My Memoirs Part 39

I looked through the window. Paris seemed a new, a different city....

We reached Saint-Lazare. I glanced at the big building; it reminded me of a convent.... And there were so many doors. We pa.s.sed through a yard, a pa.s.sage. Then we came to a small room.

"Your name," said some one.

"Why?"

"You must write it, here...."

"Yes, Madame," said one of the inspectors, kindly. "Write your name, your age...."

A bell rang. The inspectors, deeply moved, said, "We must bid you good-bye, Madame...."

They went as far as a door with me. I shook hands with them and said, "Courage, courage; we shall all know the truth soon."

Then I was taken to another room. There was green furniture in it; the ceiling was low. It was not a beautiful room, but it was most comfortable. I saw a small man of about forty-five, with a strong face, blue eyes, fair hair, and a pointed beard, and some one said, "That is _Monsieur le Directeur_."

"So it is you who are putting me here?"... I said. "That is a nice old arm-chair...." I was convinced that I should be given a room like this one.

The director spoke softly, in gentle tones. He rang a bell. A _gardien_ came with a "sister." She wore a black dress, and a great white cornette encircled her kind, strong face. She looked about fifty. Afterwards I learned her name; Sur Leonide, and it was one of the names I learned at Saint-Lazare which I shall never forget and which I bless day after day.

She has since told me that the first words I said to her, when she entered the director's room, were: "It is I, _ma sur_; it is strange, is it not, that it should be I?"...

I followed her, I began to be surprised, almost alarmed. She took me through a long, long pa.s.sage. At the end, there was a bed in an angle. A man was there, he took up some large keys, and opened the door. The sister took me by the hand and said: "It is a little dark...."

"How ugly and damp it is here, _ma sur_".... I held the bannister: "It reminds me," I said, "of those in the old houses at Montbeliard, near my dear Beaucourt."

We came to another door. There I saw a sister sitting at a small desk in a room where the windows had big iron bars. I felt frightened. We went down another long pa.s.sage, and came to a high gate which the sister opened.

"Where are we going, _ma sur_? Everything is so dirty and dark. Are we going the right way?"

"Yes. You must come and fetch your sheets." She shut the gate behind her, and I noticed for the first time a bunch of large heavy keys hanging at her waist.

She opened the door with one of the keys and said: "I will choose some nice sheets... you must be very tired."

"Oh no, _ma sur_, I am not tired.... I hope Marthe is not unhappy. I am glad she did not come here with me...."

The sister muttered: "Hus.h.!.+ You must not talk here.... Take these sheets."

I looked at them. I had seen soldiers' sheets, but these were much coa.r.s.er.

The sister looked at me and said: "Yes... you are not used to them...."

I carried the sheets, and followed the sister along a filthy, evil-smelling corridor.

"Where are you going after this?" I asked.

"My poor child, I am taking you to your cell."

Another sister arrived, turned a big key in a lock twice, and drew a bolt. A heavy door was opened before me. The sister held a lantern, and I was told to go in.

I saw two women's faces looking at me from two little beds against the black walls, two barred windows, and three other beds that were empty.

"Make your bed, there...."

The foot of "my" bed touched that of a bed in which I saw a dark, pale, fierce-looking woman, the sight of whom made me s.h.i.+ver....

There was a tiny unlighted stove with three legs and a long chimney in the middle of the cell. The floor was made of slabs. Many were missing, most of them were broken, and there was dirty water in the holes. It was very cold.

One of the sisters pointed to a shelf above the bed and said: "You can put your things there.... Give me your hat, your hatpins, your gloves.

You are only ent.i.tled to keep your dress."

I lay down, almost entirely dressed, on the bed. I heard a clock strike midnight. I still wondered where I was. This is not an infirmary, I thought.... And why am I not alone in a room?... The sisters went silently away. I heard the key turned in the lock, the bolt pushed back.

The women at once started eagerly talking to me.... I could not understand them. I thought of Marthe. I cried, cried... and then fell, suddenly, into the great void of a sleep almost as deep as death.

CHAPTER XXII

THE THREE CELLS

I awoke the next morning--in a cell. The women were still there. I felt as if I had been beaten all over my body and my head. At first I did not realise where I was, or what I was doing there.... I saw the slabs of the floor, the dirt, the door with the peep-hole, through which, after lifting a small wooden shutter, people from the outside could see what was going on in the cell, the iron bedstead with the rough straw mattresses, the pillow filled with dried sea-weed, and the sheets made of some yellowish material that looked like sail-cloth. I saw the boards fastened into the wall above each bed, the small stove, the heap of coal in a corner, a few yellowish earthen-ware bowls and jugs, and blunt knives on a rickety table. I saw the walls covered with tar, vermin crawling about the cracks and hollows in the slabs, around the little puddles of muddy, evil-smelling water, the rough-hewn, uneven joists of the dark ceiling, from which hung thick webs. (Saint-Lazare, I heard afterwards, is one of the oldest and most dilapidated prisons in France.) I saw the two windows, with their heavy iron bars, and thick wire-gauze--through which, later on, I found it so difficult to give some of my bread to the scores of sparrows and pigeons which nest in the old roofs of Saint-Lazare--and I knew that I was a prisoner.

But what did it matter! In less than a week everything would be arranged and definitely settled, the real murderers would be arrested, and I would be once more with my daughter! Meanwhile, it was horrible to be here, to be in prison! I thought of Marthe, of my father... and I cried.

The women watched me eagerly. They addressed me by my name.... How did they know who I was?

"Oh!" said one, "we know all we want. Newspapers are not allowed here, but when you have a nice counsel, he hands some to you secretly....

Besides, new batches of women arrive every day, women who have just been arrested.... They know the latest news, and when they walk round the yard you can hear them talk."

The noise of steps outside, of the key being turned twice, and of the bolts being drawn--a noise which I was to hear so many times a day during a whole year, but which always jarred painfully on my nerves--interrupted the woman's explanations.

The man with the fair, pointed beard and the stern expression whom I had seen on my arrival at Saint-Lazare, entered, followed by the Sister who had given me the sheets, and whom I will henceforth call by her name, Sister Leonide. The two women jumped up and said: "Good morning, _Monsieur le Directeur_."

He turned to me, and in a matter-of-fact tone asked: "Are you satisfied?

Is there anything you want, Madame?"

"Oh, yes!... I want to see my daughter."

He made no answer to that, but said: "Your counsel will no doubt come to see you to-day," and walked away.

"How stupid of you," said one of the women to me; "you might have obtained anything. For the Director to call on you like that, early in the morning, it must be a political crime." (This remark amazed me.) "You should have asked for another stove, this one draws badly, or for an extra blanket...." And both started telling me what I should ask for the next time the Director came, so that our cell should be comfortable.

The door opened again. A young Sister, with a healthy glow on her round cheeks, came in.

"What do you want to-day, Madame?" she asked.