CHAPTER X
MONT SAINT-JEAN
It was just two o'clock by the dial of the prison of St. Lazare. The cold, which had lasted for several days, had been succeeded by soft, mild, and almost spring weather; the rays of the sun were reflected in the water of the large square basin, with its stone corners, formed in the centre of a courtyard planted with trees, and surrounded by dark, high walls pierced with a great many iron-barred windows. Wooden benches were fastened here and there in this large paved enclosure, which served for the walking-place of the prisoners. The ringing of a bell announcing the hour of recreation, the prisoners came in throngs by a thick wicket-door which was opened to them. These women, all clad alike, wore black skull-caps and long loose gowns of blue woollen cloth, fastened around the waist by a band and iron buckle. There were there two hundred prostitutes, sentenced for breach of the particular laws which control them and place them out of the pale of the common law. At first sight their appearance had nothing striking, but, after regarding them with further attention, there might be detected in each face the almost ineffaceable stigmas of vice, and particularly that brutishness which ignorance and misery invariably engender. Whilst contemplating these masses of lost creatures, we cannot help recollecting with sorrow that most of them have been pure and honest, at least at some former period. We say "most of them," because there are some who have been corrupted, vitiated, depraved, not only from their youth, but from tenderest infancy, – even from their very birth, if we may say so; and we shall prove it as we proceed.
We ask ourselves, then, with painful curiosity, what chain of fatal causes could thus debase these unhappy creatures, who have known shame and chastity? There are so many declivities, alas, which verge to that fall! It is rarely the passion of the depraved for depravity; but dissipation, bad example, perverse education, and, above all, want, which lead so many unfortunates to infamy; and it is the poor classes alone who pay to civilisation this impost on soul and body.
When the prisoners came into the yard, running and crying out, it was easy to discern that it was not alone the pleasure of leaving their work that made them so noisy. After having hurried forth by the only gate which led to this yard, the crowd spread out and made a ring around a misshapen being, whom they assailed with shouts. She was a small woman, from thirty-six to forty years of age; short, round-shouldered, deformed, and with her neck buried between shoulders of unequal height. They had snatched off her black cap, and her hair, which was flaxen, or rather a pale yellow, coarse, matted, and mingled with gray, fell over her low and stupid features. She was clad in a blue loose gown, like the other prisoners, and had under her right arm a small bundle, wrapped up in a miserable, ragged, checked pocket-handkerchief. With her left elbow she endeavoured to ward off the blows aimed at her. Nothing could be more lamentably ludicrous than the visage of this unhappy woman. She was hideous and distorted in figure, with projecting features, wrinkled, tanned, and dirty, which were pierced with two holes for nostrils, and two small, red, bloodshot eyes. By turns wrathful and imploring, she scolded and entreated; but they laughed even more at her complaints than her threats. This woman was the plaything of the prisoners. One thing ought, however, to have protected her from such ill-usage, – she was evidently about to become a mother; but her ugliness, her imbecility, and the custom they had of considering her as a victim intended for common sport, rendered her persecutors implacable, in spite of their usual respect for maternity.
Amongst the fiercest enemies of Mont Saint-Jean (that was the unhappy wretch's name), La Louve was conspicuous. La Louve was a strapping girl of twenty, active, and powerfully grown, with regular features. Her coarse black hair was varied by reddish shades, whilst her blood suffused her skin with its hue; a brown down shaded her thin lips; her chestnut eyebrows, thick and projecting, were united over her large and fierce eyes. There was something violent, savage, and brutal in the expression of this woman's physiognomy, – a sort of habitual sneer, which curled her upper lip during a fit of rage, and, exposing her white and wide-apart teeth, accounted for her name of La Louve (the she-wolf). Yet in that countenance there was more of boldness and insolence than cruelty; and, in a word, it was seen that, rather become vicious than born so, this woman was still susceptible of certain good impulses, as the inspectress had told Madame d'Harville.
"Alas! alas! What have I done?" exclaimed Mont Saint-Jean, struggling in the midst of her companions. "Why are you so cruel to me?"
"Because it is so amusing."
"Because you are only fit to be teased."
"It is your business."
"Look at yourself, and you will see that you have no right to complain."
"But you know well enough that I don't complain as long as I can help it; I bear it as long as I can."
"Well, we'll let you alone, if you will tell us why you call yourself Mont Saint-Jean."
"Yes, yes; come, tell us all that directly."
