Whether he knew what he was talking about, or whether he knew how impracticable were the schemes he propounded, cannot be told. It was sufficient that, at least, the vagabonds before him knew no better than he did, and, at any rate, he spoke truly in one particular--to whatever life they went forth, it must be better than death on the gallows or the wheel. And as they listened, they told each other that, at the worst, they would be free and at liberty to commence a new life of preying on their fellow creatures, if there were any worth preying on.
"Now," the chaplain continued hastily, for a glance at the prison clock showed him that the time for his midday meal was approaching--a meal at which he generally ate heartily, since, from various causes, he was ever a poor breakfaster; "now for the holy and irrevocable bond of marriage to which I invite you to enter, so that, thereby, you shall all lead a life of propriety and decency--which, as yet, none of you have ever done!--and shall also increase the population of New France. Therefore, stand forth, first, all you who are agreed on marriage; after which those who are not yet affianced unto one another can select spouses according to their tastes. Stand forth, I say, you who are agreed."
Forth, at his bidding they came, many of them having already decided on becoming united, since it seemed that those who were married might derive more advantage from their emigration than those who were single; and because, also, all in their own minds had decided that, once in the foreign land to which they were going, the tie might easily be broken if they got sick of it. Therefore they stood before him, ready.
They were a strange, vile-looking crowd, such as, perhaps, no other state of society but that which prevailed in the last days of the Regency of Philip of Orleans could have produced. All were not of the lowest orders; some there were who had commenced life in circumstances which should almost have warranted them against ever coming to such case as they were now in. The chaplain's list contained their names--or such names as they chose to be known by--as well as their prison numbers; it contained, too, information as to where other particulars could be gathered. And in that list was an account of what crimes they were condemned for.
Among the men, most had been convicted of robbery, accompanied generally with violence; one had slain a youth in a gambling hell, or tripot, after cheating him; another had drugged a friend and robbed him; a third had broken into a church and stolen the sacred vessels; a fourth had beaten a priest; a fifth had throttled his wife. While, also, there were others convicted and sentenced to the gibbet or the wheel for crimes which, besides these, seemed trifling: a shop boy who had robbed his master: a master who had starved his shop boy to death; a vicomte who had embezzled the trust money of a ward and lost it all in the "System;" a clerk who had stolen money to indulge in loose pleasures, and a literary man who had written against the doctrines of Rome and had called her Babylon, he being prosecuted by the Cardinal Dubois of pious life!
The women were, however, the greater sinners, besides being also better educated in most cases, and, likewise, more hardened and defiant. One was beautiful, her golden hair being knotted now behind her head--wigs in the Prison of St. Martin des Champs were, naturally, superfluous!--her eyes as blue as the cornflower, large, limpid, and full of innocence; yet she had murdered her husband and her husband's mother to marry a man who, from the moment she was arrested, had never come near her nor sent her word nor message, nor money for her defence. She was now about to marry the embezzling vicomte. Next to her there stood, ready to bestow herself on the literary man, a woman who was her exact opposite, a creature black and swarthy, yet with the remains of magnificent florid beauty in her dissolute face; a woman born beneath the warm sun of Hérault. She, too, had committed secret murder on one who had wronged her; yet now she was to be married. And, sometimes, as he glanced at her who in a few moments would be his wife, the literary man who boasted that he had made Pope Clement tremble trembled himself.
The others were all more or less alike; lost women, as Roger, the priest had said--one of them was about to espouse the shop boy--young viragoes, robbers of drunken men, and so forth. And all meant to lead a new life in a new land, though not perhaps the manner of life which the priest had so unctuously described.
"Stand forth," he said again now, for the clock had struck twelve and his onion soup and stewed mutton were ready.
"Stand forth in front of me. Prepare to enter the Holy State." Whereupon he rapidly ran his eye over the paper in his hand, compared the numbers by which the convicts were known in the prison with the names they had been tried under, and then, exhorting them to attend to the ceremony in a decent and reverent attitude, he proceeded to make each two into one.
Yet before he did so he gave them one last salutary admonition, one paternal warning. "Remember," he said, "that this is no idle ceremony to be gone through carelessly, but an entrance into the honourable state of matrimony; an espousal of each other as binding on you by the laws of the land as though it had taken place at the altar of Notre Dame, and been performed by Monseigneur the Archbishop. Pause, therefore, ere it is too late; before you pledge yourselves to one another; ransack your memories; be sure that none of you men have wives anywhere else; that none of you women--though, in truth, most of you have taken steps to make yourselves widows without the assistance of Fate--have husbands. For if any of you have such ties and the fact is ever discovered, nothing can save you again. Wherever you are, in France or her colonies, you will most assuredly be executed, for such is the punishment of bigamy as laid down by his late most sacred Majesty, urged thereto by the pious Madame de Maintenon. I have warned you. Turn your eyes inwards," and as he spoke he cast his own eyes over the convicts before him to see which of them trembled or turned pale. Doubtless there were some to whom the warning came home--amongst them there must of a surety have been some dissolute wives who had deserted their husbands, and selfish husbands who, having grown tired of supporting wives of whom they had sickened, had long disappeared from their knowledge--yet all were hardened and gave no sign of meditated bigamy. The New World was before them; their imaginations were inflamed with the hopes of, a fresh and more free life in New France, or elsewhere, if they could escape from the old world. If they had deserted a dozen wives, or husbands, each was now willing to accept another.