Part 4

Curiously little is known by the outside world, though Paris is a gossip-loving and gossipy city, of the real facts of the life inside the house of correction of Saint Lazare. I never realized myself until quite recently the horrors of incarceration there. Chance then threw me into communication with a woman who had shot another woman dead, had spent some months in Saint Lazare, had been acquitted by the jury and is a free woman now. Her crime had been a crime of jealousy. The jury had refused to punish her more than she had been punished, and she got a verdict of “not guilty,” though she shot and killed her rival in the affections of her husband and pleaded guilty to so doing. This woman is a woman with literary tastes, a woman who is in the habit of observing, and who has the gift of describing what she sees. She has told me a great deal about the life in Saint Lazare, but far more eloquent than anything which she has told me is the present condition of the woman herself. We talk about “the prison taint” with very little real knowledge of what it means. Imagine a woman of your own world, a lady of refinement and of education, who waits to be spoken to before she opens her lips, who stands aside to let you pass if you open a door, who, if you beg her to take precedence, walks before you with bowed head and folded hands as though you were her gaoler. Her voice is always subdued, she never contradicts, she gives her opinion only when asked for it, and even then it is an opinion without emphasis. She has forgotten how to hurry. She has forgotten how to lie in bed late in the mornings. She never gives an order. When she wants something from a servant her tone and manner in asking for it are those of supplication. She is resigned—terribly resigned. Her whole attitude is one of resignation so pitiful that, unattractive woman though she is, a man’s heart fairly bleeds for her, and one feels a longing to try and comfort and console her as one would console a child who has been beaten. Morally and mentally the prisoner in Saint Lazare is being beaten all the time that she is in prison. There is no physical punishment, there is no active cruelty, there is only the terrible deadweight of the prison system; but this is quite enough to unsettle and to dull the most active brain. There is no doubt that the active brains suffer the most. The whole atmosphere of the place, as this woman told me, is the atmosphere of a convent from which all love and sympathy are banished. Imagine, if you can, a hospital in which, while everything is done to ease the physical distress of the patients, their moral distress is ignored. Imagine a hospital in which the nurses are stern and unsmiling, in which complaint of mental distress is met with silence, in which no unnecessary word is ever spoken, in which no woman ever puts her cool hand on another woman’s forehead because she has a headache, or kisses her because she is unhappy. Imagine long dreary days with no brightness in them. Imagine the horrid rattle of big keys in heavy locks. Form your own mind-picture of Cell No. 12, with its broken red-tiled floor, its bare black walls topped with dirty grey whitewash, its furniture of a straw-bottomed chair, a plain white deal table, a battered metal basin and water jug, its windows with their bars and wire netting, the cruel silence and soul-deadening simplicity. No flowers, no ribbons, no armchair, no cushions, very little light after sundown, none of the thousand and one trifles which brighten the poorest room of the poorest woman. No conversation, no letters which have not been read first by strangers, visits hedged in with the severest of formality, no name, a number—in a word no life, merely existence, and existence without the sympathy which makes existence lovable. This is the mind-picture I have formed, and this is a true picture of Madame Caillaux’s daily life in _pistole_ No. 12. Her principal distraction is her occasional drive with two plain clothes policemen to the Palace of Justice, and her examination there by the magistrate. And yesterday this woman was fêted and cherished by society, had a large circle of friends, was busy every moment of the day. Now she has nothing to do but to think. She may write, she may read, but she may only exist. Her existence has become a backwater without a ripple in it, a dark cul-de-sac into which no sunshine penetrates. Is it surprising that the constant presence of a _soubrette_ of the prison should be considered necessary? A man smashed a water-bottle and cut his throat in Paris the other day to avoid six months imprisonment. He had been in prison before, awaiting trial, and he knew what it meant. And he was a rough man with no refined tastes, and no need of refinement. In Italy the other day a brigand went mad after solitary confinement. The prisoner in Saint Lazare is not even allowed to go mad. A great deal of nonsense has appeared in the English newspapers about Madame Caillaux’s life in