The prison of Sainte-PÉlagie owed its name to a frail beauty whom play-goers in Antioch knew in the fifth century of this era. Embracing Christianity, she forsook the stage, and built herself a cell on the Mount of Olives. The Church bestowed on her the honours of the Calendar.

Twelve centuries later, in the reign of Louis XIV., a Madame de Miramion, inspired by the memory, not of PÉlagie the comÉdienne, but of Sainte-PÉlagie the recluse, built in Paris a substantial Refuge for young women whose virtue seemed in need of protection. Letters-patent were obtained from the King, and Madame de Miramion sought her recruits here and there in the capital; gathering within the fold, it was said, a considerable number "who had no longer anything to fear for their virtue." But the rule of the house was strait, and one by one Madame's young persons absconded, or were withdrawn from her keeping by their parents. Nothing daunted, and sustained by her fixed idea of making penitents at any price, Madame de Miramion descended boldly upon the haunts of Aspasia herself, and there laid hands on all those votaries of Venus who were either weary of their calling or whose calling was wearying of them. The crown of the joyeuse vie fits loosely, and the lightest shock unfixes it. Madame's campaign in this quarter was successful, and she was soon at the head of a battalion of more or less repentant graces. New letters-patent were granted by a Majesty so desirous of the moral well-being of his female subjects, the establishment of Sainte-PÉlagie was confirmed, and, thanks to the invaluable assistance of the police, the complement of Magdalens was maintained. Sainte-PÉlagie continued its pious destiny until the days of the Revolution, when the cloister of the Magdalens became a prison.

As a prison, Sainte-PÉlagie (which is in existence to-day as a maison de correction, or penitentiary) has known many and strange guests. From 1792 to 1795, it held a mixed population of both sexes, political prisoners and others. Between the years 1797 and 1834, debtors of all degrees were confined there, and at one period the debtors shared the gaol with a motley crew of juvenile delinquents. Under the Restoration and under the two Empires Sainte-PÉlagie served the uses of a State prison. The first Napoleon had the cells in constant occupation. The Restoration sent there, within the space of a few days, one hundred and thirty-five individuals, arrested by the police of Louis XVIII. for their connection, as officers, with the old Imperial Guard. Innumerable indeed, from 1790 onwards, were the victims who found a lodging, not of their choosing, behind the ample walls which the widow Miramion had consecrated a shelter for tottering virtue or gallantry in mourning for its past. The men of the Revolution found Sainte-PÉlagie excellently suited to their needs; Madame de Miramion had housed her Magdalens strongly. In form a vast quadrilateral, the buildings were easily converted to the uses of a prison; and at a later date the prison was arranged in three divisions. On the west side were confined petty offenders under sentences ranging between six months and one year. The debtors' was the second division; and here also were imprisoned young rogues, thieves, and vagabonds, and (up to 1867) "certain men of letters and journalists." The east side seems to have been reserved principally for political offenders. But the divisions were never very strictly observed; and a political prisoner relegated by mischance or for lack of space to the west side of the prison was treated in all respects as a common criminal. Ordinary prisoners were kept at work, and received a small percentage on the profits of their industry. Political prisoners, journalists, and "men of letters" were exempted from labour; and a third class called pistoliers, purchased this exemption at a cost of from six to seven francs a fortnight.

It was by order of the Convention that Sainte-PÉlagie was transformed from a convent-refuge into a prison, and during the revolutionary period a crowd of unknown or little-known suspects passed within its keeping before being summoned to the bar. Not a few quitted it only for the scaffold.

Madame Roland was cast there on the 25th of June, 1793. Three years earlier, Carlyle notes her at Lyons, "that queen-like burgher woman; beautiful, Amazonian-graceful to the eye" with "that strong Minerva-face." We shall return to Madame Roland, wife of the "King's Inspector of Manufactures."

