"recounting the details of the siege he had sustained in his house against the bailiff's men. He had wanted to give himself up without fuss, but was told when he presented himself at the office that a person condemned for debt must be forcibly arrested (doit être appréhendé au corps avec brutalité), and pitched into a cab under the eyes of all the loungers on the foot-way,—who no doubt often imagine that they are assisting at the capture of some eminent criminal. This enterprise on the part of the bailiff and his men is charged to the unfortunate debtor, and the field of battle is as often as not some public thoroughfare."
But by far the most interesting and sympathetic personality on the debtor's side of Sainte-Pélagie at this date was the American Colonel Swan. The nature and amount of the colonel's debt are not set out, but the interest seems to have been the main cause of offence, and he had made it a matter of conscience to refuse payment.
"The French law had ordered his temporary arrest, and, twenty years after his incarceration, he was still 'temporarily' in confinement. Compatriot and friend of Washington, Colonel Swan had fought in the War of Independence with Lafayette, and the grand old French republican often bent his white head beneath the wicket of the gaol, on a visit to his brother-in-arms."
His own private means, the aid of wealthier friends, or even a successful project of escape, might have restored him to the free world; but so greatly had he used himself to his captivity, that no thought of liberty seems ever to have crossed his mind.
"It was not altogether without emotion that one saw this comely veteran—whose features were almost a copy of Benjamin Franklin's—pacing the narrow and sombre passages of the prison, drawing a breath of air at the loop-hole above the little garden. His long robe of swanskin or white dimity announced his coming, and it was both curious and touching to see how the groups of prisoners made way for him in the corridors, and how some hastened to carry into their cells the little stoves on which they did their cooking, lest the fumes of the charcoal should offend him."
This respect and love of the whole prison the old colonel had justly won; not a day of his long confinement there but he had marked by some service of kindness, for the most part mysterious and anonymous. No hungry debtor went in vain to the door of the colonel's little cell; and often, seeking a supper, the petitioner went away with the full price of his liberty.
There were two classes in the debtors' wing; those with certain resources of their own to supplement the miserable allowance of their creditors, and those who were dependent for their daily rations on the handful of centimes allowed them by law.
These last used to hire their services to the others for a gratuity, and were among the regular suitors of Colonel Swan's inexhaustible bounty. They were known in the prison as "cotton-caps" (bonnets de coton). One of these, hearing that the American had lost his "cotton-cap," went to beg the place. The colonel knew all about the man, a poor devil with a large family, stranded there for a few hundred francs. He asked a salary of six francs a month.
"That will suit me very well," said the colonel; and, opening a little chest, "here is five years' pay in advance." It was the amount precisely of the man's debt,—and a fair instance of the colonel's benefactions.
Towards the year 1829, prisoners taking their airing in the garden saw an old man strolling an hour or two in the day on the high terrace or gallery at the top of the prison. It was Colonel Swan, for whom, in failing health, the doctor had demanded that privilege. He had accepted it gratefully, but—as if admonished from within—he said to the doctor: "My proper air is the air of the prison; this breath of liberty will kill me."