t seems that it is fixed for to-morrow,” said m. de terremondre as he entered paillot’s shop.
everyone understood the allusion: he was referring to the execution of lec?ur, the butcher’s assistant, who had been sentenced to death on the 27th of november, for the murder of madame houssieu. this young criminal supplied the entire township with an interest in life. judge roquincourt, who had a reputation in society as a ladies’ man, had courteously admitted madame dellion and madame de gromance to the prison and allowed them a glimpse of the prisoner through the barred grating of the cell where he was playing cards with a gaoler. in his turn, the governor of the prison, m. ossian colot, an officer of the academy, gladly did the honours of his condemned prisoner to journalists as well as to prominent townsmen. m. ossian colot had written with the knowledge of an expert on various questions of the penal148 code. he was proud of his establishment, which was run on the most up-to-date lines, and he by no means despised popularity. the visitors cast curious glances at lec?ur, while they speculated on the relationship between this youth of twenty and the nonagenarian widow who had become his victim. they stood stupefied by astonishment before this monstrous brute. yet abbé tabarit, the prison chaplain, told with tears in his eyes how the poor lad had expressed the most edifying sentiments of repentance and piety. meanwhile, from morning to night throughout three whole months, lec?ur played cards with his gaolers and disputed the points in their own slang, for they were of the same class. his darkened soul never revealed its sufferings in words, but the rosy, chubby lad who, only ten months before, was to be met whistling in the street with his basket on his head, and his white apron knotted round his muscular loins, now shivered in his strait waistcoat with pale, cadaverous face and looked like a sick man of forty. his herculean neck was wasted and now protruded from his drooping shoulders, thin and disproportionately long. by this time it was agreed on all sides that he had exhausted the abhorrence, the pity and the curiosity of his fellow-citizens, and that it was high time to put an end to him.
149 “for six o’clock to-morrow. i heard it from surcouf himself,” added m. de terremondre. “they’ve got the guillotine at the station.”
“that’s a good thing,” said dr. fornerol. “for three nights the crowd has been congregating at the cross-roads of les évées and there have been several accidents. julien’s son fell from a tree on his head and cracked his skull. i’m afraid it’s impossible to save him.
“as for the condemned,” continued the doctor, “nobody, not even the president of the republic, could prolong his life. for this young lad who was vigorous and sound up to the time of his arrest is now in the last stage of consumption.”
“have you seen him in his cell, then?” asked paillot.
“several times,” answered dr. fornerol, “and i have even attended him professionally at ossian colot’s request, for he is always deeply interested in the moral and physical well-being of his boarders.”
“he’s a real philanthropist,” answered m. de terremondre. “and the fact ought to be recognised that, in its way, our municipal prison is an admirable institution, with its clean, white cells, all radiating from a central watch-tower, and so skilfully arranged that all the occupants are constantly under observation without being aware of the fact. nothing can be said against it, it is complete and150 modern and all on the newest lines. last year, when i was on a walking tour in morocco, i saw at tangier, in a courtyard shaded by a mulberry tree, a wretched building of mud and plaster, with a huge negro dressed in rags lying asleep in front of it. being a soldier, he was armed with a cudgel. swarthy hands clasping wicker baskets were projecting from the narrow windows of the building. these belonged to the prisoners, who were offering the passers-by the products of their lazy efforts, in exchange for a copper or two. their guttural voices whined out prayers and complaints, which were harshly punctuated at intervals by curses and furious shouts. for they were all shut up together in a vast hall and spent the time in quarrelling with one another about the apertures, through which they all wanted to pass their baskets. whenever a dispute was too noisy, the black soldier would wake up and force both baskets and suppliant hands back within the walls by a vigorous onslaught of his cudgel. in a few seconds, however, more hands would appear, all sunburnt and tattooed in blue like the first ones. i had the curiosity to peep into the prison hall through the chinks in an old wooden door. i could see in the dim-lit, shadowy place a horde of tatterdemalions scattered over the damp ground, bronzed bodies sleeping on piles of red rags, solemn faces with long venerable beards beneath151 their turbans, nimble blackamoors weaving baskets with shouts of laughter. on swollen limbs here and there could be seen soiled linen bandages barely hiding sores and ulcers, and one could see and hear the vermin wave and rustle in all directions. sometimes a laugh passed round the room. and a black hen was pecking at the filthy ground with her beak. the soldier allowed me to watch the prisoners as long as i liked, waiting for me to go, before he begged of me. then i thought of the governor of our splendid municipal prison, and i said to myself: ‘if only m. ossian colot were to come to tangier he would soon discover and sweep away this crowding, this horrible promiscuity.’”
