From the yard I passed into the workshops,—long, low, dark rooms in which gas is never lighted, for labor begins and ends with daylight. The trades followed were of the prison class, such as shoemaking, tailoring and so forth. Industry and orderliness were generally observable, but I seemed to detect a certain unsettled air. The prisoners gazed furtively from under their peaked caps at a strange visitor and seemed continually on the lookout for something to happen. They were in fact constantly expecting the order to “move on,” and any day the van might arrive to take them elsewhere. It might be to the other end of the world.
This kind of removal, still known at La Grande Roquette, is horrible, because it is final and irretrievable, and the journey is to that unknown bourne from which no traveller returns. The French system of dealing with condemned prisoners cannot be commended. It is cruel in the extreme, from the long uncertainty in which the individual is left as to his ultimate fate. He has made his last petition, the final appeal from the legal tribunal to the possibly more merciful Chief of the State, and he awaits the decision for weeks and weeks in the condemned cell. The delay is sometimes horribly prolonged. One man waited forty days, and was a prey the whole time to painful visions at night. He dreamed of the guillotine and saw his head rolling in the sawdust. He awoke with screams of terror and cried out perpetually, “The knife! The scaffold! I see nothing else!” The agony of the delay is intensified from the well-known fact that the dénouement, when it comes, will be abrupt and with the briefest possible notice. Only on the very morning of execution is the prisoner roused, generally from profound slumber, and warned suddenly to prepare for immediate death. All this time, since his sentence and reception at La Roquette, he has occupied the condemned cell, one of three rather large chambers near the hospital at the back of the prison. He has never been left for one instant unattended. Two warders have been with him, and have watched him closely day and night. Time was when, to render assurance doubly sure, the convict was kept continually in a strait-jacket or camisole de force. The priest of the prison has also been his constant companion. From the condemned cell the prisoner is taken by a rather long and circuitous route to the outer office, near the inner gate of the prison. Here the executioner and his assistants receive him and commence the “toilette of death.” The man is pinioned and bound by a variety of intricate straps. Thence, when he is ready, the procession passes across the courtyard to the outer prison gates. It is but a step. Once through them, the scaffold is immediately reached, the last act commences, is soon played, and the curtain promptly falls. Barely fourteen seconds elapse, it is said, from the time the convict steps on the scaffold to the moment when decapitation is effected. There is but a short fruition, therefore, for the sightseers whom morbid curiosity has attracted to the spot, even if they see anything at all, which is doubtful, as the guillotine is placed on the ground level, and is surrounded by a double line of mounted gensdarmes.
On the very night that the guillotine was being erected in the Place de la Roquette for the execution of the poisoner La Pommerais, a marvellous escape was effected by a child prisoner from the reformatory prison opposite, the little Roquette.
At nine o’clock in the evening a lad of barely thirteen years, by using his knife, cut away the metal covering of his window in which the ventilator worked, then climbing up on a chair placed on top of his bed he got his head through, and looked down into the courtyard; it was quite empty, the night was dark; the only sound within was the monotonous footstep of the night watchman. But beyond the wall, there was a movement as of a crowd collecting, and from time to time the sound of a hammer and other tools. The boy knew what was on foot, for the story of La Pommerais and his approaching execution was known within the reformatory, and it was also known that the dread event was fixed for next morning. “Everybody is busy,” said the fugitive, “no one will think of me.” So he worked his little body through the ventilator, and reached the cornice between the first and second floor. Resting his feet on this narrow ledge and holding to his window by one hand, he stretched the other towards the next window and caught it, creeping thus from window to window till he had passed six of them. He was every moment in the utmost danger, for he hung on merely by his fingers and the soles of his heavy shoes. He said long afterwards that he suffered agonies in the hour occupied in thus creeping along. A single slip would certainly have precipitated him into the yard below. He was almost at the end of his strength, his arms ached horribly, and his hands were torn and bleeding. He took courage, however, saying to himself: “If I fall I shall be killed, if I stop I shall be recaptured; I must certainly go on.”
