At the last siting of the Convention, Chénier in energetic terms denounced the guillotine. A voice called out: "What o'clock is it?" A voice responded: "The hour of justice." A moment later this vote was proclaimed: "Dating from the publication of the general peace, the punishment of death shall be abolished throughout the French Republic."
That vote has not yet become effective!
After a long sleep the question re-awoke on the lips of M. de Tracy, son of the orator who had been amongst the first to entreat that the code of France might be cleansed of blood. In the same historic mention we must gather in the names of the Duc de Broglie, the Marquis de Lally-Tallendal, the Marquis de Pastoret ("A man attacks me; I can defend myself only by killing him: I kill him. For society to do the same thing, it must find itself in precisely the same situation.") de Bérenger, Lafayette, Glais-Bizoin, Taschereau, Appert, Lèon Fancher, and Guizot the historian.
"If," added the authors of Les Prisons de Paris, "all these enlightened publicists and statesmen, with M. Guizot amongst them, did not succeed in pulling down the scaffold, at an epoch when, to quote M. de Bérenger, the very executioners were weary, it must be concluded, we suppose, that it is necessary to proceed with prudent hesitation, and, by a gradual abolition, to convince the most timid and incredulous that society has nothing to dread from this reform."
This was written fifty years ago, and as "prudent hesitation" has not yet attained its goal it is still possible to penetrate within the condemned hold of La Roquette.
The prison is chiefly interesting in this day as the fore-scene of the scaffold. It is built with a wealth of precautions; and escape, if not impossible by ordinary means, is exceptionally difficult to compass. No successful flight from La Roquette has been recorded in modern times.
Three iron grilles and four doors of massive oak conduct to the great courtyard. The foundations of the prison are in layers of freestone; the two walls which enclose the buildings are of a thickness proportionate to their elevation, and the builder took care to efface the angles by rounded stonework. Buildings surround the courtyard on the north, east, and west, and the prison chapel occupies the south.
For the ordinary prisoner (convicts awaiting shipment to the penal colonies, or undergoing short sentences of hard labour), the day at La Roquette begins early. The warders are at their posts soon after light, and the second bell summons the prisoners half an hour later. Thirty minutes are allowed for dressing, bed-making, and cell-cleaning, and at the third bell there is a general descent to the yard, each prisoner receiving his first allowance of bread as he goes down. After half an hour's exercise the regular labour of the day begins, and at nine o'clock there is a distribution of soup. Between nine-thirty and ten the prisoners take another turn in the yard, and the second period of work lasts till three in the afternoon. At three is served another allowance of bread, with vegetables or meat according to the day; and from half-past three to four the courtyard echoes again the monotonous tramp of hundreds of pairs of sabots. The last sortie—there are four in all—varies with the seasons; and after supper the prisoners are locked in for the night.
Fifty years ago, there was here and there in the bagnes, and the general prisons of France, a priest of exalted ideals, and such unwearied patience as the task demands, toiling to reclaim the Condamnés who were his spiritual charge. One such was the Abbé Touzè, chaplain of La Roquette at about the middle period of our century. The Abbé set himself to inquire what causes sent men to prison at that day, what might be done or attempted to prevent them from returning there; and knowing that the part which thinks may be reached through the part which feels, it was in the sanctuary of the heart that he began his experiments on a population whose emotions are none too easily turned to moral or religious profit. To a Touzè in France, a Horsley in England, prison is not all the barren vineyard which a lazy chaplain finds it; and the aumônier of La Roquette did not labour in vain. He has been mentioned here as a herald of the philanthropic scientist of later days, who has occasionally done for the prison world what genius alone—with religious fervour for its basis—can accomplish there.
When the secret history of the condemned cell comes to be written, the material will be furnished for a new and important chapter in the history of criminal psychology; but it must not be a patchwork of lurid gossip on a background of stale religious sophisms, such as Newgate chaplains of the last century were not above compiling and selling for their profit in the crowd on a hanging Monday; nor a mere spicy morsel for the sensation-hunter, such as, for example, the copious gutter-stuff printed and circulated about Lacenaire, who drew the gaze of Paris to the condemned cell of La Roquette some half-century ago.