“you paint a picture of barbarism which i recognise,” answered m. bergeret. “it is far less cruel than civilisation. for these mussulman prisoners have no sufferings to undergo, save such as arise from the indifference or the occasional savagery of their gaolers. at least the philanthropists leave them alone and their life is endurable, for they escape the torture of the cell system, and in comparison with the cell invented by the penal code of science, every other sort of prison is quite pleasant.
“there is,” continued m. bergeret, “a peculiar savagery in civilised peoples, which surpasses in cruelty all that the imagination of barbarism can conceive. a criminal expert is a much fiercer152 being than a savage, and a philanthropist will invent tortures unknown in china or persia. a persian executioner kills his prisoners by starving them, but it required a philanthropist to conceive the idea of killing them with solitude. it is on the principle of solitude that the punishment of the cell system depends, and no other penalty can be compared with it for duration and cruelty. the sufferer, if he is lucky, becomes mad through it, and madness mercifully destroys in him all sense of his sufferings. people imagine they are justifying this abominable system when they allege that the prisoner must be withdrawn from the bad influence of his fellows and put in a position where he cannot give way to immoral or criminal instincts. people who reason in this way are really such great fools that one can scarcely call them hypocrites.”
“you are right,” said m. mazure. “but let us be just to our own age. the revolution not only accomplished a reform in judicial procedure, but also much improved the lot of the prisoner. the dungeons of the olden times were generally dark, pestilential dens.”
“it is true,” replied m. bergeret, “that men have been cruel and malicious in every age and have always delighted in tormenting the wretched. but before philanthropists arose, at any rate, men153 were only tortured through a simple feeling of hatred and desire for revenge, and not for the good of their morals.”
“you forget,” answered m. mazure, “that the middle ages gave birth to the most accursed form of philanthropy ever known—the spiritual. for it is just this name that suits the spirit of the holy inquisition. it was through pure charity alone that this tribunal handed heretics over to the stake, and if it destroyed the body, it was, so they said, only in order to save the soul.”
“they never said that,” answered m. bergeret, “and they never thought it. victor hugo did, indeed, believe that torquemada ordered men to be burnt for their good, in order that their eternal happiness might be secured at the price of a short pain. on this theory he constructed a drama that sparkles with the play of antithesis. but there is no foundation whatever for this idea of his, and i should never have imagined that a scholar like you, fattening, as you have done, on old parchments, would have been led astray by a poet’s lies. the truth is that the tribunal of the inquisition, in handing the heretic over to the secular arm, was simply cutting away a diseased limb from the church, for fear lest the whole body should be contaminated. as for the limb thus cut off, its fate was in the hands of god. such was the spirit154 of the inquisition, frightful enough, but by no means romantic. but where the holy office showed what you rightly call spiritual philanthropy was in the treatment it meted out to those converted from the error of their ways. it charitably condemned them to perpetual imprisonment, and immured them for the good of their souls. but i was merely referring to the state prisons, just now, such as they were in the middle ages and in modern times up to the reign of louis xiv.”
“it is true,” said m. de terremondre, “that the system of solitary confinement has not produced all the happy results that were expected from it in the reformation of prisoners.”
“this system,” said dr. fornerol, “often produces rather serious mental disorders. yet it is only fair to add that criminals are naturally predisposed to troubles of this kind. we recognise to-day that the criminal is a degenerate. thus, for instance, thanks to m. ossian colot’s courtesy, i have been allowed to make an examination of our murderer, this fellow lec?ur. i found many physiological defects in him.... his teeth, for instance, are quite abnormal. i argue from that fact that he is only partially responsible for his acts.”
“yet,” said m. bergeret, “one of the sisters of mithridates had a double row of teeth in each jaw, and in her brother’s estimation, at any rate, she155 was a woman of noble courage. so dearly did he love her that when he was a fugitive pursued by lucullus, he gave orders that she should be strangled by a mute to prevent her falling alive into the hands of the romans. nor did she then fail to live up to her brother’s lofty estimation of her character, but suffering death by the bowstring with joyous calmness, said: ‘i thank the king, my brother, for having had a care to my honour, even in the midst of his own besetting troubles.’ you see from this example that heroism is not impossible even with a row of abnormal teeth.”