In the same month, if not on the same day, were sent to Sainte-PÉlagie the Comte de Laval-Montmorency, and the Marquis de Pons. In August of the same year went to join them (not now with popular acclamation, as when, in 1765, Mademoiselle Clairon and her fellow players were haled to the ChÂtelet) nine ladies of the ThÉÂtre-FranÇais. After the 9th Thermidor (July 27, 1794), which saw the sudden downfall and death of Robespierre, Sainte-PÉlagie received most of the victims of the reaction,—the Tail of Robespierre,—including the Duplaix family.

Madame Roland had known the indignities of a revolutionary prison before her sojourn at Sainte-PÉlagie. Imprisoned first in the Abbaye, it was from there that she wrote:

"I find a certain pleasure in enforcing privations on myself, in seeing how far the human will can be employed in reducing the 'necessaries' of existence. I substituted bread and water for chocolate, at breakfast; a plate of meat with vegetables was my dinner; and I supped on vegetables, without desert."

But having "as much aversion from as contempt for a merely useless economy" (autant d'aversion que de mÉpris pour une Économie inutile), Madame Roland goes on to say that what she saved by the retrenchments of her own cuisine she spent in procuring extra rations for the pauper prisoners of the Abbaye; and adds: "If I stay here six months I mean to go out plump and hearty [je veux en sortir grasse et fraÎche] wanting nothing more than soup and bread, and with the satisfaction of having earned certain bÉnÉdictions incognito."

Transferred to Sainte-PÉlagie, this heroic woman of the people saw herself confounded with women of the town (the descendants of the widow Miramion's Magdalens), thieves, forgers, and assassins. She made the best of the situation, cultivated flowers in a box in the window of her cell, and wrote incessantly. When told that her name had been included in the process against the Girondins, she said: "I am not afraid to go to the scaffold in such good company; I am ashamed only to live among scoundrels." Her friends had contrived a plan for her escape, but could not induce her to profit by it: "Spare me!" she cried. "I love my husband, I love my daughter; you know it; but I will not save myself by flight." When the axe fell on the heads of the twenty-two Girondins, October 31, 1793 (10th Brumaire of the Republican calendar), Madame Roland was removed to the Conciergerie. Knowing well the fate that awaited her, she lost neither her courage nor her beautiful tranquillity; and used to go down to the men's wicket of the prison, exhorting them to be brave and worthy of the cause. In the tumbril, on her way to the guillotine, she was robed in white, her superb black hair floating behind her; and at the place of execution, bending her head to the statue of Liberty, she murmured: "O Liberty! what crimes are done in thy name!"—O LibertÉ! que de crimes on commet en ton nom!

It was not Madame Dubarry's to show this sublime fortitude in death; but after all one dies as one must. Sainte-PÉlagie will tell us that poor Dame Dubarry was the feeblest and most faint-hearted of its recluses of the Revolution. She wept, and called on heaven to save her, and shuffled and cut her cards, and consulted the lines in her hand; and when her name was called at the wicket on the fatal morning, she swooned on the flags of the prison, and was carried scarcely animate to the tumbril.

The story of governor Bouchotte, who had charge of Sainte-PÉlagie at this terrible epoch, is a noble one. The September massacres had begun, and the red-bonnets in detachments were sharing the butchery at the prisons. The Abbaye, the Carmes, the Force, and the Conciergerie had given them prompt entrance; the turnkeys saluting the self-styled judges, say MM. Alhoy and Lurine, as the grave-digger salutes the hangman. Not so governor Bouchotte of Sainte-PÉlagie. The mob swarmed at the doors, but to their clattering on the panels no answer was vouchsafed. Pikes, hammers, and axes resounded on the solid portals, but silence the most complete reigned behind them.

"Can citizen Bouchotte have been beforehand with us?—Le citoyen Bouchotte, nous aurait-il devancÉs?" cried one. "Not an aristocrat voice to be heard! Bouchotte has perhaps finished them off himself."

The neighbouring houses were ransacked for tools proper to effect an entrance, and the doors were burst open. The mob poured in; and there, bound hand and foot on the flags in the courtyard of the prison, they found the governor and his wife.

