"Have I not in my time heard lions roar?
Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind,
Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?
Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,
And Heaven's artillery thunder in the skies?
Have I not in the pitched battle heard
Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?"
SHAKSPEARE.
On reaching the prison, I gave up all for lost; sullenly resigned myself to what now seemed the will of fate; and without a word, except in answer to the interrogatory of my name and country, followed the two horrid-looking ruffians who performed the office of turnkeys. St Lazare had been a monastery, and its massiveness, grimness, and confusion of buildings, with its extreme silence at that late hour, gave me the strongest impression of a huge catacomb above ground. The door of a cell was opened for me after traversing a long succession of cloisters; and on a little wooden trestle, and wrapt in my cloak, I attempted to sleep. But if sleep has not much to boast of in Paris at any time, what was it then? I had scarcely closed my eyes when I was roused by a rapid succession of musket-shots, fired at the opposite side of the cloister, the light of torches flashing through the long avenues, and the shouts of men and women in wrath, terror, and agony. I threw myself off my uneasy bed, and climbing up by my prison bars, endeavoured to ascertain the cause of the mêlée. But the imperfect light served little more than to show a general mustering of the national guard in the court, and a huge and heavy building, into which they were discharging random shots whenever a head appeared at its casements. A loud huzza followed whenever one of those shots appeared to take effect, and a laugh equally loud ran through the ranks when the bullet wasted its effect on the massive mullions or stained glass of the windows. A tall figure on horseback, whom I afterwards learned to be Henriot, the commandant of the national guard, galloped up and down the court with the air of a general-in-chief manœuvring an army. I think that he actually had provided himself with a truncheon to meet all the emergencies of supreme command. While this sanguinary, and yet mocking representation of warfare was going on, M. le Commandant was in full eloquence and prodigious gesticulation. "A la gloire, mes enfans!" was his constant cry. "Fight, mes braves! the honour of France demands it: the eyes of Europe—of the world—are turned upon you. Vive la Republique!" And all this accompanied with waving his hat, and spurring his horse into foam and fury. But fortune is a jade after all; and the hero of the tricolored scarf was destined to have his laurels a little shorn, even on this narrow field. While his charger was caracoling over the cloisters, and his veterans from the cellars and counters of Paris were popping off their muskets at the unfortunates who started up against the old casement, I heard a sudden rush and run; a low postern of the cloister had been flung back, and the prisoners within the building had made a sally on their tormentors. A massacre at the Bicêtre, in which six thousand had perished, had warned these unhappy people that neither the prison wall, nor night, was to be security against the rage of the bloodhounds with whom murder seemed to have grown into a pastime; and after having seen several of their number shot down within their dungeon, they determined to attack them, and, if they must die, at least die in manly defence. Their rush was perfectly successful; it had the effect of a complete surprise; and though their only weapons were fragments of their firewood—for all fire-arms and knives had been taken from them immediately on their entrance into the prison—they routed the heroes of the guard at the first charge. Even the gallant commander himself only shared the chance of his "camarades:" a flourish or two of his sabre, and an adjuration of "liberty," had no other effect than to insure a heavier shower of blows, and I had the gratification of seeing the braggadocio go down from his saddle in the midst of a group, who certainly had no veneration for the majesty of the truncheon. The victory was achieved; but, like many another victory, it produced no results: the gates of the St Lazare were too strongly guarded to be forced by an unarmed crowd, and I saw the prisoners successively and gloomily return to the only roof, melancholy as that was, which now could shelter them.
The morning brought my case before the authorities of this den. Half a dozen coarse and filthy uniformed men, and some of them evidently sufferers in the tumult of the night, for their heads were bound up and their arms bandaged—a matter which, if it did not improve their appearance, gave me every reason to expect increased brutishness in their tempers—formed the tribunal. The hall in which they had established their court had once been the kitchen of the convent; and, though all signs of hospitality had vanished, its rude and wild construction, its stone floor and vaulted roof, and even its yawning and dark recesses for the different operations which, in other days, had made it a scene of busy cheerfulness, now gave it a look of dreariness in the extreme. I could have easily imagined it to be a chamber of the Inquisition. But men in my circumstances have not much time for the work of fancy; and I was instantly called on for my name, and business in France. I had heard enough of popular justice to believe, that I had now arrived within sight of the last struggle, and I resolved to give these ruffians no triumph over the Englishman.