“lec?ur’s case,” replied the doctor, “presents many other peculiarities which cannot fail to be significant in the eyes of a scientist. like so many born criminals his senses are blunted. thus i found, when i examined him, that he was tattooed in every part of his body. you would be surprised at the lewd fancy shown in the choice of scenes and symbols painted on his skin.”
“really?” said m. de terremondre.
“the skin of this patient,” said dr. fornerol, “really ought to be properly prepared and preserved in our museum. but it is not the character of the tattooing that i want to insist upon, but rather the number of the pictures and their arrangement on the body. certain parts of the operation156 must have caused the patient an amount of pain which could scarcely have been bearable to a person of ordinary sensibility.”
“there you are making a mistake!” exclaimed m. de terremondre. “it is evident that you don’t know my friend jilly. yet he is a very well-known man. jilly was quite young when, in 1885 or ’86, he made the tour of the world with his friend lord turnbridge on the yacht old friend. jilly swears that throughout the whole voyage, through storms and calm, neither lord turnbridge nor himself ever put foot on deck for a single moment. the whole time they remained in the cabin drinking champagne with an old top-man of the marines who had been taught tattooing by a tasmanian chief. in the course of the voyage this old top-man covered the two friends from head to foot with tattoo marks, and jilly returned to france adorned with a fox-hunt that comprises as many as three hundred and twenty-four figures of men, women, horses and dogs. he is always delighted to show it when he sups with boon companions at an inn. now i really cannot say whether jilly is abnormally insensitive to pain, but what i can tell you is that he is a fine fellow, and a man of honour and that he is incapable of....”
“but,” asked m. bergeret, “do you think it right that this butcher’s boy should be guillotined?157 for you confess that there are such things as born criminals, and in your own phrase it seems that lec?ur was only partially responsible for his acts, through a congenital predisposition to crime.”
the doctor shrugged his shoulders.
“then what would you do with him?” he asked.
“as a matter of fact,” replied m. bergeret, “i am but little interested in the fate of this particular man. but i am, nevertheless, opposed to the death penalty.”
“let’s hear your reasons, bergeret,” said mazure, the archivist, for to him, living as he did in admiration of ’93 and the terror, the idea of the guillotine carried with it mystic suggestions of moral beauty. “for my part, i would prohibit the death penalty in common law, but re-establish it in political cases.”
m. de terremondre had appointed paillot’s shop as a rendezvous for m. georges frémont, the inspector of fine arts, and just at the moment when this civic discussion was in progress, he entered the shop. they were going together to inspect queen marguerite’s house. now, m. bergeret stood rather in awe of m. frémont, for he felt himself a poor creature by the side of such a great man. for m. bergeret, who feared nothing in the world of ideas, was very diffident where living men were concerned.
158 m. de terremondre had not got the key of the house, so he sent léon to fetch it, while he made m. georges frémont sit down in the corner among the old books.
“monsieur bergeret,” said he, “is singing the praises of the old-fashioned prisons.”
“not at all,” said m. bergeret, a little annoyed, “not at all. they were nothing but sewers where the poor wretches lived chained to the wall. but, at any rate, they were not alone—they had companions—and the citizens, as well as the lords and ladies, used to come and visit them. visiting the prisons was one of the seven works of mercy. nobody is tempted to do that now, and if they were, the prison regulations would not allow it.”
“it is true,” said m. de terremondre, “that in olden times it was customary to visit the prisoners. in my portfolios i have an engraving by abraham bosse, which represents a nobleman wearing a plumed felt hat, accompanying a lady in a veil of venice point and a peaked brocade bodice, into a dungeon which is swarming with beggars clothed in a few shreds of filthy rags. the engraving is one of a set of seven original proofs which i possess. and with these one always has to be on one’s guard, for nowadays they reprint them from the old worn plates.”
“visiting the prisons,” said georges frémont,159 “is a common subject of christian art in italy, flanders and france. it is treated with peculiar vigour and truth in the della robbias on the frieze of painted terra-cotta that surrounds the hospital at pistoia in its superb embrace.... you know pistoia, monsieur bergeret?...”
the professor had to acknowledge that he had never been in tuscany.
here m. de terremondre, who was standing near the door, touched m. frémont’s arm.