"Why, I've told you a hundred times. It was an old soldier that I loved a long while ago, and who was called so because he was wounded at the battle of Mont Saint-Jean; so I took his name. That's it; now are you satisfied? You will make me repeat the same thing over, and over, and over!"
"If your soldier was like you, he was a beauty!"
"I suppose he was in the Invalids?"
"The remains of a man – "
"How many glass eyes had he?"
"And wasn't his nose of block tin?"
"He must have been short of two arms and two legs, besides being deaf and blind, if he took up with you."
"I am ugly, – a monster, I know that as well as you can tell me. Say what you like, – make game of me, if you choose, it's all one to me; only don't beat me, that's all, I beg!"
"What have you got in that old handkerchief?" asked La Louve.
"Yes, yes! What is it?"
"Show it up directly!"
"Let's see! Let's see!"
"Oh, no, I beg!" exclaimed the miserable creature, squeezing up the little bundle in her hands with all her might.
"What! Must we take it from you?"
"Yes, snatch it from her, La Louve!"
"Oh, you won't be so wicked? Let it go! Let it go, I say!"
"What is it?"
"Why, it's the beginning of my baby linen; I make it with the old bits of linen which no one wants, and I pick up. It's nothing to you, is it?"
"Oh, the baby linen of Mont Saint-Jean's little one! That must be a rum set out!"
"Let's look at it."
"The baby clothes! The baby clothes!"
"She has taken measure of the keeper's little dog, no doubt."
"Here's your baby clothes," cried La Louve, snatching the bundle from Mont Saint-Jean's grasp.
The handkerchief, already torn, was now rent to tatters, and a quantity of fragments of stuff of all colours, and old pieces of linen half cut out, flew around the yard, and were trampled under feet by the prisoners, who holloaed and laughed louder than before.
"Here's your rags!"
"Why, it is a ragpicker's bag."
"Patterns from the ragman's."
"What a shop!"
"And to sew all that rubbish!"
"Why, there's more thread than stuff."
"What nice embroidery!"
"Here, pick up your rags and tatters, Mont Saint-Jean."
"Oh, how wicked! Oh, how cruel!" exclaimed the poor ill-used creature, running in every direction after the pieces, which she endeavoured to pick up in spite of pushes and blows. "I never did anybody any harm," she added, weeping. "I have offered, if they would let me alone, to do anything I could for anybody, to give them half my allowance, although I am always so hungry; but, no! no! it's always so. What can I do to be left in peace? They haven't even pity of a poor woman in the family way. They are more cruel than the beasts. Oh, the trouble I had to collect these little bits of linen! How else can I make the clothes for my baby, for I have no money to buy them with? What harm was there in picking up what nobody else wanted when it was thrown away?" Then Mont Saint-Jean exclaimed suddenly, with a ray of hope, "Oh, there you are, Goualeuse! Now, then, I'm safe; do speak to them for me; they will listen to you, I am sure, for they love you as much as they hate me."
La Goualeuse was the last of the prisoners who entered the enclosure.
Fleur-de-Marie wore the blue woollen gown and black skull-cap of the prisoners; but even in this coarse costume she was still charming. Yet, since her carrying off from the farm of Bouqueval (the consequences of which circumstance we will explain hereafter), her features seemed greatly altered; her pale cheeks, formerly tinged with a slight colour, were as wan as the whiteness of alabaster; the expression, too, of her countenance had changed, and was now imprinted with a kind of dignified grief. Fleur-de-Marie felt that to bear courageously the painful sacrifices of expiation is almost to attain restored position.
"Ask a favour for me, Goualeuse," said poor Mont Saint-Jean, beseechingly, to the young girl; "see how they are flinging about the yard all I had collected, with so much trouble, to begin my baby linen for my child. What good can it do them?"
Fleur-de-Marie did not say a word, but began very actively to pick up, one by one, from under the women's feet, all the rags she could collect. One prisoner ill-temperedly kept her foot on a sort of little bed-gown of coarse woollen cloth. Fleur-de-Marie, still stooping, looked up at the woman, and said to her in a sweet tone:
"I beg of you let me pick it up. I ask it in the name of this poor woman who is weeping."
The prisoner removed her foot. The bed-gown was rescued, as well as most of the other scraps, which La Goualeuse acquired piece by piece. There remained to obtain a small child's cap, which two prisoners were struggling for, and laughing at. Fleur-de-Marie said to them:
"Be all good, pray do. Let me have the little cap."
