Whilst Madame d'Harville is waiting for La Goualeuse, we will conduct the reader into the presence of the prisoners.
CHAPTER X.
MONT SAINT-JEAN.
It was just two o'clock by the dial of the prison of St. Lazare. The cold, which had lasted for several days, had been succeeded by soft, mild, and almost spring weather; the rays of the sun were reflected in the water of the large square basin, with its stone corners, formed in the centre of a courtyard planted with trees, and surrounded by dark, high walls pierced with a great many iron-barred windows. Wooden benches were fastened here and there in this large paved enclosure, which served for the walking-place of the prisoners. The ringing of a bell announcing the hour of recreation, the prisoners came in throngs by a thick wicket-door which was opened to them. These women, all clad alike, wore black skull-caps and long loose gowns of blue woollen cloth, fastened around the waist by a band and iron buckle. There were there two hundred prostitutes, sentenced for breach of the particular laws which control them and place them out of the pale of the common law. At first sight their appearance had nothing striking, but, after regarding them with further attention, there might be detected in each face the almost ineffaceable stigmas of vice, and particularly that brutishness which ignorance and misery invariably engender. Whilst contemplating these masses of lost creatures, we cannot help recollecting with sorrow that most of them have been pure and honest, at least at some former period. We say "most of them," because there are some who have been corrupted, vitiated, depraved, not only from their youth, but from tenderest infancy,—even from their very birth, if we may say so; and we shall prove it as we proceed.
We ask ourselves, then, with painful curiosity, what chain of fatal causes could thus debase these unhappy creatures, who have known shame and chastity? There are so many declivities, alas, which verge to that fall! It is rarely the passion of the depraved for depravity; but dissipation, bad example, perverse education, and, above all, want, which lead so many unfortunates to infamy; and it is the poor classes alone who pay to civilisation this impost on soul and body.
When the prisoners came into the yard, running and crying out, it was easy to discern that it was not alone the pleasure of leaving their work that made them so noisy. After having hurried forth by the only gate which led to this yard, the crowd spread out and made a ring around a misshapen being, whom they assailed with shouts. She was a small woman, from thirty-six to forty years of age; short, round-shouldered, deformed, and with her neck buried between shoulders of unequal height. They had snatched off her black cap, and her hair, which was flaxen, or rather a pale yellow, coarse, matted, and mingled with gray, fell over her low and stupid features. She was clad in a blue loose gown, like the other prisoners, and had under her right arm a small bundle, wrapped up in a miserable, ragged, checked pocket-handkerchief. With her left elbow she endeavoured to ward off the blows aimed at her. Nothing could be more lamentably ludicrous than the visage of this unhappy woman. She was hideous and distorted in figure, with projecting features, wrinkled, tanned, and dirty, which were pierced with two holes for nostrils, and two small, red, bloodshot eyes. By turns wrathful and imploring, she scolded and entreated; but they laughed even more at her complaints than her threats. This woman was the plaything of the prisoners. One thing ought, however, to have protected her from such ill-usage,—she was evidently about to become a mother; but her ugliness, her imbecility, and the custom they had of considering her as a victim intended for common sport, rendered her persecutors implacable, in spite of their usual respect for maternity.