“look, monsieur frémont,” said he, “towards the square at the right of the church. you will see the prettiest woman in the town go by.”
“that’s madame de gromance,” said m. bergeret. “she is charming.”
“she occasions a lot of gossip,” said m. mazure. “she was a demoiselle chapon. her father was a solicitor, and the greatest skinflint in the department. yet she is a typical aristocrat.”
“what is called the aristocratic type,” said georges frémont, “is a pure conception of the brain. there is no more reality in it than in the classic type of the bacchante or the muse. i have often wondered how this aristocratic type of womanhood arose, how it managed to root itself in the popular conception. it takes its origin, i think, from several elements of real life. among these i should point to the actresses in tragedy and160 comedy, both those of the old gymnase and of the théatre-fran?ais, as well as of the boulevard du crime and the porte-saint-martin. for a whole century these actresses have been presenting to our spectacle-loving people numberless studies of princesses and great ladies. besides these, one must include the models from whom painters create queens and duchesses for their genre, or historical pictures. nor must one overlook the more recent and less far-reaching, yet still powerful, influence of the mannequins, or lay-figures, of the great dressmakers, those beautiful girls with tall figures who show off a dress so superbly. now these actresses, these models, these shop-girls, are all women of the lower class. from this i deduce the fact that the aristocratic type proceeds entirely from plebeian elegance. hence there is nothing surprising in the fact that madame de gromance, née chapon, should be found to belong to this type. she is graceful, and what is a rare thing in our towns, with their sharp paving-stones and dirty footpaths—she walks well. but i rather fancy she falls a little short of perfection as regards the hips. that’s a serious defect!”
lifting his nose from the thirty-eighth volume of l’histoire générale des voyages, m. bergeret looked with admiring awe at this red-bearded parisian who could thus pass judgment on madame de161 gromance’s delicious beauty and worshipful shape in the cold and measured accents of an inquisitor.
“now i know your tastes,” said m. de terremondre, “i will introduce you to my aunt courtrai. she is heavily built and can only sit down in a certain family arm-chair, which, for the past three hundred years, has been in the habit of receiving all the old ladies of courtrai-maillan within its capaciously wide and complacent embrace. as for her face, it suits well with the rest of her, and i hope you will like it. my aunt courtrai is as red as a tomato, with fair moustaches that wave negligently in their beauty. ah! my aunt courtrai’s type has no connection with your actresses, models, and dressmakers’ dummies.”
“i feel myself,” said m. frémont, “already much enamoured of your worthy aunt.”
“the ancient nobility,” said m. mazure, “used to live the life of our large farmers of to-day, and, of course, they could not avoid resembling those whose lives they led.”
“it is a well-proved fact,” said dr. fornerol, “that the human race is degenerating.”
“do you really think so?” asked m. frémont. “yet in france and italy, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the flower of their chivalry must have been very slender. the royal coats of mail belonging to the end of the middle ages and162 the renaissance times were skilfully wrought, and damascened and chased with exquisite art, yet so narrow in the shoulders are they and so meagre in figure, that a man of our day could only wear them with difficulty. they were almost all made for small, slight men, and in fact, french portraits of the fifteenth century, and the miniatures of jehan foucquet show us a world of almost stunted folk.”
léon entered with the key, in a great state of excitement.
“it is fixed for to-morrow,” he said to his master. “deibler and his assistants came by the half-past three train. they went to the h?tel de paris, but there they wouldn’t take them in. then they went to the inn at the bottom of duroc hill, le cheval bleu, a regular cut-throat place.”
“ah, yes,” said frémont, “i heard this morning at the prefecture that there was an execution in your town. the topic was in everybody’s mouth.”
“there are so few amusements in the provinces!” said m. de terremondre.