Saint Lazare. Paris papers have printed stories (the authorities have always contradicted them) drawing a picture of a comfortable room with carpet on the floor and curtains to the windows. The woman who described to me the real life in Saint Lazare assures me that the “carpet” is merely a strip of rug to keep the tiled floor, with the dangers of the broken tiles, from the prisoner’s bare feet when she steps out of bed, and that it is a physical impossibility that any curtains should be hung. Madame Steinheil was allowed to hang sheets in front of the windows. Perhaps Madame Caillaux has obtained this permission too. The prisoner is allowed to get her food from outside, but this food is of the plainest and simplest. She is allowed to receive visits, but the visits are rare ones, and she is never alone with her visitor. She may write, but what she writes is always read. She may receive letters but she knows that all her letters pass through other hands and are subject to careful scrutiny before she gets them. She has no privacy at all and knows that she is always under watch and that even when she is alone in her cell there is an eye at the little trapdoor which peeps into it over her bed. The prisoner in the _pistole_ has not even the consolation of company during exercise hours, and she must sometimes envy the women whom she can see from her windows. She can talk to the nuns, but they answer as little as possible. She lives out her life in a whisper. The _soubrette_ is a prisoner. She talks a little sometimes—prison talk. She brings the _pistolière_ her cup of soup at seven in the morning, and tells her all the prison news, but she is not allowed to remain long, for she has other work to do and it is the hour of the canteen. If the _pistolière_ wants coffee she must go to the canteen and buy it. She is allowed a large mugful every morning, for which she pays twopence. She walks down the long dreary corridor with her mug in her hand, and waits in a large hall where the _pistolières_ stand in a row against the wall. Numbers are called in turn, and each woman is given her coffee and the permitted trifles she has ordered the day before, such as butter, milk, white bread (the prison bread is grey), herrings, dried figs or letter paper. Then the long morning drags on until post time. The letters are distributed by Sister Léonide herself, and the letters are always open. The _pistolière_ does not take her exercise in the large courtyard with the trees in it. The yard in which she is allowed to walk, and which Monsieur Moran has drawn for me, is small and has a high wall round it. The windows of cells look down on it, and as the prisoner walks up and down she knows that she is being watched and feels that there are eyes behind the bars of every window. Every now and again a big rat runs across her path. These rats of Saint Lazare are fat and of huge size. They run about quite freely and are almost tame, for no one ever interferes with them. The nuns of Saint Lazare keep cats, but they and the rats made friends long ago, and the cats and rats feed amicably together. At least a hundred rats a day are killed in the kitchens and corridors, but there are so many rats that the others hardly miss them. You hear them at night scampering over the beams of the ceilings, you see them in the corridors, the kitchens, the cells, everywhere. For some reason they are most playful about dusk, and there are stories in the prison of women who have had fits of hysteria and have even gone out of their minds because of sudden fear of these rats of the prison. There is a sickness common to all prisoners in Saint Lazare which is known there as “the six o’clock sickness” (_le mal de six heures_). It attacks all newcomers, and none escape it. It comes on after the walk in the courtyard, when night begins to close in, and the prison settles into silence till the morning. It is an attack of a kind of malarial fever, a shivering fit and a violent headache with a feeling of lassitude and nausea afterwards. When it comes on, the prisoners are given a cachet of quinine from the prison pharmacy. It does very little good. After dark the _pistolière_ is allowed two candles which she fixes in a piece of bread or fastens by means of their own wax to her wooden table. No lamps are allowed. I have seen it stated in the newspapers that Madame Caillaux is allowed a lamp, but I do not know whether the statement is true. The last ceremony of the day is “the roll call.” This, like most of the other ceremonies in Saint Lazare, is conducted in absolute silence. The door of the _pistole_ is opened, and Sœur Léonide appears with the big Book of Hours which she carries in her two hands. On either side of her is a _soubrette_, one of whom carries a big bunch of keys. Sister Léonide stands in the doorway of the _pistole_ for a moment, looks at the prisoner to make certain that she is there, bends her head, turns and goes. Not a word is spoken. And then comes the night.

