"On account of the burglary in an inhabited house, the lawyer told me, 'It's a safe thing.' I shall have fifteen or twenty years at the galleys and a berth in the pillory to boot."
"The galleys! but you are so weak you will die there!" cried the unhappy woman, bursting into tears.
"How if I had enrolled myself among the white-leaders?"
"But the galleys, oh! the galleys!"
"It is a prison in the open air, with a red cap instead of a brown one, and, besides, I have always been curious to see the ocean. What a starer I am!"
"But the pillory! To be exposed there to the contempt of all the world, oh! my brother." And the unfortunate woman began again to weep.
"Come, come, Jeanne, be reasonable. It is a bad quarter of an hour to pass, but I believe one is seated. And, besides, am I not accustomed to a crowd? When I played juggler I always had people around me; I will imagine that I am at my old trade, and if it has too much effect upon me I will close my eyes; it will absolutely be the same as if they did not see me."
Speaking with so much stoicism, this unfortunate man wished less to appear insensible of his criminal actions than to console and satisfy his sister by this apparent indifference. For a man accustomed to prison manners, and with whom all shame is necessarily dead—even the galleys were only a change of condition, a "change of caps," as Pique-Vinaigre said, with frightful truth.
Many of the prisoners of the central prisons even prefer the galleys on account of the lively, animated life which is led there, committing often attempts at murder to be sent to Brest or Toulon. This can be imagined before they enter the galleys they have almost as much work, according to their declaration. The condition of the most honest workman of the forts is not less rude than that of the convicts. They enter the workshop, and leave it, at the same hour, and the beds on which they repose their limbs, exhausted by fatigue, are often no better than those of the galleys.
They are free, some one will say. Yes, free one day, Sunday, and this is also a day of repose for the convict. But feel they no shame and contempt? What is shame for these poor wretches, who, each day, bronze the soul in this infamy, in this mutual school of perdition, where the most criminal are the most distinguished? Such are the consequences of the present system of punishment. Incarceration is very much sought after. The galleys—often demanded.