“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 and 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 beneath 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 fiercer 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, men were only tortured through a simple feeling of hatred and desire for revenge, and not for the good of their morals.”