"Citizens," cried Bouchotte, "you arrive too late! My prisoners are gone. They got warning of your coming, and after binding my wife and myself as you see us, they made their escape."

Bouchotte was taken at his word, he and his wife were released from their cords, and the red-bonnets went off to wreak a double vengeance at BicÊtre. At the risk of his own and of his wife's life, the admirable Bouchotte had tricked the cut-throats. He had uncaged his birds and given them their liberty through a private postern, and had then ordered his warders to tie up his wife and himself. Honour to the brave memory of Bouchotte! The history of the French Revolution has few brighter passages than this.

Nougaret gives us a curious picture of the interior of Sainte-PÉlagie under the bloody rule of Robespierre.^[18] The prison itself he describes as "damp and unwholesome" (humide et malsaine). There were about three hundred and fifty prisoners, detained they knew not why, for they were not allowed to read the charges entered on the registers.

To each prisoner was allotted a cell six feet square, "with a dirty bed and a mattress as hard as marble." The turnkey's first question to a new-comer was: "Have you any money?" If the answer was, Yes, he was supplied with "a basin and a water-jug and a few cracked plates, for which he paid triple their worth." If the prisoner entered with empty pockets, it was: "So much the worse for you; for the rule here is that nothing buys nothing" (on n'a rien pour rien). In this plight, says Nougaret, the prisoner was obliged to sell some poor personal effect in order to obtain the strictest necessaries of life. "A citizen who occupied, in the month of FlorÉal, cell number 10 in the corridor of the second story, sacrificed for twenty-five francs a gold ring worth about £20, to procure for himself those same necessities." The rations at this date consisted of "a pound and a half of bad bread and a plate of flinty beans [haricots trÈs-durs], larded with stale grease or tallow." Prisoners who could afford it paid an exorbitant price for a few supplementary dishes. Later, the diet was rather more generous.

Although communication between the prisoners was forbidden, they had invented a sort of club; perhaps the most singular in the annals of clubdom. The "meetings" were at eight in the evening, but no member left his cell. Despite the thickness of the doors, it was found that, by raising his voice, a prisoner could be heard from one end of the corridor to the other; and by this means the members of the club exchanged such news as they had gleaned during the day from the warders on duty. In order that no one might be betrayed or compromised (in the event of the conversation being overheard by the gendarmes posted under the windows), instead of saying "I heard such-and-such a thing to-day," the formula was, "I dreamt last night."

When a candidate presented himself (that is to say, when a new prisoner arrived), the president inquired, in behalf of the club, his name, quality, residence, and the reason of his imprisonment; and if the answers were satisfactory he was proclaimed a member of the society in these terms: "Citizen, the patriots imprisoned in this corridor deem you worthy to be their brother and friend. Permit me to send you the accolade fraternelle!"

Two circumstances excluded from membership of the club,—to have borne false witness at Fouquier-Tinville's bar, and to have been concerned in the fabrication of false assignats. The club held its "meetings" regularly, until the date at which the prisoners were allowed to exercise together in the corridors.

We saw Madame Roland, "brave, fair Roland," at the men's wicket of Sainte-PÉlagie, passionately exhorting them; and Comtesse Dubarry answering her summons to the guillotine by a swoon.

Another woman, not famous yet, but destined to fame, was on the women's side of Sainte-PÉlagie in 1793: JosÉphine de Beauharnais, who was to stand one day with Napoleon on the throne. A tradition of the prison affirmed that JosÉphine left her initials carved or traced on a wall of her cell.