"Oh, to be sure! It's for a harlequin in swaddling-clothes this cap is! It is made of a bit of gray stuff, with points of green and black fustian, and lined with a bit of an old mattress cover."
The description was exact, and was hailed with loud and long-continued shoutings.
"Laugh away, but let me have it," said Mont Saint-Jean; "and pray do not drag it in the mud as you have some of the other things. I'm sorry you've made your hands so dirty for me, Goualeuse," she added, in a grateful tone.
"Let me have the harlequin's cap," said La Louve, who obtained possession of it, and waved it in the air as a trophy.
"Give it to me, I entreat you," said Goualeuse.
"No! You want to give it back to Mont Saint-Jean."
"Certainly I do."
"Oh, it is not worth while, it is such a rag."
"Mont Saint-Jean has nothing but rags to dress her child in, and you ought to have pity upon her, La Louve," said Fleur-de-Marie, in a mournful voice, and stretching out her hand towards the cap.
"You sha'n't have it!" answered La Louve, in a brutal tone; "must everybody always give way to you because you are the weakest? You come, I see, to abuse the kindness that is shown to you."
"But," said La Goualeuse, with a smile full of sweetness, "where would be the merit of giving up to me, if I were the stronger of the two?"
"No, no; you want to wheedle me over with your smooth, canting words; but it won't do, – you sha'n't have it, I tell you."
"Come, come, now, La Louve, do not be ill-natured."
"Let me alone! You tire me to death!"
"Oh, pray do!"
"I will not!"
"Yes, do, – let me beg of you!"
"Now, don't put me in a passion," exclaimed La Louve, thoroughly irritated. "I have said no, and I mean no."
"Take pity on the poor thing, see how she is crying!"
"What is that to me? So much the worse for her; she is our pain-bearer" (souffre douleur).
"So she is," murmured out a number of the prisoners, instigated by the example of La Louve. "No, no, she ought not to have her rags back! So much the worse for Mont Saint-Jean."
"You are right," said Fleur-de-Marie, with bitterness; "it is so much the worse for her; she is your pain-bearer, she ought to submit herself to your pleasure, – her tears and sighs amuse and divert you! – and you must have some way of passing your time. Were you to kill her on the spot, she would have no right to say anything. You speak truly, La Louve, this is just and fair, is it not? Here is a poor, weak, defenceless woman; alone in the midst of so many, she is quite unable to defend herself, yet you all combine against her! Certainly your behaviour towards her is most just and generous!"
"And I suppose you mean to say we are all a parcel of cowards?" retorted La Louve, carried away by the violence of her disposition and extreme impatience at anything like contradiction. "Answer me, do you call us cowards, eh? Speak out, and let us know your meaning," continued she, growing more and more incensed.
A murmur of displeasure against La Goualeuse, not unmixed with threats, arose from the assembled crowd. The offended prisoners thronged around her, vociferating their disapprobation, forgetting, or remembering but as a fresh cause of offence, the ascendency she had until the present moment exercised over them.
"She calls us cowards, you see!"
"What business has she to find fault with us?"
"Is she better than we are, I should like to know?"
"Ah, we have all been too kind to her!"
"And now she wants to give herself fine lady airs, and to domineer over us! If we choose to torment Mont Saint-Jean, what need has she to interfere?"
"Since it has come to this, I tell you what, Mont Saint-Jean, you shall fare the worse for it for the future."
"Take this to begin with!" said one of the most violent of the party, giving her a blow.
"And if you meddle again with what does not concern you, La Goualeuse, we will serve you the same."
"Yes, that we will."
"But that is not all!" said La Louve. "La Goualeuse must ask our pardon for having called us cowards. She must and she shall! If we don't put a stop to her goings on, she will soon leave us without the power of saying our soul is our own, and we are great fools not to have seen this sooner."
"Make her ask our pardon."
"On her knee."
"On both knees."
"Or we will serve her precisely the same as we did her protégée, Mont Saint-Jean!"
"Down on her knees! Down with her!"
"Lo! we are cowards, are we?"
"Dare to say it again!"
Fleur-de-Marie allowed this tumult to pass away, ere she replied to the many furious voices that were raging around her. Then, casting a mild and melancholy glance at the exasperated crowd, she said to La Louve, who persisted in vociferating, "Will you dare to call us cowards again?"
