Escapes were rarely attempted at Mazas, and if tried were scarcely ever successful. Once a practised locksmith contrived to remove the fastenings of his cell during the night, to get through the bars beyond and lower himself into the yard, where he found a scaffold pole, and raising it against the first wall climbed up by it to the top. It helped him also to descend to the far side, where he came upon the night watchman wrapped up in his cloak and sleeping peacefully. The boundary wall had still to be surmounted, but the scaffold pole was too short. Foiled in this direction the fugitive retraced his steps and now attacked the grating of the chief sewer which passed under the outer wall, flowing towards the river. He climbed down it, but unhappily for him found that the Seine was in flood, and, being unable to swim, was all but drowned. He managed to extricate himself, however, and, being now thoroughly worn out and disheartened, he returned to his cell, where the evidence of his fruitless efforts remained to convict him next morning. Two other prisoners made a somewhat similar attempt. They also removed their windows, lowered themselves by ropes made from their bed sheets, and, gaining the yard, forced the grating of the sewer by means of bars taken from their iron bedsteads. They entered the sewer, and, traversing it for some distance, were stopped by a much larger grating, which separated the prison branch from the main sewer. This they also forced and were at liberty to issue forth, if they pleased, upon the Seine. But by this time the alarm was given; the fugitives were traced into the prison sewer; all the sewer mouths were closely watched, and the two men were re-captured a couple of days later.
Mazas as the prison of the prévenus, the receptacle of all persons accused of serious crime and detained on reasonable presumption of guilt, was intimately associated with the passing criminality of Paris for fifty years. Every Ishmaelite, charged with raising his hand against his fellows, passed through its forbidding portals to emerge once more, if fate was kind to him, or if convicted, to disappear into its inner darkness. Confinement in a trial prison is the most painful phase in the criminal’s career. He is a constant prey to sickening anxiety, or the plaything of exaggerated hope. He alternates between overmuch confidence and dreadful despair. His surroundings affect him according to his quality. The cellular isolation, which is his almost invariable lot, may be grateful to the victim of circumstance, whether really innocent or by no means hopelessly bad. The old offender, on the other hand, suffers acutely, it is said, not so much from remorse as from boredom and disgust; less from the prickings of his conscience than self-reproach at having played his cards badly and failed in his latest attempt at depredation. In any case the days are long when spent in a separate cell, awaiting judgment, the nights dark and often sleepless and interminable. We have authentic assurance that the end of it all, the very worst,—conviction, sentence, the heaviest, the extreme penalty of the law,—comes as a distinct relief, and although a certain, shameful death is now before him, the condemned prisoner sleeps soundly on his final return from court. The prisoner condemned to death is generally worn out with the struggle for life. He is wearied, mentally and physically, and wishes, as a rule, to forget the horrible episode which has kept his faculties tense-strung, and, for a time at least, he sinks into apathy and is more or less callous of his impending fate. Now and again, and this is specially characteristic of the French prisoner, he is defiant with cynical bravado. He may be passive, or active, as in the case of Camp, who, when he reached his cell on return from the court which had sentenced him, was seized with a fit of fury, and, catching up a log of wood as a weapon, rushed at a warder and attempted to murder him. A curious trait in all condemned men is the survival of hope to the very last.
In France, where in capital cases an appeal to the law for the revision of the proceedings is the rule, the convict is always buoyed up by the chance of reprieve, and never finally yields until the officials enter his cell on the last dread morning, and he is awakened to hear the words, “It is for to-day.” This means that death is imminent, and that within a few minutes, half an hour at the outside, the guillotine will have done its work. It is a cruel process, that of postponing all knowledge of the exact day until it has arrived; although in France murderers will exhibit the most ferocious tiger-like attitude when it comes. “Dread anticipation never leaves them,” a French chaplain, l’Abbé Crozes, of the Grande Roquette, has recorded. “As the inevitable day approaches they are consumed with the liveliest fears, and are possessed with one single idea, that of escaping death.” Two miscreants, guilty of the most bloodthirsty murders, Abadie and Gilles, who waited for three months before the end came, told the same good priest that every morning at four o’clock they awoke in an agony of terror, and only recovered about six, when the hour for communicating the dread news had passed for the day. A similar story is that of the French noble, lying with the rest of the prisoners in a Revolutionary prison, who, as often as he heard the list for execution each morning and missed his name, cried out with intense relief: “The little man has another day to live.”
The French practice of withholding from the criminal information as to the day of his death until almost the moment for execution has arrived is cruel enough; but this chapter has shown an amelioration in French prison conditions of such extent that the cruelty of that practice may be condoned.
CHAPTER VIII
MAZAS AND LA SANTÉ
Notable inmates of Mazas—Dr. de la Pommerais, the poisoner—Execution—Strange story of execution—Troppmann—Massacre of the Kinck family—Father suspected—Found to be Troppmann—His motives and measures—Troppmann’s trial and conviction—The theft of the Duke of Brunswick’s diamonds—La Santé Prison similar to Mazas—Its interior described—Labor on “contract” system—Objections—Variety of products—Mild rule—Religious tolerance—Prison library—Dietaries—No canteen and extras.
The great prison of Mazas received criminals of all sorts and of all degrees of atrocity in its day; and we may here review the cases of several of the most notable of these. The crimes of the French poisoner De la Pommerais followed so closely on those of Palmer, the English doctor who ruthlessly dealt death to so many of his friends and relations, that it is quite possible that the first named owed something of his inspiration to the example of the latter. The facilities offered to medical practitioners for the administration of lethal drugs have often tempted doctors to commit murder when greedy for gain. This Frenchman came to Paris from Orleans in 1839, when four and twenty years of age, and set up in practice as a homœopathist. He gave lessons in that branch of science, opened a dispensary, and gave medical advice for small fees to the poorer classes. He was a pretentious youth, who sought to pass as a man of title, and called himself the Count de la Pommerais. He also craved the decoration of St. Sylvester from Pope Pius IX and the cross of the Legion of Honor, but obtained neither, as may well be imagined.
His fictitious rank, however, brought him a wife; the orphan child of a military doctor, whom he married much against the wish of her mother, a lady of some private means. Madame Dubrizy as she was named, lived only a couple months, and died in horrible suffering after having dined with La Pommerais. She had retained her fortune in her own hands, for she distrusted as well as disliked her son-in-law. He had produced securities as his contribution to the marriage contract, which she found were only borrowed for the occasion: by her death he came into her money.
Strong suspicion of foul play was aroused when a second sudden death occurred among his acquaintances. A Madame de Pauw, widow of one of his patients, died suddenly, although she did not appear to have suffered from any previous illness. The police had kept an eye on La Pommerais for some time past. His dossier, “social character,” was recorded at the Prefecture, and spoke of him as a dangerous intriguer, who was in the habit of visiting this Madame de Pauw frequently, although they were in very different stations in life. He made a great show, and was well received in society, but she was reputed a mere pauper. On this same dossier it was stated that he had probably poisoned his deceased mother-in-law, although there was no direct proof that he had done so.