The Terror seems almost to have emptied Sainte-PÉlagie, and it is not until the days of the Empire that we find its cells once more in the occupation of political prisoners. Prisoners of that quality were not lacking there in Buonaparte's despotic era; but (and this may have been of design) the registers were not too well kept, and prisoners' names and the motives of their imprisonment are hard to arrive at. Had we the lists in full, however, they would excite small interest at this day. Between 1811 and March, 1814, when the records were more precise, two hundred and thirty-four persons were confined in this prison for causes more or less political. In April, 1814, we have the Russian Emperor giving their freedom to some seventy of the prisoners of Napoleon. The Restoration sends the officers of the old Imperial Guard to Sainte-PÉlagie. The record of the Hundred Days, so far as this prison is concerned, is a clean one; but Charles X. continues the use of Sainte-PÉlagie as a prison of State, and BÉranger, Cauchois-Lemaire, Colonel Duvergier, Bonnaire, Dubois, Achille Roche, and BarthÉlemy are amongst the names on the gaoler's books. The Constitutional Monarchy from 1830 to 1848, the Republic succeeding it, and the reign of Napoleon III. (who swept into it five hundred citizens in the space of a few days) kept alive the political tradition of Sainte-PÉlagie. M. Rochefort, who had his turn there from 1869-1870, was one of the last of Napoleon III.'s prisoners, to whom the revolution of the 4th of September gave back their liberty. From that date, the "political boarders" of Sainte-PÉlagie were few, the governments of MM. Thiers and De Broglie preferring rather to suppress newspapers than to pursue their editors.

Under the Empire and the Restoration the organisation and administration of Sainte-PÉlagie evidently left much to be desired. It was not rare, says one chronicler, for accused persons to remain six or seven months without being interrogated.

A certain M. Poulain d'Angers lay there a quarter of a year quite ignorant as to the cause of his arrest. Another accused, a certain M. Guillon, who had been attached to the Emperor's Council, weary of the perpetual shufflings of the police of the succeeding reign, constituted himself a prisoner de facto without having received judgment; and remained six months a captive, although there was no entry against his name: one morning, they showed him the door, malgrÉ lui. An adventure which befell this gentleman attests sufficiently the disorder which reigned in the prison service.

Being to some extent indisposed, the doctor had given M. Guillon an order for the baths. Not knowing in what part of the prison the infirmary was situated, he presented his order to a tipsy turnkey, who promptly opened the door which gave on the Rue du Puits-de-l'Ermite. M. Guillon, a free man without being aware of it, took the narrow street to be a sentry's walk, and went a few paces without finding any one to direct him. Returning to the sentry at the door, he inquired where were the baths. "What baths?" said the sentinel.—"The prison baths." "The prison baths," said the sentinel, "are probably in the prison; but you can't get in there."—"What? I can't get into the prison! Am I outside it, then?"—"Why, yes; you're in the street; you ought to know that, I should think." "I did not know it, I assure you," said M. Guillon; "and this won't suit me at all." He rang the prison bell, and was readmitted; and the recital of his adventure restored to sobriety the turnkey who had given him his freedom.

It was related that under the Directory a criminal condemned to transportation managed to conceal himself in Sainte-PÉlagie, persuaded that there at all events he was safe, nor were his hopes deceived.

It appears to have been after the Revolution of 1830—that brief week of July which "paragons description"—that some kind of method was attained or attempted in the management of Sainte-PÉlagie. A new wing had been built, which was reserved for the politicals,—but the builder had reckoned without his guests, and without the King's Attorney. It was considered that thirty-six beds in ten chambers, to say nothing of a small spare dormitory, would be accommodation enough for prisoners of this class. At the same epoch, a droll idea took possession of the administration. It was, that if the gamins and 'prentice-thieves raked into the police-courts were mixed pell-mell with the political prisoners, the former might get a polish on their morals, and the latter an agreeable distraction! As a scheme of reform for the artful dodger it was perhaps elementary, but it shewed at least a kindly anxiety on the part of the administration to prepare diversions for political offenders. Alas! it was a dream; for there were presently so many political delinquents to be accommodated, that the question was no longer how to distract their captivity, but how to lodge the new-comers. The artful dodger was exiled.