Now the moon came through the clouds, and he knew that his shadow would be seen from below. At that moment he heard his name called, “Molutor, Molutor,” and he shivered, feeling sure he had been detected. But the voice was that of a fellow-prisoner, the occupant of the cell, the window of which he was passing, who had recognised him. But with true loyalty to his class he did not betray him. On the contrary he tried to help him, and after reconnoitring around encouraged him by saying there were no warders in sight. Stimulated by these encouraging words, the lad, who had already reached the fifth window, made a renewed effort, and passed on to the sixth, next the angle of the building, and there seized the water pipe. At this moment the clock struck midnight. Then followed strange noises. Looking down, he saw beneath him the open space of the Place de la Roquette, in which a crowd was slowly gathering, and some workmen were moving forward an oddly shaped machine, which he easily recognised. They were about to erect the scaffold. The machinery for the guillotine and its purpose were perfectly well known to the fugitive. At this moment it is said he shuddered, not so much at the pressing danger of his situation, and the near certainty of death if he slipped, but with inward despair at the life that lay before him. Surely it was useless to compass his escape, to risk so much to get away now, if some little time ahead he would inevitably arrive at the guillotine, led step by step, passing from court to court and judgment to judgment, until he mounted this same scaffold, and expiated his offences as this same La Pommerais was about to do. Not the less did he complete his escape. He slipped down to the ground on the other side, gained the outer wall, and climbed it. Then he waited until the square was thronged to get away. When the crowd was seized with horror at the sound of the falling knife and the thud of the severed head in the basket he would escape. At the supreme moment, when a shiver of horror affected the spectators, he alone kept his head, and, with sure, cautious step, slipped in amongst the people and passed unchecked to the boulevard Voltaire.
A criminal drama which horrified all Paris in 1857 and had its suitable dénouement on the Place de la Roquette, was the murder of the Archbishop of Paris, Monseigneur Sibour, a dignified ecclesiastic, who was universally loved and esteemed in his diocese. The Archbishop was on his way to put on his vestments for the mass in the church of St. Etienne du Mont. The procession was on the point of entering the sacristy when a man, dressed in black, rushed in behind the Archbishop, who was carrying aloft the Episcopal Cross, and with his left hand caught hold of him and twisted him sharply round, while with his right he struck him in the ribs with a knife. The wound was mortal, and the Archbishop almost immediately fell dead, while his murderer was seized and roughly handled by the indignant crowd. The police proceeded at once to interrogate him and soon learned who he was. In appearance short and thin, with a not unpleasing countenance, carefully dressed in black, he proved to be one Louis Verger, an unfrocked priest. He confessed that the murder was premeditated, and that he had come to the church with the set intention of committing it. He had no animus against the Archbishop, but desired to aim a blow at the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Thence his outcry when he struck the fatal blow, “No more goddesses!” “Down with the goddesses!” He was quite calm and self-possessed afterward, and the suggestion that he was insane quite fell to the ground. When he was received at Mazas his mental condition was inquired into, but there was no symptom of derangement. His first demand was for food, for he had eaten nothing that morning, fearing to interfere with the steadiness of his nerves. When questioned as to the motives of his crime, his answers were clear and logical, except that he was fanatically hostile to certain doctrines, and especially to that of the celibacy of the clergy. In his parish he was constantly at difference with his parishioners, with whom he had many quarrels, and he was at length removed to another parish. He went to London to work under Cardinal Wiseman, the new Archbishop of Westminster, and on his return to Paris obtained fresh preferment at Saint Germain L’Auxerrois. He was still turbulent and constantly a thorn in the side of the Archbishop. His state of mind was held to be doubtful, but the doctors declared him more dangerous than mad. He preached the most violent diatribes against ecclesiastical authority, and richly deserved the sentence of suspension that was decreed against him within a week of his murderous attack upon the Archbishop.
No doubt excessive vanity and the desire to pose as a public character were strong temptations to the crime he committed. He was always greatly pleased when people came to see him and he gloried in his crime as a new cause célèbre which long would be the talk of the town. He maintained this attitude all through his trial, and at times behaved scandalously by insulting the judge and ridiculing the procedure. The audience was furiously incensed with him, and more than once it was necessary to suspend the proceedings. Public feeling was entirely on the side of the murdered Archbishop. At the same time there can be very little doubt that he was an irresponsible being, a maniac suffering from exaltation, eager always to “show off;” and it would have been a bitter disappointment to him if he had been put away in an asylum.