The one bright spot in this terrible life of monotony in the prison of Saint Lazare, the one relief from these never-ending days of the same food, the same walk, the same rats, the same silence, is Mass in the chapel. Here the _pistolière_ sits, silent, it is true, but with other women near her and round her. But even here she sits apart, and Madame Caillaux, I am told, has not attended mass. “There is only one hope in Saint Lazare,” said the former prisoner who gave me most of this information, “we all hope for our day of trial.” “All of you?” I asked. “Oh, yes,” she said. “No matter what we fear, nothing can be worse than the terrible monotony of life in the _pistole_. Our lives are those of prisoners in a dark gallery. The trial and the open law courts are the one glimpse of light and life at the end of the passage.”

III

THE CRIME AND THE PUBLIC

Whenever anything sensational occurs to disturb the serenity of daily life in Paris, the vortex of politics promptly sucks it in. The Parisians—Frenchmen in general, in fact—are insatiable politicians, and no matter what the happening, discussion of it becomes immediately a party matter. It is of little consequence whether the item which is talked about in clubs, in cafés, in the newspapers, in the theatre lobbies, at dinner-parties, and at supper after the theatre is green hair, the Caillaux Drama, or a new play, the people who discuss it usually take sides in accordance with their political views. You may laugh at the idea that green hair or a non-political play has any bearing on politics, but in Paris this is curiously true. Green hair, for instance, became a dogma of the Opposition. It was adopted by ladies of the aristocracy, therefore Socialists and Radicals jeered at it. The sensible man who ventured to laugh at green hair was immediately stigmatized by those who upheld the new fashion as a supporter of the parliamentary system and the _bloc_, not because parliamentary Radicals and green hair have any real connexion, not because Monsieur Jaurès prevents the ladies of his family from wearing it, but because the Duchesse de Y. and the Comtesse de Z., who are “_bien pensants_,” have become votaries of the fashion. A new play is judged not so much on its merits as on political grounds. If the author be of aristocratic sympathies, Monsieur Lavedan, for instance, the anti-aristocrats promptly run down his play, and if he be one of the class from which Dreyfusards were drawn during the Dreyfus case and afterwards, the reactionaries have no good word to say for his work. How curiously true this is in Paris, and how difficult it is for any foreigner who has not lived many years in Paris to understand it, was proved by the tumult and bloodshed over a play of Monsieur Henry Bernstein’s which was produced some years ago at the Comédie Française. The reactionary party actually contrived to wreck the play because they disliked Monsieur Bernstein, because he was a Jew, and because his play was produced in the national theatre. The principal difficulty for a foreigner in understanding the extraordinary hold of politics in France on matters which appear and which are really entirely outside the scope of politics is increased by the Frenchman’s attitude in argument. When a foreigner disagrees with a Frenchman on any question whatsoever, the Frenchman, should he happen to be getting the worse of the discussion, puts an end to it by remarking, smilingly and politely, “But you are a foreigner, my friend, and therefore cannot possibly understand this matter, which is essentially French.” There is no answer to such a statement. Frenchmen believe, quaintly enough, that the hand of every foreigner is always against them. The national conceit in France, an excellent asset, of course, for the nation, but singularly aggravating sometimes, is enormous, unfathomable, and entirely impervious to argument or logic. The greatest praise for anything in France is that it is French. The greatest praise for anything in Paris is that it is very Parisian, and so peculiar is this national conceit that it finds an outlet in the inevitable claim which is invariably made for French initiative in any invention, scientific or otherwise, which has made its mark in the world, for any novelty of medical science, for anything inspired at all. The origin of anything worth having in the world is French. This is dogma, and quite indisputable. Your Frenchman will admit the marvels of Marconi, but he will always add that Branly, a Frenchman, was the real inventor of wireless telegraphy, and will ignore Hertz as far as he dares. There was an argument in the French Press, not long ago, for instance, to prove that Columbus was a Frenchman. I do not know whether his famous egg was also a French egg, and I do not remember exactly how Columbus was proved to be French. I do know, however, that Frenchmen are quite sure that, although Edison and Bell had something to do with the invention of the telephone, a Frenchman was the real inventor of it, and quite recently, when Mr. Westinghouse died, the newspapers proved, to their own satisfaction, that a Frenchman was the inventor of the Westinghouse brake.

