CHAPTER IX.
THE LIONS" DEN.
If the appearance of a house of confinement, constructed with every attention to salubrity and humanity, has nothing repulsive in its aspect, the sight of the prisoners causes a very different feeling. At the sight of the criminals who fill the gaols, we are at first seized with a shudder of fear and horror. It is only after some reflection that this is overcome, and feelings of pity mixed with bitterness overcome us.
To understand the feeling of horror and fear, our reader must follow us to the Fosse aux Lions (the Lions" Den), one of the yards in La Force so called. In this are usually placed the most dangerous criminals, whose ferocity, or the charges against whom, are most serious. At this time they had been compelled to place there, in consequence of the alterations making in the prison, many other prisoners. These, although equally under accusations and awaiting the a.s.sizes, were almost all respectable persons in comparison with the usual occupants of the Lions"
Den. The sky, gloomy, gray, and rainy, cast a dull light over the scene we are about to depict, and which took place in the centre of the yard of considerable extent, square, and enclosed by high white walls, having here and there several grated windows.
At one end of this yard was a narrow door with a wicket; at the other end, at the entrance to the day-room, a large apartment with a stove in the centre, surrounded by wooden benches, on which were sitting and lying several prisoners conversing together. Others, preferring exercise, were walking up and down the walks, four or five in a row, arm in arm. It requires the pencil of Salvator or Goya, in order to sketch the different specimens of physical and moral ugliness, to render in its hideous fantasy the variety of costumes worn by these men, for the most part covered with squalid rags,--for being only accused, _i. e._ supposed innocent, they were not clad in the usual uniform of the central houses. Some, however, wore it; for on their entrance into gaol, their rags appeared so filthy and infected that, after the usual washing and bath, they had the frock and trousers of coa.r.s.e gray cloth, as worn by the criminals, a.s.signed to them.
A phrenologist would have observed attentively those embrowned and weather-beaten countenances, those flat or narrow foreheads, those cruel or crafty looks, the wicked or stupid mouth, the enormous neck,--they nearly all presented frightful resemblances to brutes. In the cunning looks of one was seen the perfidious subtlety of the fox, in another was the sanguinary rapacity of the bird of prey, in a third, the ferocity of a tiger; and, in all, the animal stupidity of the brute. We will sketch one or two of the most striking physiognomies in the Fosse aux Lions.
Whilst the turnkey was watching his charge, a sort of council was being held in the day-room. Amongst the prisoners there a.s.sembled were Barbillon and Nicholas Martial. The prisoner who appeared to preside and lead in this debate was a scoundrel called the Skeleton, whose name has been often mentioned by the Martial family in the Isle du Ravageur. The Skeleton was _prevot_, or captain, of the day-room. This fellow was tall and about forty years of age, fully justifying his sinister nickname by a meagreness impossible to describe, but which might almost be termed osteologic.
If the countenance of the Skeleton presented more or less a.n.a.logy with that of the tiger, the vulture, or the fox, the shape of his forehead, receding as it did, his bony, flat, and lengthened jaws, supported by a neck of disproportioned length, instantly reminded you of the conformation of a serpent. Complete baldness increased still more this hideous resemblance, for beneath the corded skin of his forehead, nearly as flat as a reptile"s, might be distinguished the smallest protuberances, the smallest sutures of his skull. His beardless face was exactly like old parchment tightly distended over the bones of his face, and only somewhat stretched from the projection of the cheek-bone to the angle of the lower jaw, the working of which was distinctly visible. His eyes, small and lowering, were so deeply imbedded, and the rim of his brow so prominent, that under his yellow brow, when the light fell, were seen two orbits literally filled with shadows; and, a little further on, the eyes seemed to disappear in the depths of these two dark cavities, these two black holes, which gave so sinister an aspect to the skeleton head. His long teeth, whose alveolar projections were to be accurately traced beneath the tanned skin of his bony and flat jaws, were almost continually developed by a habitual sneer.
Although the stiffened muscles of this man were almost reduced to tendons, he possessed extraordinary strength, and the strongest resisted with difficulty the grasp of his long arms, his long and lean fingers.
He had the formidable clutch of a skeleton of iron. He wore a blue smock-frock, very short, and which exposed (and he was vain of it) his knotted hands and half his forearm, or rather two bones, the radius and the ulna (this anatomy will be excused us), two bones enveloped in a coa.r.s.e and black skin, separated by a deep groove, in which were some veins hard and dry as cords. When he placed his hands on a table he seemed, as Pique-Vinaigre justly remarked, as if he were spreading out a game of knuckle-bones.
The Skeleton, after having pa.s.sed fifteen years of his life at the galleys for an attempt at robbery and murder, had broken his ban and been taken in the very act of theft and murder. The last a.s.sa.s.sination had been committed with circ.u.mstances of such ferocity that the ruffian made up his mind, and with reason, that he should be condemned to death.
