All were in the courtyard at daybreak. And now began the ceremony of preparing, of making the toilette de voyage, as it was brutally termed, of the travellers ere they set out upon their journey. Into the vast gaol-yard--called in bitter mockery and spite by generations of convicts who had quitted it on their road to the galleys, the "Court of Honour"--there came now three waggons filled with chains and fetters; carcans, or iron collars, to be fitted on to the necks of men and women alike; iron bolts to join together the chains which attached each of those prisoners to one another. To be rivetted on here in Paris; to be never struck off again until the journey of 350 miles was accomplished, and the human cattle stood upon the crazy decks of the hired transports which were eventually to land them, free at last, amidst the raging surf of the Gulf of Mexico.
Free then, but, until then, condemned convicts in actual fact as much as if, instead of being on their way to the New World, there to begin a new life, they were to step on board the galleys themselves and there begin the hideous existence which France enforced on all those who offended against her laws.
Before, however, these fetters and those chains were rivetted upon their necks and wrists and ankles--rivetted cold, and thereby causing awful agony to all the culprits--one thing had to be done. Those women who, in the course of the months in which they had lain in prison, had given birth to children, were now to be separated from them; separated from them for ever in all likelihood, since it was certain that the mothers would never return to France, and almost equally certain that the children would never be likely to make their way to New France when they grew up. Separated also--since the lawgivers of France boasted that they punished but never persecuted--because these babes had committed no crime; because, too, the Government paid no passage money for children, nor arranged for their sustenance.
Three women had given birth thus to children during the time they lay in the vaults of St. Martin des Champs, which was one of the places of reception for these galley slaves who now figured under the name of colonists; and, not knowing that their babes would ever be torn from them, had rejoiced exceedingly over their birth. For they had hugged the little creatures to their bosoms to keep them warm and to warm themselves; they had kissed and fondled them and crooned strange phrases of maternal love over them; had even looked forward with joy unspeakable to the extra burden which they would have to carry on the long march that they suspected, truly enough, lay before them. And they had passed the helpless things round at night to other women who had been torn, shrieking, from their own offspring, or had been spirited off to gaol ere they could utter one last farewell to them, or give them one last mad embrace; they had passed these newborn babes round surreptitiously in the dark, and when the warders slumbered, to these poor bereft mothers, so that they might pet them a little, call them by the names of their own deserted and lost children, and bring, thereby, some sort of comfort to their aching hearts in doing so. While the women, these other women who had been wrenched away from their offspring, had arranged with those happier ones to assist in the carrying of the infants on the weary march and to help those who owned them, their reward to be that they should hold the little mites within their arms sometimes and, thereby, delude themselves into the belief that it was their own flesh and blood which they were clasping to their aching breasts.
Yet now--now!--those mothers who had been made happy by the coming of the children were to be parted from them for ever. There strode towards one of these mothers who was seated on the stone bench which ran all round the Court of Honour, the Governor of St. Martin des Champs (a stern man who had never possessed either wife or child, nor anything of a home but tents and barracks, during a long life of soldiering) accompanied by a woman from the Hospital of Charity--which preceded by some years the Hospital for Foundlings--a nurse. And she, that mother smiling there, had no idea, no suspicion, of aught that was about to befall her. If any other of the convicts knew--which was doubtful, since few had ever travelled the road before that all were now to set out upon--not one spoke a word or gave a hint of the sorrow that was to light upon the unhappy woman.
"Say farewell to your child," the governor exclaimed. "Quick! there is no time to lose. Bid it adieu; then give it to this good nurse," and he indicated that other woman who accompanied him.
The mother looked up at him with staring eyes. There was, in truth, a half smile upon her face, as though she doubted if she heard aright and was almost amused--if one so wretched as she could ever be amused again!--at the strange, impossible form which the words he must actually have uttered had taken to her ears. Then she said, quietly, "What did monsieur say?"
"Bid your child adieu. Quick!" the governor repeated impatiently; "or it will be taken without your farewells. Quick! I say. There are two others to be dealt with."
"Bid my child--farewell!" she murmured, understanding his words at last. "Bid it farewell. You mean that?" And, now, her eyes stared with a horror that was awful to see. A horror that appalled even this man, whose life had been passed amidst, first, the turbulence of years of rough campaigning, and, next, amidst all the most depraved and savage wild beasts of Paris humanity.
Above the roar of clanking cold iron being fastened upon the chains of men and women, the rivetting and fitting of carcans upon different throats--the white throats of erring women, the knotted, corded throats of men who had worn them before and slaved out portions of their evil lives with those cursed iron bands swathed fast about them--amidst, too, the cheers of the populace outside, through whose ranks, by now, the first chain--that of some men--was passing, that woman's shriek was heard. It rose above all; above hoarse curses from the male savages at the pain caused by the hammer as it struck the edges of their collars together; above yells from the female savages as the same process went on; above, too, the trumpets of the gendarmerie, which, a merciful Government allowed to bray outside the prison gates as an encouragement to the unhappy wretches setting out upon that journey; above everything else that shriek arose.