More buildings were called for, and another court; and the political wing of Sainte-PÉlagie became a colony by itself. A colonist of the early thirties bestowed on it the following appreciation:—"Sainte-PÉlagie is death by wasting (le supplice par la langueur), torture by ennui, homicide by process of decline. It is a sort of pneumatic machine applied to the brain, which saps and exhausts it by inches. It is not an active irritation, and it is nothing resembling repose. It is not Paris, and it is not a desert solitude. It is a mÉlange of everything: air, a modicum; elbow-room, rather less; friends, one or two; bores, any number. It is a prison with a mirage of the world; a world not made for a prison. It is not severe, and it is infinitely wearisome. It is a kind of civilised police; it is a prodigious and perpetual paradox.... Sainte-PÉlagie is insupportable!"

Here is another appreciation of about the same date:—"Sainte-PÉlagie is a hurly-burly (pÊle-mÊle) of all imaginable ideas and opinions; a species of political Pandemonium. The Caricature runs foul of the Quotidienne, the Courrier de l'Europe elbows the Revolution, the Gazette pirouettes between the Tribune and the Courrier FranÇais.... All colours and all races, all ages and all tongues are confounded. It is a Babel; it is a common camp in which friends and foes are flung together after a general rout. As a huge anomaly it is curious to see, but it has the depressing effect of a monster!"

Let us turn to the debtors' side. Dulaure quotes in this connection a description given by De la Borde in his Memoirs, which is worth translating:

"The debtors' wing of Sainte-PÉlagie, which is intended to accommodate a hundred, has one hundred and twenty and sometimes one hundred and fifty tenants. The building is in three stories, each story consisting of one narrow corridor, the rooms in which receive no light except from loopholes beneath the roof. There are no fire-places in the rooms, some of which are cruelly cold, whilst in others the heat is unbearable. With proper space for three persons at the most, they are generally made to hold from five to six; and the dirt everywhere is revolting. The wretched occupants can only take exercise in a corridor four feet wide, and a courtyard thirty feet square. For years they have asked in vain for some contrivance which would give them a proper current of air; there is not a decent ventilator in the place. In winter they are locked in from eight P.M. until seven A.M.; and, whatever his necessities, not one of the five or six cell-mates can possibly quit his cell between those hours. The dirtiest and worst-kept part of the whole prison is the infirmary. Two or three patients are put into one bed,—an excellent means of spreading the itch, and other maladies."

The reproach of this unseemly state M. de la Borde laid upon the chiefs of the prison service for their indifference, and the subordinates for their wholesale negligence.

To obtain leave to visit a friend on the debtors' side, you climbed the dingy staircase of the PrÉfecture de Police, to the office marked Bureau des Prisons, where orders were issued for the principal gaols; and you took your place in the waiting-room amongst a very motley crowd whose relatives or acquaintances had been "put away" for murder, arson, forgery, house-breaking, or a simple difficulty with a creditor.

Furnished with the necessary passport, a literary Frenchman made the pilgrimage to Sainte-PÉlagie seventy years ago, and wrote a most interesting account of his visit. The authors of Les Prisons de Paris transferred it to their entertaining pages, and I cannot do better than translate from them. It chanced to be pay-day in the prison, that is to say, the day on which the debtors received the stingy pittance which their creditors were compelled to pay them once a month,—an excellent opportunity of observing the stranded victims of the most nonsensical law in the universe. To clap into prison a man who could not satisfy his creditors, and thereby to encourage the indolent debtor in his indolence and to dry up for the industrious debtor all possible sources of industry, was perhaps, in this country as in France, the summit of folly ever attained by legal enactment.

"I found myself in a world of which those who have described it only from the other side of the wall have given us an entirely false notion. Where were all the gaieties which the novelists and the rhymesters have depicted for us? Where were the bevies of fair women who, as we have been assured, flock here by day to scatter the cares of the forlorn imprisoned debtor? I strained my ear in vain for any note of those bacchic concert-parties and mad festivities (ces bruyants Éclats de l'orgie) which are to be met with in the novels. I threw a glance into the courtyard, and calculated the amount of space which each man could claim in the only spot in the whole prison where there is any circulation of air; I came to the conclusion that, when the prisoners were assembled here of an evening, after their friends had left, each might possess for himself a fraction of a fraction of a square yard of mother earth."