Now the reactionary nationalist party in France makes more noise than all the others put together. The reactionary newspapers are more violent in tone than any of the others, and have a knack of making a statement on Monday, reaffirming it on Tuesday, and alluding to it as an absolute and admitted fact on Wednesday. They have therefore the grip on public opinion which noise and reiteration always secure, and it is very natural that public opinion abroad, which has necessarily less opportunity for discrimination, should finish by accepting the reiterated outcry of the noisiest portion of the French Press as the real French opinion. In a drama like the Caillaux drama, in a case where a respected man, the editor of a flourishing Paris newspaper, has been done to death, it is obvious that those who feel that the woman who has killed him has any claim to sympathy at all will find themselves in the minority. It is no less a fact that unfair methods have been in use ever since the death of Monsieur Calmette to rouse the opinion of the world against the wretched woman who is in prison for killing him. The law courts will decide how much or how little sympathy is due to her. In the meanwhile the French Press is pursuing its inevitable method of judging the case in advance, and everything is being done for political reasons to increase the public feeling of natural horror for the deed which resulted in the death of the editor of the _Figaro_. It is difficult to exaggerate the bitter tone of the daily howl for punishment: Already the _Action Française_ has begun to throw mud at Monsieur Boucard, the examining magistrate, in case his report on the case should be too lenient, and to suggest that he has been bought over. I have not seen in any French paper a suggestion that Madame Caillaux is already being punished by the political downfall of her husband and her own incarceration. There is no sign anywhere in the French newspapers of an attempt to be fair, and the very worst side of the French character has come to the surface in this chorus of bitter cruelty to a woman who is down, on the one side, and libels on the dead man on the other. As much harm is being done to Madame Caillaux’s case by her friends as by her enemies. While her enemies are clamouring against her, her friends are losing any public sympathy which might have arisen, by attacking the memory of Gaston Calmette. It is quite obvious to any reasonable person who considers the drama calmly and without prejudice that Madame Caillaux did not kill Monsieur Gaston Calmette for the mere pleasure of killing. It is equally obvious that Monsieur Calmette waged his campaign in the _Figaro_ against Monsieur Caillaux because he thought it was the right thing to do, and that he thought the political downfall of Monsieur Caillaux, which he was attempting to bring about, would be a good thing for France. Nothing is to be gained, however, on either side by an attempt to vilify the other. The facts speak for themselves, and can be chronicled in a very few lines. Monsieur Calmette considered the political downfall of Joseph Caillaux a necessity for his country. Monsieur Caillaux, rightly or wrongly, feared that to procure his downfall Monsieur Calmette intended to publish certain private letters. Monsieur Calmette’s daily attacks on Monsieur Caillaux naturally enraged both Monsieur Caillaux and his wife. The fear of an attack in print on their private lives may or may not have been justified, but it certainly was the direct cause of the murder. This murder is deplored by everybody. Nobody will deny that Madame Caillaux deserves punishment, but if those who are working every day to embitter public feeling against her would only pause to think, and would leave political considerations on one side for a moment, they would realize that their campaign is an insult to their own judges, their own juries, and their own legal system. France boasts of its liberty. Whenever a sensational case occurs, and public feelings are stirred, that liberty is allowed to degenerate into licence, and to disagree with the howl of the reactionary Press is to ask for abuse. Everybody who says a word of pity for Madame Caillaux in France nowadays is accused of trying to make the course of justice deviate. The examining magistrate whose duty it is to try and find the truth out and report on it is insulted if he dares to be impartial. Everybody who dares to suggest that the very bitterness of the Caillaux campaign was largely responsible for its deplorable climax is held up to obloquy as an enemy of France. I hold no brief either for Madame Caillaux and her husband or for the campaign in the _Figaro_. Both the murder and the bitterness of the campaign of which it was the climax are to be deplored. The campaign, as I shall show in this book, was a necessary evil. The bitterness and insistency with which it was conducted were perhaps unnecessary evils. The woman has killed, and will undoubtedly be punished. She is being punished already. The man who conducted the bitter campaign has been shot dead. Surely there is nothing to be gained by attempting to sully the dead man’s memory, or by attempting to overwhelm the woman whose victim he was. Madame Caillaux in prison is a victim of the political campaign of the _Figaro_ in exactly the same degree as the editor of the _Figaro_ is the victim of Madame Caillaux. The two will be judged. The wrong of one neither minimises nor magnifies the action of the other. I am as certain that Madame Caillaux believed, she had a right to shoot as I am certain that she was wrong to kill. I am as certain that Monsieur Calmette believed in the justice of his campaign as I am certain that Monsieur and Madame Caillaux believed that it was being conducted unjustly.

What neither of them or Monsieur Calmette realized was the harm that all three would do to the country which I am certain all three loved.

The terrible, the brutal fact remains that Gaston Calmette is in his coffin and that Madame Caillaux killed him. Unhappily, there is no doubt that if Monsieur Calmette had been wounded merely, the outcry of the anti-Caillaux party would have been nearly as loud, and the dignity of French justice would have been considered as little or less than it is to-day by Monsieur Caillaux and his friends on the one side and Monsieur Calmette and his on the other. If the Caillaux drama had not a death in it the disinclination to allow the courts to judge without interference would have been as great as it is now, in spite of the lesson which the Fabre incident should teach. To the observer, to the lover of France the most deplorable, the most unhappy result of the Caillaux drama is the belittling of France in the eyes of the whole world by the inability of the French nation to put simple faith in its own administrators of the justice of the country. And most unhappily of all, this want of faith is justified. The story of the Rochette case, like the story of the Dreyfus case, is undoubtedly a blot on France’s fair name, and every man or woman who loves France sincerely must deplore it.