If, however, no attempt at classification was made by the prison director, certain distinctions of rank existed which were generally acknowledged by the prisoners themselves. The authors of Les Prisons de Paris mention a class of elegant adventuresses who were always apart in Saint-Lazare, and who stood as the shining examples of the aristocracy of vice. The passage is interesting and worth translation:
"Amongst the class of swindlers, so numerous in Saint-Lazare, who boast their skill in exploiting the ambitious fools of Paris, you might recognise beneath the prison cap, so coquettishly worn, dames whom you had met perchance in the most elegant houses in town, and whose protection you might have sought. This one was a countess, that one a baroness, and, rightly or wrongly, the badge of nobility was painted on the panels of their carriages. Did you need the friendly word of a minister or the countenance of a capitalist, it was enough that you were known to have one of these angels for your friend. There were four of them in the sewing-room of Saint-Lazare,—rogues and swindlers of the first water! For years these corsairs have laid violent hands on all fortunes they could come at, but they continue to hold a position in society which is in itself a more scathing satire on the morals of the age than any which I am able to imagine. At intervals, these dames are lodged for a time at the country's cost in one or other of the houses of detention, without, however, losing one jot or tittle of their prestige in the world of fashion! When they reappear, society receives them open-armed, as poor banished exiles who have returned to the fatherland, or prodigal children whose wanderings are ended."
Nothing delighted plebeian Saint-Lazare so much as to hear the countesses and baronesses discussing the merits, as a gallant, of this or the other minister, nobleman, poet, or banker of renown; and the interest culminated when the question arose as to which of the two could produce the greater number of letters signed by names with which all Paris was familiar.
Roving like satellites around these gaudy planets were a small class of habitual criminals who, out of prison, served the noble adventuresses in several offices, as spies, go-betweens, receivers, etc. These also enjoyed a certain celebrity in the prison. One of them used to open chestnuts with a knife with which, in a passion of jealousy, she had all but murdered her lover, and which had become an object of the devoutest worship since the lover had gone to hide his scars under the red jacket of the galley-slave. Another woman arrived at the prison in a flutter of pride, eager to display a novel charm which decorated her ears. She also had lost her latest lover, but Monsieur de Paris had been kind enough to extract for her two teeth from the head which he had just severed. The disconsolate mistress had had them set in gold as earrings! Nearly all these women carried on the neck, arms, and upper portion of the body specimens of the work of the professional tattooer; they preserved in this way the names of their successive lovers, and the figured emblems sometimes included the most ignoble devices.
Of the licenced women who restricted themselves mainly if not entirely to the calling of femme publique, Saint-Lazare recognised two separate orders. They were the Panades and the Pierreuses. The Panades carried a high chin in the society of their humbler associates; they were generally members of some maison de tolérance, where, so long as the mistress found it profitable to maintain them, they lived in luxurious indolence; fed, and pampered, and extravagantly dressed; captives, but in gilded fetters. In prison they separated themselves, as far as it was possible, from the rest, to whom they never addressed a word. They would be known only by some delicate or romantic name: Irma, Zélie, Amanda, Nathalie, Arthemise, Balsamine, Léocadie, Isménie, Malvina, Lodoïska, Aspasie, Delphine, Reine, and Fleur de Marie.
The Pierreuses regarded them with the bitterest jealousy, and spited and abused them at every opportunity. Memories of a gayer past intensified the feelings of the Pierreuses; they too had been Panades until the abbesse had cast them out, faded and worn, to join the foot-sore legion of street-walkers. They used to whisper mockingly: "You may sneer, you Panades; but we were like you once, and you'll be like us;" and as for the prophetic part of the reproof, it was more than likely to be realised. Like the Panades, the Pierreuses had a peculiar set of names: Boulotte, Rousselette, Parfaite, la Ruelle, la Roche, le Bœuf, Bouquet, Louchon, la Bancale, la Coutille, Colette, Peleton, Crucifix, etc. To the Panade, prison was a place of horror and disgrace; to the Pierreuse it was often the kindest home she had; and as years advanced on her, and the gains of her trade grew ever miserably smaller, the poor creature felt never so happy as in the hands of the police, on the once dreaded journey to Saint-Lazare.
There was a strangely sympathetic side to this saddest of the prisons of Paris. The sick and worn-out were always tenderly regarded by their fellow-prisoners, and a woman who brought in with her a child in arms was an object of intense and almost affectionate interest. If a woman died in the prison, it was not unusual for the rest to club together to provide a substantial and costly funeral, and masses for the repose of her soul. Sometimes the affections of the whole prison, directed upon one weak girl, had the result of saving her from ruin and insanity.
In the early years of the Restoration, Marie M——, a pretty peasant girl, was sent to Saint-Lazare for stealing roses. She had a passion for the flower, and a thousand mystical notions had woven themselves about it in her mind. She said that rose-trees would detach themselves from their roots, glide after her wherever she went, and tempt her to pluck their blossoms. One in a garden, taller than the rest, had compelled her to climb the wall, and gather as many as she could,—and there the gendarmes found her. She was terrified in prison, believing that when she went out the roses would lure her amongst them again, and that she would be sent back to Saint-Lazare.
This poor girl excited the vividest interest amongst the femmes publiques in that sordid place. They plotted to restore her to her reason, christened her Rose, which delighted her, and set themselves to make artificial roses for her of silk and paper. Those fingers, so rebellious at allotted tasks, created roses without number, till the cell of Marie M—— was transformed into a bower. An intelligent director of prison labour seconded these efforts, and opened in Saint-Lazare a workroom for the manufacture of artificial flowers, to which Marie M—— was introduced as an apprentice. Here, making roses from morning till night, and her dread of the future dispelled, the malady of her mind reached its term with the term of her sentence, and she left the prison cured and happy. The authors of Les Prisons de Paris, from whose pages her story is borrowed, declare that Marie M—— became one of the most successful florists in Paris.