“but that spirit,” said m. bergeret, “is revolting. a legal execution takes place in secret. but why should we still carry it on at all, if we are ashamed of it? president grévy, who was a man of great insight, practically abolished the death penalty, by never passing a sentence of death. would that his successors had followed his example!163 personal security in the modern state is not obtained by mere fear of punishment. many european nations have now abolished the death penalty, and in such countries crime is no more common than in the nations where this base custom yet exists. and even in countries where this practice is still found, it is in a weak and languishing condition, no longer retaining power or efficacy. it is nothing but a piece of useless unseemliness, for the practice is a mere survival of the principle on which it rested. those ideas of right and justice which formerly laid men’s heads low in majestic fashion are now shaken to their roots by the morality which has blossomed upon the natural sciences. and since the death penalty is visibly on the point of death, the wisest thing would be to let it die.”
“you are right,” said m. frémont. “the death penalty has become an intolerable practice, since now we no longer connect any idea of expiation with it, for expiation is a purely theological notion.”
“the president would certainly have sent a pardon,” said léon, with a consequential air. “but the crime was too horrible.”
“the power of pardon,” said m. bergeret, “was one of the attributes of divine right. the king could only exercise it because, as the representative164 of god on earth, he was above the ordinary human justice. in passing from the king to the president of the republic, this right lost its essential character and therefore its legality. it thenceforth became a flimsy prerogative, a judicial power outside justice and yet no longer above it; it created an arbitrary jurisdiction, foreign to our conception of the lawgiver. in practice it is good, since by its action the wretched are saved. but bear in mind that it has become ridiculous. the mercy of the king was the mercy of god himself, but just imagine m. félix faure invested with the attributes of divinity! m. thiers, who did not fancy himself the lord’s anointed, and who, indeed, was not consecrated at rheims, released himself from this right of pardon by appointing a commission which was entrusted with the task of being merciful for him.”
“it was only moderately so,” said m. frémont.
here a young soldier entered the shop and asked for le parfait secrétaire.
“remains of barbarism,” said m. bergeret, “still persist in modern civilisation. our code of military justice, for instance, will make our memory hateful in the eyes of the near future. that code was framed to deal with the bands of armed brigands who ravaged europe in the eighteenth century. it was perpetuated by the165 republic of ’92 and reduced to a system during the first half of this century. when a nation had taken the place of an army, they forgot to change the code, for one cannot think of everything. those brutal laws which were framed in the first place to curb a savage soldiery are now used to govern scared young peasants, or the children of our towns, who could easily be led by kindness. and that is considered a natural proceeding!”
“i don’t follow you,” said m. de terremondre. “our military code, prepared, i believe, at the restoration, only dates from the second empire. about 1875 it was revised and made to suit the new organisation of the army. you cannot, therefore, say that it was framed for the armies of former times.”
“i can with truth,” answered m. bergeret, “for this code is nothing more than a mere collection of orders respecting the armies of louis xiv and louis xv. everyone knows what these armies were, a conglomeration of kidnappers and kidnapped, the scourings of the country, divided into lots which were bought by the young nobles, often mere children. in such regiments discipline was maintained by perpetual threats of death. but everything is now changed: the soldiery of the monarchy and the two empires has given place to a166 vast and peaceful national guard. there is no longer any fear of mutiny or violence. nevertheless, death at every turn still threatens these gentle flocks of peasants and artisans clumsily disguised as soldiers. the contrast between their harmless conduct and the savage laws in force against them is almost laughable. and a moment’s reflection would prove that it is as absurd as it is hateful to punish with death crimes which could easily be dealt with by the simple penal code devised for the maintenance of public order.”
“but,” said m. de terremondre, “the soldiers of to-day are armed as were the soldiers of former ages, and it is quite necessary that a small, unarmed body of officers should be able to ensure obedience and respect from a mob of men armed with muskets and cartridges. that’s the gist of the whole matter.”
“it is an ancient prejudice,” said m. bergeret, “to believe in the necessity of punishment and to fancy that the severer the punishment the more efficacious it is. the death penalty for assaulting a superior officer is a survival of the time when the officers were not of the same blood as the soldiers. these penalties were still retained in the republican armies. brindamour, who became a general in 1792, employed the customs of bygone days in the service of the revolution and shot volunteers167 in grand style. at any rate, it may be said that brindamour waged war and fought strenuously from the time that he became general. it was a matter of keeping the upper hand: it was not a man’s life that was at stake, but the safety of the country.”
“it was theft especially,” said m. mazure, “that the generals of the year ii punished with relentless severity. a light-infantry man in the army of the north, who had merely exchanged his old hat for a new one, was shot. two drummers, the eldest of whom was only eighteen, were shot in sight of their comrades for having stolen some worthless ornaments from an old peasant. it was the heroic age.”
