" ... The work of the camp is considered the most severe. It includes the digging up of stones, earthworks, &c. It is only interrupted on the Sunday morning for the religious service. For nourishment we have coffee without sugar at five o'clock in the morning, 700 grammes of bread, and 100 grammes of beans; in the evening a small piece of beef; and, finally, 69 centilitres of wine a week. When I am able to buy a quarter of a pound of bread, my health leaves less to be desired. Already several of ours are no more. Many are attacked with anæmia. Fifteen out of sixty in St. Louis are at the hospital. All this would be nothing if there were not that commingling with men of infamous passions. There are fifty of us in one compartment. As to the employments, shops, and offices, the Communards are excluded from these."
"Ile Nou, 15th February.
"I isolate myself as much as I can, but there are hours when I must be in the bagnio on pain of death. There are hours when I must defend my rations from the voracity of my companions, when I must submit to the familiarity of a Mano or of a Lathauer.[263] This is horrible, and I blush with shame when I think that I have become almost insensible to all this infamy. These wretches are cowards, and are not the least of our tormentors. It is enough to drive one mad, and I believe that many amongst us will become so. Berezowski, this unfortunate man,[264] who has suffered so much for eight years, is almost demented, and it is painful to look upon him. It is terrible, and I dare not think of this. How many months, years, are we still to pass in this bagnio? I tremble at the thought. Despite all, believe that I shall not allow myself to be crushed; my conscience is tranquil, and I am strong. My health alone could betray me and be vanquished, but of myself I am sure, and shall never swerve."
A third:—
"I have suffered much; the bagnio of Toulon, the chains, the convicts' dress, and, what is still worse, the ignoble contact of the criminals—all this I have had to bear with. I have, it is true, one consolation for so much suffering—my tranquil conscience, the love of my old parents, and the esteem of men such as you.... How many times have I been discouraged! What despair, what doubts have seized me! I believed in mankind, and all my illusions have been lost one by one; a great change has come over me, and I have almost failed to resist so many disillusions."
Yet another:—
"I do not deceive myself; these years are entirely lost for me; not only is my health undermined, but I feel myself getting lower every day. This life is really too hard to bear, without books (save those of the Mame library), in this filthy bagnio, exposed to all insults, to all blows; shut up in grated caves; in the workshops treated as beasts; insulted by our jailers and our comrades of the chain, we must submit to it all without a murmur, the slightest infringement entailing terrible punishments—the cell, quarter ration of bread, irons, thumbscrews, the lash. It is ignominious, and I shudder at the thought of it. Many of our comrades are in double chains in the correction platoon, subjected to the hardest labour, dying of hunger, driven on with blows of a cane, often with revolver-shots, unable to communicate with us, who cannot even pass them a mouthful of bread. It is terrible, and I am afraid all this will not end very soon. But protestations will be made; we shall not be abandoned; it would be horrible if we were left here. I am unable to work, so I am right in saying that these years are completely lost, and this drives me to despair; yet I was willing to learn; but what is to be done without books and without a guide? We are almost without news. Still we know that the Republic is affirming itself from day to day; our hope is there, but I dare not believe it; we have had so many deceptions."
How many live to-day? It is not known. Maroteau left in March, 1875. The Commission of Pardons had aggravated his sentence; commuted Satory to the Ile Nou. At twenty-five years of age he died in the bagnio for two articles, when the jackals of the Versaillese press, whose every line has demanded and obtained carnage, sway our Paris. To the last moment his courage did not forsake him. "It is not a great affair to die," said he to the friends who surrounded his deathbed; "but I should have preferred the stake of Satory to this filthy pallet. My friends, think of me! What will become of my mother?"
Hear this knell tolled by one of the convicts:—