The debtors trooped down to the office to finger their doles.

"I watched a procession of artisans and labourers, whose speech and costume contrasted oddly with the title of 'merchants' (nÉgociants), under which their creditors had filched them from the workshops and yards to which they belonged; next, some physiognomies of men of the world, some representatives of the middle classes, and a crowd of young bloods (Étourneaux).

"One of the first comers was an officer, decorated and seamed with wounds, who had been four times in Sainte-PÉlagie to purge the same debt. After five months' captivity he came to an arrangement with his creditor, to whom he owed a couple of thousand francs, agreeing to pay him in ninety days five hundred more. He was let out, failed to redeem the debt, and returned to take up his old quarters in Sainte-PÉlagie. At the end of a year, he acknowledged a debt of three thousand francs to the same creditor, and obtained six months' grace. He paid a thousand on account, could not furnish a penny more, and went back to prison for the third time. Thus, after nearly three years in prison, the captain owes one-third more than he did on first coming in, and has paid a thousand francs to boot,—to encourage his creditor.

"The old fellow who followed him was a monument of the speculative spirit of a certain class of creditors. He was half-blind, and had lost his left arm; his whole debt amounted to £20. Eight days before the King's birthday his creditor cast him into Sainte-PÉlagie, in the hope that one of the civil-list bonuses would fall to the old man. Unhappily, the hope was not realised, and the creditor is now looking forward to next year's list.

"Amongst the swarm of debtors, I recognised my old water-carrier, who needed little coaxing to tell me the story of his imprisonment.

"LÉonard was a native of Auvergne. After hawking water in buckets for several years, his ambition rose to a water-cart; and behold him now with his sphere of operations extended from the Rue du Faubourg-PoissonniÈre to the Marais. Unluckily for LÉonard the water-cart was not yet his own property, and he began to fall into arrears with his monthly payments. When the arrears had become what the bailiffs call an 'exploitable' sum, LÉonard was haled to the bar. Here he suddenly ceased to be a water-carrier; they promoted him to the rank of 'merchant,' and under that style and dignity they condemned poor LÉonard for debt. In this strait LÉonard thought, "Why not become bankrupt at once?" but when he went to deposit his balance-sheet they told him he was not a 'merchant' at all, but a mere water-carrier. Fifteen days later, LÉonard had joined the ranks of the impecunious in Sainte-PÉlagie.

"His next idea was to lodge an appeal, and his brother was willing to bear the costs; but LÉonard's debt was a bagatelle of £12, and the lawyer whom he consulted said that the blessings of appeal were reserved for persons owing £20 and upwards. The code of the Osages, if they have one, probably does not contain such exquisite burlesque as this.

"I asked LÉonard what had become of his wife. 'Oh,' he said, 'poor Jeanne has gone back to Auvergne; otherwise they'd have had her too, for they made Jeanne a "merchant" also' (elle Était aussi nÉgociante).

"I gave LÉonard a trifle, and he went off to drink it. It is the commonest recreation, when it can be indulged; and the majority of the debtors, when their day of liberation comes, return to their homes with the two incurable habits of idleness and liquor."

Another who came to touch his allowance was a tradesman whose clerk had robbed him of one thousand crowns. "The tradesman being unable in consequence to meet his engagements is condemned to spend five years in Sainte-PÉlagie, and from the grating of his cell he can see in the penal wing the scoundrelly clerk, who gets off with six months' imprisonment!"

Another comes

"tripping cheerfully through the crowd; he is receiving his last payment; in a few days he will be a free man. An anonymous letter has loosed his bonds with the happy tidings that his creditor has been dead a year, and that a speculative bailiff has been prolonging his captivity on the chance of the debt being paid into his own pocket."