“it was not only thieves,” answered m. bergeret, “who were shot down from day to day in the republican armies, it was also mutineers. and those soldiers, who have been so much belauded since, were dragooned like convicts, even to the point of semi-starvation. it is true that they were occasionally in an awkward mood. witness the three hundred gunners of the 33rd demi-brigade who, at mantua in the year iv, demanded their pay by turning their cannon on the generals.
“they were jolly dogs with whom jesting was not safe! if enemies were not come-at-able they were capable of spitting a dozen of their superior officers. such is the heroic temperament. but168 dumanet is not a hero nowadays, since peace no longer produces such beings. sergeant bridoux has nothing to fear in his peaceful quarters, yet it pleases him to be still able to say that a man cannot raise a hand against him without being immediately shot with musical honours. however, in the present state of our manners and in time of peace, such a circumstance is out of proportion, although nobody can see it. it is true that when a sentence of death has been passed by court-martial it is never carried out, save in algeria, and that, as far as possible, we avoid giving these martial and musical entertainments in france. it is recognised that here they would produce a bad effect: and in that fact you have a tacit condemnation of the military code.”
“take care,” said m. de terremondre, “lest you impair discipline in any way.”
“if,” answered m. bergeret, “you had only seen a batch of raw recruits filing into the barrack yard, you would no longer think it necessary to be for ever hurling threats of death at these sheep-like creatures in order to maintain discipline among them. they are thinking of nothing but of how to get through their three years, as they put it, and sergeant bridoux would be touched even to tears by their pitiful docility, were it not that he thirsts to terrify them in order that he may169 enjoy his own sense of power. it is not that sergeant bridoux was born with a more callous heart than anyone else. but he is doubly perverted, both as slave and tyrant, and if marcus aurelius had been a non-commissioned officer i would not go so far as to promise that he would never have tyrannised over his men. however that may be, this tyranny suffices to produce that submission tempered by deceit that is the soldier’s most useful virtue in time of peace.
“it is high time that our military codes of law, with their paraphernalia of death, should be seen no more, save in the chamber of horrors, by the side of the keys of the bastille and the thumb-screws of the inquisition.”
“army affairs,” said m. de terremondre, “require most cautious handling. the army means safety and it means hope. it is also the training school of duty. where else, save there, can be found self-sacrifice and devotion?”
“it is true,” said m. bergeret, “that men consider it the primary social duty to learn to kill their fellows according to rule, and that, in civilised nations, the glory of massacre is the greatest glory known. and, after all, though man may be irredeemably evil and mischievous, the bad work he does is but small in comparison with the whole170 universe. for this planet is but a clod of earth in space and the sun but a gaseous bubble that will soon dissolve.”
“i see,” said m. frémont, “that you are no positivist. for you treat the great fetich but scornfully.”
“what is the great fetich?” asked m. de terremondre.
“you know,” answered m. frémont, “that the positivists classify man as the worshipping animal. auguste comte was very anxious to provide for the wants of this worshipping animal and, after long reflection, supplied him with a fetich. but his choice fell on the earth and not on god. this was not because he was an atheist. on the contrary, he held that the existence of a creative power is quite probable. only he opined that god was too difficult for comprehension, and therefore his disciples, who are very religious men, practise the worship of the dead, of great men, of woman, and of the great fetich, which is the earth. hence it comes about that the followers of this cult make plans for the happiness of men and busy themselves in regulating the affairs of the planet with a view to our happiness.”
“they will have a great deal to do,” said m. bergeret, “and it is quite evident that they are optimists. they must be optimistic to a171 degree, and this temperament of theirs fills me with astonishment, for it is difficult to realise that intelligent and thoughtful men such as these can cherish the hope of some day making our sojourn on this petty ball bearable to us. for this earth, revolving clumsily round a yellow, half-darkened sun, carries us with it as though we were vermin on a mouldy crust. the great fetich does not seem to me in any way worshipful.”
dr. fornerol stooped down to whisper in m. de terremondre’s ear:
“bergeret wouldn’t gird at the universe in this way if he hadn’t some special trouble. it isn’t natural to see the seamy side of everything.”
“you’re right,” said m. de terremondre.
