I saw two women's faces looking at me from two little beds against the black walls, two barred windows, and three other beds that were empty.
"Make your bed, there...."
The foot of "my" bed touched that of a bed in which I saw a dark, pale, fierce-looking woman, the sight of whom made me shiver....
There was a tiny unlighted stove with three legs and a long chimney in the middle of the cell. The floor was made of slabs. Many were missing, most of them were broken, and there was dirty water in the holes. It was very cold.
One of the sisters pointed to a shelf above the bed and said: "You can put your things there.... Give me your hat, your hatpins, your gloves. You are only entitled to keep your dress."
I lay down, almost entirely dressed, on the bed. I heard a clock strike midnight. I still wondered where I was. This is not an infirmary, I thought.... And why am I not alone in a room?... The sisters went silently away. I heard the key turned in the lock, the bolt pushed back. The women at once started eagerly talking to me.... I could not understand them. I thought of Marthe. I cried, cried... and then fell, suddenly, into the great void of a sleep almost as deep as death.
CHAPTER XXII
THE THREE CELLS
I AWOKE the next morning—in a cell. The women were still there. I felt as if I had been beaten all over my body and my head. At first I did not realise where I was, or what I was doing there.... I saw the slabs of the floor, the dirt, the door with the peep-hole, through which, after lifting a small wooden shutter, people from the outside could see what was going on in the cell, the iron bedstead with the rough straw mattresses, the pillow filled with dried sea-weed, and the sheets made of some yellowish material that looked like sail-cloth. I saw the boards fastened into the wall above each bed, the small stove, the heap of coal in a corner, a few yellowish earthen-ware bowls and jugs, and blunt knives on a rickety table. I saw the walls covered with tar, vermin crawling about the cracks and hollows in the slabs, around the little puddles of muddy, evil-smelling water, the rough-hewn, uneven joists of the dark ceiling, from which hung thick webs. (Saint-Lazare, I heard afterwards, is one of the oldest and most dilapidated prisons in France.) I saw the two windows, with their heavy iron bars, and thick wire-gauze—through which, later on, I found it so difficult to give some of my bread to the scores of sparrows and pigeons which nest in the old roofs of Saint-Lazare—and I knew that I was a prisoner.
But what did it matter! In less than a week everything would be arranged and definitely settled, the real murderers would be arrested, and I would be once more with my daughter! Meanwhile, it was horrible to be here, to be in prison! I thought of Marthe, of my father... and I cried.
The women watched me eagerly. They addressed me by my name.... How did they know who I was?