To this victim of a negligent law succeeded two who had made the law their dupe. One was an officer who had had himself arrested for debt to escape joining an expedition to Morea. The other was a tradesman "who was nobody's prisoner but his own, and who had arranged with a friend to deposit the monthly allowance for food. He was speculating on the article of the code which gave a general exemption from arrest for debt to all who had passed five consecutive years in the gaol."

A new-comer, "with his face all slashed," was

"recounting the details of the siege he had sustained in his house against the bailiff's men. He had wanted to give himself up without fuss, but was told when he presented himself at the office that a person condemned for debt must be forcibly arrested (doit Être apprÉhendÉ au corps avec brutalitÉ), and pitched into a cab under the eyes of all the loungers on the foot-way,—who no doubt often imagine that they are assisting at the capture of some eminent criminal. This enterprise on the part of the bailiff and his men is charged to the unfortunate debtor, and the field of battle is as often as not some public thoroughfare."

But by far the most interesting and sympathetic personality on the debtor's side of Sainte-PÉlagie at this date was the American Colonel Swan. The nature and amount of the colonel's debt are not set out, but the interest seems to have been the main cause of offence, and he had made it a matter of conscience to refuse payment.

"The French law had ordered his temporary arrest, and, twenty years after his incarceration, he was still 'temporarily' in confinement. Compatriot and friend of Washington, Colonel Swan had fought in the War of Independence with Lafayette, and the grand old French republican often bent his white head beneath the wicket of the gaol, on a visit to his brother-in-arms."

His own private means, the aid of wealthier friends, or even a successful project of escape, might have restored him to the free world; but so greatly had he used himself to his captivity, that no thought of liberty seems ever to have crossed his mind.

"It was not altogether without emotion that one saw this comely veteran—whose features were almost a copy of Benjamin Franklin's—pacing the narrow and sombre passages of the prison, drawing a breath of air at the loop-hole above the little garden. His long robe of swanskin or white dimity announced his coming, and it was both curious and touching to see how the groups of prisoners made way for him in the corridors, and how some hastened to carry into their cells the little stoves on which they did their cooking, lest the fumes of the charcoal should offend him."

This respect and love of the whole prison the old colonel had justly won; not a day of his long confinement there but he had marked by some service of kindness, for the most part mysterious and anonymous. No hungry debtor went in vain to the door of the colonel's little cell; and often, seeking a supper, the petitioner went away with the full price of his liberty.

There were two classes in the debtors' wing; those with certain resources of their own to supplement the miserable allowance of their creditors, and those who were dependent for their daily rations on the handful of centimes allowed them by law.

These last used to hire their services to the others for a gratuity, and were among the regular suitors of Colonel Swan's inexhaustible bounty. They were known in the prison as "cotton-caps" (bonnets de coton). One of these, hearing that the American had lost his "cotton-cap," went to beg the place. The colonel knew all about the man, a poor devil with a large family, stranded there for a few hundred francs. He asked a salary of six francs a month.

"That will suit me very well," said the colonel; and, opening a little chest, "here is five years' pay in advance." It was the amount precisely of the man's debt,—and a fair instance of the colonel's benefactions.

Towards the year 1829, prisoners taking their airing in the garden saw an old man strolling an hour or two in the day on the high terrace or gallery at the top of the prison. It was Colonel Swan, for whom, in failing health, the doctor had demanded that privilege. He had accepted it gratefully, but—as if admonished from within—he said to the doctor: "My proper air is the air of the prison; this breath of liberty will kill me."

A few months later, the cannon of the 27th of July was belching in the streets of Paris. On the 28th, the doors of the "commercial Bastille" were thrown open, and the prisoners went out.

Colonel Swan, who went out with them, died on the 29th.

There were a few clever escapes, evasions as the French call them, from Sainte-PÉlagie. What was known as the procÈs d'Avril, 1835, resulted in the condemnation of Guinard, Imbert, Cavaignac, Marrast, and others, who were lodged in the political wing. Forty of them joined in a scheme of evasion, and a subterranean passage was dug from the north-east angle of the prison into the garden of No. 9, Rue Copeau. The tunnel, nearly twenty yards in length, was completed on the 12th of July, and of the forty prisoners twenty-eight made good their escape from Sainte-PÉlagie the "insupportable."

