Passed out to what she knew and felt would be her death. To what she prayed might be her death.
[CHAPTER XII]
MARSEILLES
The chain gangs--the men a mile ahead of the women--marched but slowly on their way; indeed, it was impossible that they should progress very fast. Some, as has been said, especially among the female prisoners, had never been accustomed to walking at all; others, amongst both women and men, soon became footsore. The months passed in the dungeons of the prisons, with their bodies chained by the neck to the beam behind them, had given their feet but little opportunity of exercise, that only being obtainable which they got from stamping on the ground to drive out the cold they suffered from during the winter period. No wonder that all became footsore ere a fiftieth part of their toilsome journey was covered.
Yet they went on; they had to go on. Marseilles was, to be exact, 356 miles from Paris by road, and they were timed to do the distance in thirty days; must do it according to the contract made by the Government with the owners of the ships which were to transport the "colonists," the "emigrants," to New France. Thirty days for 356 miles.
About twelve miles a day! Not much that for pedestrians, for hardy walkers, for people used to journeying on foot day by day. A thing to be accomplished easily, and easily to be surpassed, by the countless pedlars who swarmed over the face of France; by itinerant monks, by wandering ballad-singers, strolling players and troops of showmen; yet not easy for women or men who, even if they had ever walked at all, were now quite out of practice; who, also, were ill-fed and, in many cases, were sick and ailing. Yet they had to do it. It must be done.
Each morning, therefore, they set forth again on their route, no matter whether the sun was beating down fiercely on their heads--they being protected only by hats which they had been allowed to plait from the prison straw, in anticipation of the forthcoming journey--or whether the rain was falling in torrents. Each night they lay down wherever the chain halted, which it generally did near some village or hamlet, partly because there the colonists might be allowed to lie and sleep beneath the shelter of barns and outhouses, but more particularly because, thereby, the guards and the galley sergeants and mounted gendarmes could find drinking shops and pants wherein they might rest and refresh themselves. And, gradually, as they went on and on along the great southern road, through Montargis and Cosne, and by Nevers, and on to Moulins and Montmarault, their numbers became a little diminished nightly. Women dropped by the wayside, or, rather, amidst the dust and mud of the high road; it was useless to place them in the carts and carry them further; therefore they were left beneath the hedges and the sparse bushes that bordered the route--left with their coarse prison petticoat thrown over their dead faces to save them from the flies--left there for the villagers to bury when they were found. And, because the women passed along behind the men, they saw--they could not help but see!--unless they were blinded by staggering for league after league through heat and dust, that, with the chain of men, the same thing had happened. Their bodies--some of their bodies--were also to be seen lying beneath the hedges and the bushes, but with no protecting rag over their faces.
Yet, still, those who were not dead went on and on, stumbling, falling, being dragged up by the companion manacled to them, or by the guards (kind in some cases, brutal in others) on and on, like women walking in their sleep; their lids half closed over their glistening, fever-lit eyes, their senses telling them they were suffering, even as the dumb brutes' senses tell them that they are suffering. But no more!
Shackled to the dark handsome woman of the south who had espoused the writer who hated Rome and her customs, was Laure, alive still, though praying that every day might be her last. That she would have ever reached Clermont, to which they were by now arrived, had it not been for this woman, was doubtful. For she, brought up by Vandecque in all the luxury he could afford--partly from love of her, partly because she was a saleable article that, carefully cherished, might fetch a large price--was no more fitted to walk day by day a distance of from ten to fifteen miles than she was fitted to sleep on the ground in barns and outhouses, or to exist on bread and water and anything else which her comrade could procure by stealing or begging from the compassionate landlords of those inns where sometimes the chain halted.
Yet she had done it, she had survived, she was alive; she could feel the cool mountain air of the Dômes sweep down upon and revive her. She was still alive.