"You? Oh, no, not you! I call this poor woman, whom you have so roughly treated, whom you have dragged through the mud, and whose clothes you have nearly torn off, a coward. Do you not see how she trembles, and dares not even look at you? No, no! I say again, 'tis she who is a coward, for being thus afraid of you."
Fleur-de-Marie had touched the right chord; in vain might she have appealed to their sense of justice and duty, in order to allay their bitter irritation against poor Mont Saint-Jean; the stupid or brutalised minds of the prisoners would alike have been inaccessible to her pleadings; but, by addressing herself to that sentiment of generosity, which is never wholly extinct, even in the most depraved characters, she kindled a spark of pity, that required but skilful management to fan into a flame of commiseration, instead of hatred and violence. La Louve, amid their continued murmurings against La Goualeuse and her protégée, felt, and confessed, that their conduct had been both unwomanly and cowardly.
Fleur-de-Marie would not carry her first triumph too far. She contented herself with merely saying:
"Surely, if this poor creature, whom you call yours, to tease, to torment, to ill-use, – in fact, your souffre douleur, – be not worthy of your pity, her infant has done nothing to offend you. Did you forget, when striking the mother, that the unborn babe might suffer from your blows? And when she besought your mercy, 'twas not for herself, but her child. When she craves of you a morsel of bread, if, indeed, you have it to spare, 'tis not to satisfy her own hunger she begs it, but that her infant may live; and when, with streaming eyes, she implored of you to spare the few rags she had with so much difficulty collected together, it arose from a mother's love for that unseen treasure her heart so loves and prizes. This poor little patchwork cap, and the pieces of old mattresses she has so awkwardly sewed together, no doubt appear to you fit objects of mirth; but, for my own part, I feel far more inclined to cry than to laugh at seeing the poor creature's instinctive attempts to provide for her babe. So, if you laugh at Mont Saint-Jean, let me come in for my share of your ridicule."
Not the faintest attempt at a smile appeared on any countenance, and La Louve continued, with fixed gaze, to contemplate the little cap she still held in her hand.
"I know very well," said Fleur-de-Marie, drying her eyes with the back of her white and delicate hand, – "I know very well that you are not really ill-natured or cruel, and that you merely torment Mont Saint-Jean from thoughtlessness. But consider that she and her infant are one. If she held it in her arms, not only would you carefully avoid doing it the least injury, but I am quite sure, if it were cold, you would even take from your own garments to cover it. Would not you, La Louve? Oh, I know you would, every one of you!"
"To be sure we would, – every one pities a tender baby."
"That is quite natural."
"And if it cried with hunger, you would take the bread from your own mouth to feed it with. Would not you, La Louve?"
"That I would, and willingly, too! I am not more hard-hearted than other people!"
"Nor more are we!"
"A poor, helpless, little creature!"
"Who could have the heart to think of harming it?"
"They must be downright monsters!"
"Perfect savages!"
"Worse than wild beasts!"
"I told you so," resumed Fleur-de-Marie. "I said you were not intentionally unkind; and you have proved that you are good and pitying towards Mont Saint-Jean. The fault consisted in your not reflecting that, although her child is yet unborn, it is still liable to harm from any mischief that befalls its mother. That is all the wrong you have done."
"All the wrong we have done!" exclaimed La Louve, much excited. "But I say it is not all. You were right, La Goualeuse. We acted like a set of cowards; and you alone deserve to be called courageous, because you did not fear to tell us so, or shrink from us after you had told us. It is nonsense to seek to deny the fact that you are not a creature like us, – it is no use trying to persuade ourselves you are like such beings as we are, so we may as well give it up. I don't like to own it, but it is so; and I may just as well confess it. Just now, when we were all in the wrong, you had courage enough, not only to refuse to join us, but to tell us of our fault."
"That is true enough; and the fair-faced girl must have had a pretty stock of courage to tell us the truth so plainly to our faces."
"But, bless you, these blue-eyed people, who look so soft and gentle, if once they are worked up – "
"They become courageous as lions."
"Poor Mont Saint-Jean! She has good reason to be thankful to her!"
"What she says is true enough. We could not injure the mother without harming the child also."
"I never thought of that."
"Nor I either."
"But you see La Goualeuse did, – she never forgets anything."
"The idea of hurting an infant! horrible! Is it not?"
"I'm sure there is not one of us would do it for anything that could be offered us."