The excitement of a well-conducted escape is contagious, and in September of the same year the Comte de Richmond, who gave himself out as the son of Louis XVI., with his two friends in durance, Duclerc and Rossignol, broke prison ingeniously enough. By bribery or some other means, Richmond procured a pass-key which gave admission to the sentry-walk; and, head erect and a file of papers under his arm, he walked boldly out, followed by Rossignol and Duclerc. To the sentinel who challenged them, the Count with perfect sang-froid introduced himself as the director of the prison; "and these gentlemen," he added, "whom you ought to know, are my chief clerk, and my architect." The sentry saluted and let them pass, and M. de Richmond and his friends opened the door and walked out.

In 1865, an Englishman named Jackson, condemned to five years' hard labour, managed to get himself transferred to Sainte-PÉlagie. On a wet wild night in the last week of January, he squeezed out of his cell, crawled over the roof to a convenient wall, and by the aid of a cord and grappling iron let himself down into the street. The night was pitchy black, rain was falling in torrents, the sentry was in his box, and Jackson footed it leisurely home.

Better than these, however, was the escape of Colonel Duvergier, one of the State prisoners of Charles X. Colonel Duvergier had been condemned to five years' "reclusion" for no apparent reason except that he was one of the most distinguished soldiers of his day. The story of his escape is one of the happiest in the romantic annals of prison-breaking, but the credit of the affair rests principally with a young littÉrateur, a certain EugÈne de P——.

Colonel Duvergier was on the political, and EugÈne de P—— on the debtors' side of Sainte-PÉlagie, but they had succeeded in establishing a correspondence by letter; and EugÈne, not over-eager for his own liberty, seems to have taken upon himself to procure the colonel's. With Colonel Duvergier was one Captain Laverderie, and the colonel refused to go out unless the captain could share his escape. EugÈne de P—— said the captain should go also, and the plot went forward.

The first step was to get the colonel and his friend from the political to the debtors' side of the prison, and this was contrived at the exercise hour. When the political prisoners were being marched in, to give place to the debtors—there being but one exercise yard for the two classes—Duvergier and Laverderie escaped the warder's eye, and hid in the garden, until the debtors came out for their constitutional. Nowadays, the warder would have counted his flock, both on coming out and on going in; but the colonel and the captain seem to have had no difficulty, either in attaching themselves to the debtors or in taking refuge, after the exercise hour, in the cell of a debtor who was a party to the scheme.

So far, however, the fugitives had succeeded only in changing their quarters in the prison; and the next step was to procure for them two visitors' passes. These passes, deposited with the gate-warder when visitors entered, were returned to them as they left the prison. How to place in the warder's hands passes bearing the names of two "visitors" who had not entered the prison? The adroit EugÈne thought it not too difficult.

He had a friendly warder at the gate who was much interested in some sketches which EugÈne was making in the prison, and went down to him one day with his portfolio in his hand. "A few fresh sketches you might like to look at." While the Argus of the gate was amusing himself with EugÈne's drawings, EugÈne himself feigned astonishment at the number of visitors to the prison, as evidenced by the quantity of passes lying loose on the table. He expressed no less surprise that the warder should have so little care of them; why not keep the passes in a handy case, such, for example, as EugÈne used for his drawings?

The warder thought he would ask the governor for one. "You needn't trouble the governor," said EugÈne; "take mine. Look, what could be better!" and in filling the portfolio with the visitors' passes, he slipped in two others.

At that psychological instant, Duvergier and Laverderie presented themselves at the gate.

"Your names, messieurs?" and they gave the names which were entered on EugÈne's passes.

The passes were turned up, the warder handed them over, and—still thanking EugÈne for his present—bowed the fugitives out of the prison.