The boys were conducted back to the depot of the prefecture as soon as the president had finished speaking to them, there to await their removal to the House of Correction that should be appointed by the authorities.
In 1839, a few noble-hearted, philanthropic men conceived the idea of founding at Mettray, near the beautiful town of Tours, in almost the heart of France, a colony of young convicts, to whom should be given a moral and religious training, and the blessings of a home. These benevolent men had studied with profound attention the admirable penitentiary system of the United States of America; compared with it, the system of correction as practised in the state prisons of France had struck them as singularly ineffective and quite inadequate to attain the end and aim of all punishment, the eradication of vice, and the awakening of a desire to practise industry and honesty. The published reports of these prisons had even proved that, far from the morality of the unfortunate children detained there being improved, these unhappy victims did actually become more confirmed in their perversity by their sojourn in the house of correction. Though restrained by the prison discipline, they were not actually taught; for it is not intimidation that can teach a fallen nature how to rise, nor inculcate the love of honor and virtue. The helter-skelter way of these houses was fatal to their utility. Young offenders, guilty of comparatively slight offences, were associated with scoundrels versed in every mystery of crime. The burglar and the highway robber, the coiner and the assassin, became the companions of the child so apt to learn, so ready to receive any impression whether of good or evil. Want of space was pleaded in extenuation of this great, this fundamental error in the work of reformation; and thus justice and social good were sacrificed to considerations of economy!
The system of detention, too, as applied to children, did not render it obligatory on the administration of the prison to continue its care of the child after he had quitted the walls where he had passed the last five or six years of his young life. On the day of his liberation, the rule was to give him a few clothes and a part of the products of his labor during his detention, and then all was ended between him and those who were supposed to have been his teachers and protectors. Thus thrown all at once into a world from which he had been sequestered for years, without any family traditions of industry and probity to guide and uphold him, the unhappy youth found it impossible to gain a footing among the honest and respectable, and was soon irretrievably lost.
All the errors, all the consequences of this system, were then to be avoided in the new colony of Mettray; and guided by sound sense and a deep love of their kind, the founders of this admirable establishment undertook the task of endowing the erring children confided to them by the state with family affections and habits, with the love of order, and with health. Their minds and hearts were to be cultivated, and they were to be given the desire and the means of gaining their living by honest labor. It was to the agricultural colony of Mettray that Marcel and Polycarpe were sent, a few days after their examination before the tribunal; and they made the journey thither in the company of thirty or forty other unfortunate boys of their own age. What language can express the delight that filled the bosom of the poor orphan when his eyes first rested on the home that a merciful Providence had at last given him! Most lovely was the wide landscape that spread before him; for fertile Touraine is indeed the garden of beautiful France. The bright waters of the magnificent river Loire were there to be seen winding amidst green fields, its shores bordered by strange habitations hollowed in the rocks, or fringed with waving trees. There were the houses of the Mettray colonists on the side of a rising ground, the tapering steeple of their chapel showing itself from the middle of the group like a giant finger pointing the way to heaven. On the bank of the little stream that passed close to the settlement on its way to the great river stood a windmill, turning its sails right merrily. Plantations of mulberry-trees, beautifully kept gardens and orchards, and wheat-fields nearly ripe for the harvest, surrounded the colony; oxen grazing or pulling heavily-laden carts, sheep browsing with tinking bells, young colonists smiling, bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked, directing, helping, working in every way and with a will; all the sights and sounds of husbandry, and among the leaves a whispering breeze, and the warm air perfumed with the scent of newly-mown hay, and over all the bright blue, sunny sky. Such was the landscape that met the eyes of the pale-faced, sin-degraded children of Paris. Such was the home that a few true men with loving hearts and living sympathies had provided for the victims of poverty and crime! Here were they to learn, by the all-powerful lessons of religion and healthful labor, how to become honest, useful citizens; here were they to acquire self-respect, love of country and of their fellow-men.
Oh! blessings on the Christian men who founded the colony of Mettray! Their names are inscribed on the walls of the chapel; but those walls will crumble away in time, their names will be forgotten, but the good they have done will never decay or pass away, and "Verily they shall have their reward!"
Chapter IX.
Law, conscience, honor, all obeyed, all give
The approving voice, and make it bliss to live;
While faith, when life can nothing more supply,
Shall strengthen hope and make it bliss to die.
The boys at Mettray are divided into families, each inhabiting a separate house inscribed with the name of certain towns, or of the generous giver. There is the "House of Paris," the "House of Limoges," the "House of the widow Hébert," and one is called the "House of Mary," in which the youngest children are placed. There were more than a dozen of these dwellings when our two culprits entered the colony, each directed by a Father and an Elder Brother, the inmates of each one emulating the inmates of the others in their progress to reformation, and every family considering itself a distinct brotherhood.
It was to the "House of Paris," that Marcel and Polycarpe were consigned; and what a new life began for these poor children when, after a short sequestration, so that at least the first elements of religion, order, and honesty might be instilled into their minds, they were permitted to associate with the older colonists, and take full part in their lessons and labors. Strange but sweet did it seem to Marcel when he first felt himself a member of a family, one among many brothers, where he was to find those ties and that affection refused to him hitherto. How soon he came to love his superiors, the Father and the Elder Brother, and how easy obedience was to him, can be readily imagined by those who have followed his fortunes so far. How fond and proud he grew after a while of his home—his saving ark—can only be conceived by those who have visited Mettray, and who have seen and heard with their own eyes and ears that every child there considers himself honored by the title of colonist, and bound in his own person to prove the worthiness of the community.