Nothing is more variable than popular passion, or more abrupt than its rapid transition from bad to good, and even the reverse. The simple yet touching arguments of Fleur-de-Marie had effected a powerful reaction in favour of Mont Saint-Jean, who shed tears of deep joy. Every heart seemed moved; for, as we have already said, the womanly feelings of the prisoners had been awakened, and they now felt a solicitude for the unhappy creature in proportion as they had formerly held her in dislike and contempt. All at once, La Louve, violent and impetuous in all her actions, twisted the little cap she held in her hand into a sort of purse, and feeling in her pocket brought out twenty sous, which she threw into the purse; then presenting it to her companions, exclaimed:
"Here is my twenty sous towards buying baby clothes for Mont Saint-Jean's child. We will cut them out and make them ourselves, in order that the work may cost nothing."
"Oh, yes, let us."
"To be sure, – let us all join!"
"I will for one."
"What a capital idea!"
"Poor creature!"
"Though she is so frightfully ugly, yet she has a mother's feelings the same as another."
"La Goualeuse was right. It is really enough to make one cry one's eyes out, to see what a wretched collection of rags the poor creature has scraped together for her baby."
"Well, I'll give thirty sous."
"And I ten."
"I'll give twenty sous."
"I've only got four sous, but I'll give them."
"I have no money at all; but I'll sell my allowance for to-morrow, and put whatever any one will give for it into the collection. Who'll buy my to-morrow's rations?"
"I will," said La Louve. "So, here I put in ten sous for you; but you shall keep your rations. And now, Mont Saint-Jean shall have baby clothes fit for a princess."
To express the joy and gratitude of Mont Saint-Jean would be wholly impossible. The most intense delight and happiness illumined her countenance, and rendered even her usual hideous features interesting. Fleur-de-Marie was almost as happy, though compelled to say, when La Louve handed to her the collecting-cap:
"I am very sorry I have not a single sou of money, but I will work as long as you please at making the clothes."
"Oh, my dear heavenly angel!" cried Mont Saint-Jean, throwing herself on her knees before La Goualeuse, and striving to kiss her hand. "What have I ever done to merit such goodness on your part, or the charity of these kind ladies? Gracious Father! Do I hear aright? Baby things! and all nice and comfortable for my child! A real, proper set of baby clothes! Everything I can require! Who would ever have thought of such a thing? I am sure I never should. I shall lose my senses with joy! Only to think that a poor, miserable wretch like myself, the make-game of everybody, should all at once, just because you spoke a few soft, sweet words out of that heavenly mouth, have such wonderful blessings! See how your words have changed those who meant to harm me, but who now pity me and are my friends; and I feel as though I could never thank them enough, or express my gratitude! Oh, how very, very kind of them! How wrong of me to be offended and angry with what they said! How stupid and ungrateful I must have been not to perceive that they were only playing with me, – that they had no intention of harming me. Oh, no! It was all meant for my good. Here is a proof of it. Oh, for the future, if they like to knock me about ever so, I will not so much as cry out! Oh, I was too impatient when I complained before; but I will make up for it next time!"
"Eighty-eight francs seven sous!" said La Louve, finishing her reckoning of the collection gathered by handing about the little bonnet. "Who will be treasurer till we lay out the money? We must not entrust it to Mont Saint-Jean, she is too simple."
"Let La Goualeuse take charge of it!" cried a unanimous burst of voices.
"No," said Fleur-de-Marie; "the best way will be to beg of the inspectress, Madame Armand, to take charge of the sum collected, and to buy the necessary articles for Mont Saint-Jean's confinement; and then, – who knows? – perhaps Madame Armand may take notice of the good action you have performed, and report it, so as to be the means of shortening the imprisonment of all whose names are mentioned as being concerned in it. Tell me, La Louve," added Fleur-de-Marie, taking her companion by the arm, "are you not better satisfied with yourself than you were just now, when you were throwing about all Mont Saint-Jean's poor baby's things?"
La Louve did not immediately reply. To the generous excitement which a few moments before animated her features, succeeded a sort of half savage air of defiance. Unable to comprehend the cause of this sudden change, Fleur-de-Marie looked at her with surprise.
"Come here, La Goualeuse," said La Louve at last, with a gloomy tone; "I want to speak to you."
Then abruptly quitting the other prisoners, she led Fleur-de-Marie to a reservoir of water, surrounded by a stone coping, which had been hollowed out in the midst of an adjoining meadow. Near the water was a bench, also of stone, on which La Louve and La Goualeuse placed themselves, and were thus, in a manner, beyond the observation or hearing of their companions.