Servants of Sin: A Romance

by John Bloundelle-Burton

"Precisely. Wherefore you helped yourself. Yet you were an innocent beside this woman whom you now seek to wed. An innocent! She was affianced to a rich man of illustrious family. On the day that was to witness their wedding, on that very day she jilted him and married an English vagabond--a swindler--who, report says, shortly deserted her. But before he did so, they inveigled the one who should have been her husband to their dwelling at night on some vile pretence, and then attempted to strangle him, she doing the deed herself with those hands," and he pointed to the thin white hands of the woman which held the coarse hood about her face. While he continued: "Her victim was found almost throttled at her feet--the exempts swore to it--part of his cravat was in her hand when they rushed in. My man, you are well free of the creature, even if you could by law have wedded her, which is doubtful. The brigand, her husband, may be still alive, plundering, robbing elsewhere."

He finished speaking, and the miserable creature who would have united himself to the woman, shuddered at the escape he had had. Shuddered, too, at the look of despair upon the woman's face, which he took for the fury of a spitfire, as she, lifting her hood, stared up with large, grief-stricken eyes from where she crouched, and said to the chaplain:

"It is a lie! A lie! My husband was no adventurer, while, for that other, would to God he were truly dead. He merited death."

[CHAPTER XI]

THE CONDEMNED

The prisons had not emptied quite as swiftly as the authorities desired after they had been stuffed full of real and imaginary criminals who were to people New France, with a view to proving that the Mississippi scheme was not such a falsehood as had been stated. The principal cause of this was that trustworthy galleys which could cross the ocean from the western coast of France to the Gulf of Mexico were not obtainable, while of the transports, only three, La Duchesse de Noailles, La Victoire, and La Duchesse de Berri, were fit to make the passage. The consequence was, therefore, that but one prison emptied itself at a time, and that the month of May had come ere, for the detained of the two remaining gaols, La Tournelle and St. Martin des Champs, vessels had been provided for their reception, while even these had to be hired from private owners by the Government.

On the unhappy creatures, whether actual or supposititious malefactors, who had lain in damp and unclean dungeons during the months which had now passed since the period of the great frost, this fact fell with an even greater force of cruelty than anything which the other evil-doers--incarcerated in La Pitié, La Salpêtrière, Bicêtre or Vincennes--had had to undergo, since the incarcerated ones of the latter places had to proceed only to La Rochelle or La Havre or St. Malo, while those of the former had now to set out on a far more terrible journey. They were to march, chained together, to Marseilles, a distance, roughly, of 350 miles from Paris; to cross mountains and vast plains beneath a sun which would be a burning one ere they had accomplished half the distance, and to do so upon nourishment which would scarcely suffice to keep alive those who had to make no exertions whatsoever. The reason for this was that the private owners of the vessels which were to be hired for the purposes of their transport would only consent to let them be chartered for such use on condition that Marseilles was made the port of embarkation. Their ships belonged to, came into, that port; they would be there in the beginning of June, and, if the Government chose to have their convicts ready to proceed on board at that time, they were willing to undertake their transportation to the Gulf. If not, then those vessels must be used for the ordinary business they were employed upon, and, in no circumstances, would they contract to proceed to any other port of France, and certainly to none on the western coast, to await the arrival of the convicts.

Marseilles was, therefore, decided on as the place to which the miserable wretches still inhabiting La Tournelle and St. Martin des Champs were to proceed. Three days after the marriages which the chaplain of the latter place had performed (as the chaplain of the former had also done) the chain gangs were ordered to set out. The day was fixed--May 15--so, too, was the hour--that of eight o'clock in the morning.

It is possible that upon this earth--beneath the eyes of God--no more horrible nor more heart-rending sight has ever been witnessed than the preparations for the departure, and the actual departure itself, of a chain of galley slaves of both sexes towards the sea coast. And that which was taking place on this 15th of May in the prison of St. Martin des Champs might have wrung the hearts of even those persons who were marble to the core; of even human fiends. Yet, however much the process might be calculated to distress those who looked on, there was a sufficiency of observers to cause the exit from the gaol to be so surrounded that scarcely could the prisoners come forth, and the roads and streets leading to the open country to be so stuffed and congested with lookers-on as to be almost impassable. For to see the "strings," as they were called, depart was ever one of the spectacles of Paris.

Inside the prison, in its huge, vast yard, all were assembled at daybreak--all who were to set out upon that horrible journey on foot which was to know no end until the burning shores of the Mediterranean were reached; the end of a journey which was then to give place to a life of hell passed between close decks in ships none too seaworthy. A life of weeks spent under the eyes of sentries with loaded muskets, of overseers armed with whips coated with hardened pitch; of blasphemous and brutal guards ready to strike with sticks, or the flats of sabres, upon the backs of either men or women who disobeyed their orders and injunctions; a life of horror to be endured until they were set ashore free men and women in the New World. Perhaps the knowledge of that impending freedom enabled some to look forward calmly to what they had learned they would have to endure; perhaps--which was far more probable--none among the murderers and murderesses, the thieves and rogues and lost women, and innocent, guiltless victims, knew or dreamt of what was before them. Far more probable!