 1348 the concierge took the official title of bailiff. More than one person of high distinction has held this office: Philippe de Savoisi, friend of Charles VI., for instance, and Juvenal des Ursins, the historiographer of that monarch’s reign. Louis XI.’s famous physician, Jacques Coictier, was the first who united the functions of bailiff with those of concierge.

The concierge-bailiff of the Palais had on many points a discretionary power over the prisoners of the Conciergerie. He himself taxed the food he supplied to them, and fixed the rate of hire for the furniture they used; and more than one prisoner, released by order of justice, found himself retained at the Conciergerie until he could pay his bill for board and lodging. The post of concierge-bailiff lasted until the Revolution. The cases which came beneath the jurisdiction of this functionary were tried in a large hall of the palace. These were cases of misdoing which had occurred within the palace walls.

One of the most ghastly scenes ever enacted within the walls of the Conciergerie was that in which, during the quarrels between the Armagnacs and the Bourguignons, those ruffian supporters of the latter party, known as the “cabochiens,” invaded the gaol and killed the crowd of prisoners within it, irrespective of age or sex. The court of the palace was inundated with blood and strewn with corpses. The Count d’Armagnac, Constable of France, six bishops, and numerous members of the Paris Parliament expired under the blades of the assassins.

The dungeons of the Conciergerie, built at the level of the Seine, were dark and unhealthy: the light of day could never penetrate to them. During the Middle Ages several pestilences, caused by the filthy condition of the prisoners combined with insufficiency of food, broke out{135} at the Conciergerie and awakened the attention of the authorities. On the 31st June, 1543, beds were for the first time placed in the apartment known as the infirmary; and it was about this period that the gaolers were instructed not to ill-treat the wretches beneath their charge. They were to treat them “gently and humanely, to provide them with water and straw, to procure them the services of priests, etc.” In spite of these reforms, the Conciergerie long remained the most unhealthy prison in Paris.

In 1776, during the fire at the Palais de Justice, a great part of the Conciergerie fell a prey to the flames; nor was the mischief repaired until some years afterwards. The fire had already reached one of the towers occupied by the prisoners, when the officials were for the first time warned of their danger by their cries for help.

During the revolutionary period the number of prisoners shut up in the Conciergerie sometimes rose to 1,200. At the time of the September massacre this prison was the scene of a horrible slaughter. According to documents of indisputable exactness, close on three hundred persons fell, at the Conciergerie, beneath the weapons of the agents of popular vengeance. The “Septembrisseurs,” however, spared all the women, with one exception. A poor wretch, known as the “pretty flower-girl” of the Palais Royal, had, in a moment of furious jealousy, mutilated a French guard, her lover; and she was now put to death with unheard-of cruelty. According to Pelletier’s account she was attached to a stake, naked, her feet nailed to the ground, her breasts were cut off with blows from a sabre, and various other atrocious tortures inflicted upon her before she expired.