The Inner Court of the Central Prison, Ile Nou. The Cachots Noirs are to the right. The Condemned Cells are in the Upper Gallery above the Archway.
On the ground floor we went through several cells into which light as well as air was admitted, and here I found convicts who had been sentenced to various terms of hard labour with solitary confinement. This, with reduction of diet, is the first degree of punishment inflicted on an idle or disorderly prisoner. It was about equal to the ordinary hard labour of English prisons.
Then, after a look into the two little exercise-yards, we mounted to the second storey. Here I noticed that the cells had no windows and no gratings in the doors. Some of them had little cards affixed to them.
I went and read a couple of these; they contained the names of the prisoners, their first sentence, their subsequent offences, and their present sentences.
In these two cases it was “ten years’ solitary confinement in the dark.” Then I knew that I was standing in front of the terrible Cachot Noir, or Black Cell—that engine of mental murder which the sentimentalism of French deputies, some of them amnestied communards, has substituted for the infinitely more merciful lash.
I asked for the doors to be opened. My polite Commandant demurred for a moment. It was not réglementaire. The Cachots Noirs were never opened except at stated intervals,—once every thirty days, for an hour’s exercise and medical inspection,—but the wording of my credentials was explicit, and so the doors were opened.
Out of the corner of one came something in human shape, crouching forward, rubbing its eyes and blinking at the unaccustomed light. It had been three and a half years in that horrible hole, about three yards long, by one and a half broad. I gave him a feast of sunshine and outer air by taking his place for a few minutes.
After the first two or three the minutes lengthened out into hours. I had absolutely no sense of sight. I was as blind as though I had been born without eyes. The blackness seemed to come down on me like some solid thing and drive my straining eyes back into my head. It was literally darkness that could be felt, for I felt it, and the silence was like the silence of upper space.
When the double doors opened again the rays of light seemed to strike my eyes like daggers. The criminal whose place I had taken had a record of infamy which no printable words could describe, and yet I confess that I pitied him as he went back into that living death of darkness and silence.