His conviction came as a matter of course, but he did not accept it without protest, exclaiming contemptuously, “What justice! What justice!” He cried out that he would appeal to the Emperor (Napoleon III), and he assured his father, when the old man visited him, that he would not abide by the sentence. Nevertheless he was removed from the Conciergerie to La Roquette, and here in his last abode he tried to play the hero, and with much satisfaction frequently repeated the details of his crime. He denied that he felt any remorse for having struck down “ce pauvre Monseigneur,” but was not glad that he had done it. “My work was over,” he would say, “and I dropped my arms to my side like the workman who has finished his task.” The appeal made for reprieve was very ably maintained by his advocate, but was quite fruitless. There could be no doubt as to his guilt, and no pity for the criminal in the Emperor. Again and again the condemned man prayed to be permitted to write to the head of the state, and was very indignant when the privilege was denied him. Still he had access to friends outside, and hoped for some reversal of sentence through their good offices. He could hardly believe his ears when they came to him on the morning of execution to make the last dread announcement, which was conveyed by the Abbé Hugon, who was acting as aumonier, and who was accompanied as usual by the Chief of the Police, the director of the prison and other officials. “It is useless,” he repeated, “I know you all; you are not speaking the truth and have only come to see what effect the bad news would have on me. I do not, I cannot believe it. I know the Emperor, and feel sure he will not abandon me.”
At last the dread reality forced itself on him, and his demeanor completely changed. His air of nonchalant bravado suddenly disappeared, and a fierce passion for self-preservation seized him. He grew livid with fury, and with a wild gesture of repulsion he waved them away. “Be off, I want no priests, no relics, no cross,” he cried. “Do not think that I will go quietly to the scaffold. I’ll have no scaffold. You will have to carry me there in pieces,” and he set himself to resist vigorously, clinging to his bed, rolling himself in his blankets, struggling with the warders, shouting, roaring, swearing and blaspheming. Then the director of La Petite Roquette thought of calling in the executioner, although by law he is not permitted to enter the condemned cell. M. Heinderich came when summoned, an embodiment of superior force, a perfect Colossus, six feet in height, with broad shoulders, clear-eyed and full of resolution, the picture of a self-reliant veteran. “Come, Verger,” he said quietly, “you will not come of your own accord? we must take you then by force!” The prisoner was conquered, and without more ado allowed himself to be secured. Then he was led like a lamb to the outer office where his “toilette of death” was quickly performed. At length he broke down, and cried with bitter tears, “How terrible it is to die without relations or friends.” He listened with gratitude to the consoling words of the priest, confessed, received absolution, and almost immediately was a dead man.
A notability of the guillotine was Avinain, executed in 1867 for a series of murders, all having similar features. Several corpses were picked up, all of which had been very carefully dismembered by some hand practised in dissection. In all, the head and limbs had been skilfully removed from the trunk; but death had first been inflicted by strangulation or many terrible wounds. The remains had generally been found in the neighborhood of the Seine, and suspicion at length attached to a certain Jean Charles, otherwise Charles Alfonse, who had lived in four different houses on the riverside. The police now discovered that there were stables and sheds forming part of these several dwellings. In one building they picked up a saw, a hammer and an axe, which evidently had been used for the purpose of dismembering the bodies. These, according to French custom, had been exhibited at the Morgue, and one of the articles was recognised by a young man as having belonged to his father, who had recently disappeared. The deceased was a forage merchant. He had come to Paris to sell a cartload of hay, and had met Charles, with whom he agreed on a price. The purchaser very civilly offered him the accommodation of his stables for the night and a bed at his house, so that the purchase might be completed next morning. It appeared in the trial that before this another person had sold forage and had accepted hospitality for the night, but when the host came, insisting that the light should be extinguished for fear of setting fire to the barn, he carried in his hand a hammer; and the guest, a little suspicious, declared that he always slept with a light burning, and in a very significant fashion took out his knife as though to use it in self-defence. There was little doubt that this man with the hammer was the same Charles already indicated, and the police proceeded to inquire into his identity. He proved to be one Charles Avinain, a butcher by trade, who had recently been a convict in Cayenne. Since his return from transportation he had frequently been in trouble, and was now easily traced and arrested by means of clues furnished by his wife and daughter. He still lived at the riverside, and nearly made his escape from the police by means of a trap door in the floor of the basement which opened on to a passage. Several murders were brought home to him, committed either with hammer or knife. His victims were mostly forage merchants, and he had dealt with the bodies in the same barbarous fashion. It is recorded of him that he never exhibited the slightest remorse, until the very last moment, and then it was under the influence of overwhelming terror as he trod the steps of the scaffold. He had always repulsed the chaplain, but in the end accepted his ministrations, confessed, and received absolution.