The influence which the Skeleton exercised over the other prisoners, from his strength, energy, and wickedness, had caused him to be chosen by the director of the prison as _prevot_ of the dormitory,--that is to say, the Skeleton was charged with the police of the chamber as far as concerned its order, arrangement, and the cleanliness of the room and the beds, a duty which he discharged perfectly; and no prisoner dared to fail in the cares and duties which he superintended. The Skeleton was discoursing with several prisoners, amongst whom were Barbillon and Nicholas Martial.
"Are you sure of what you say?" inquired the Skeleton of Martial.
"Yes, yes,--a hundred times, yes! Father Micou heard it from the Gros-Boiteux, who has already tried to knock this hound on the head because he peached about some one."
"Then let"s do for him,--brush him up!" said Barbillon. The Skeleton was already inclined to give that skulking Germain a turn of his hand.
The _prevot_ took his pipe from his mouth for a moment, and then said, in a tone so low and husky as to be scarcely audible:
"Germain kept aloof from us, gave himself airs, watched us,--for the less one talks the more one listens. We meant to get rid of him out of the Fosse aux Lions, and if we had given him a quiet squeeze, they"d have taken him away."
"Well, then," inquired Nicholas, "what alteration need there be now?"
"This alteration," replied the Skeleton; "that if he has turned informer, as the Gros-Boiteux declares, he mustn"t get off with a quiet squeeze."
"By no manner o" means!" said Barbillon.
"We must make an example of him," continued the Skeleton, warming as he went on. "It is not now the nabs who look out for us, but the noses.
Jacques and Gauthier, who were guillotined the other day, were informed against,--nosed; Rousillon, sent to the galleys for life,--nosed."
"And me, and my mother, and Calabash, and my brother at Toulon," cried Nicholas; "have we not all been nosed by Bras-Rouge? To be sure we have; because, instead of shutting him up here with us, he has been sent to La Roquette. They daren"t put him with us; he knew he had done us wrong, the old--"
"Well," added Barbillon, "and didn"t Bras-Rouge nose upon me, too?"
"And I, too," said a young prisoner, in a thin voice, and lisping affectedly. "I was split upon by Jobert, who had proposed to me a little affair in the Rue St. Martin."
The latter personage, with a fluty voice, pale, fat, and effeminate face, and with a sly and treacherous glance, was singularly attired. He wore as a head-dress a red pocket-handkerchief, which exposed two locks of light brown hair close to his temples; the two ends of his handkerchief formed a projecting rosette over his forehead; his cravat was a merino shawl, with a large pattern, which crossed over his chest; his mulberry-coloured waistcoat almost disappeared beneath the tight waistband of a very large pair of trousers of plaid, with very large and different-coloured checks.
"And was not that shameful? Such a man to turn against me!" he added, in his shrill voice. "Yet, really, nothing in the world would have made me distrust Jobert."
"I know very well that he sold you, Javatte," replied the Skeleton, who seemed to protect the prisoner peculiarly; "and as a proof that they have done for thy nose the same as they have done for Bras-Rouge, they have not dared to leave Jobert here, but sent him to the stone jug of the Conciergerie. Well, there must be an end put to this! There must be an example; for traitors are doing the work of the police, and believe themselves safe in their skins because they are put in a different prison from those on whom they have nosed."
"That"s true."
"To prevent this, every prisoner should consider every nose as his deadly enemy. Whether he informs against Peter or James, here or there, that"s nothing; fall on him tooth and nail. When we have made cold meat of four or five in the prisons, the others will think twice before they turn "snitch.""
"You"re right, Skeleton," said Nicholas; "and let Germain be number one."
"And no mistake," replied the _prevot_; "but let us wait until the Gros-Boiteux arrives. When, for instance, he has proved to all the world that Germain is a nose the thing shall be settled out of hand; the calf shall bleat no more, we"ll stop his wind."
"And what shall we do with the turnkeys who watch us?" inquired the prisoner whom the Skeleton called Javatte.
"I have my plan, which Pique-Vinaigre will aid."
"He! He"s a coward."
"And no stronger than a flea."
"I"m awake. Where is he?"
"He had come out of the visiting-room, but went back again to see his lawyer."
"And is Germain still in the visiting-room?"
"Yes, with the little wench who comes to see him."
"When he returns be on your guard. But we must wait for Pique-Vinaigre, without him we can do nothing."
"No?"
"No."
"And Germain shall be done for?"
"I"ll take care of that."
"But with what? They have taken all our knives away."
"What do you think of these nippers, would you like to have your neck in their clutch?" asked the Skeleton, opening his long bony fingers, hard as iron.
"You"ll choke him?"
"Decidedly."