Some one asked if these unfortunates were more refractory than the other prisoners, thieves, etc.
“As a rule, they are less so,” replied the nun; “we hardly ever are obliged to have recourse to the gardiens with them, and we have more frequent conversions amongst them than any other class of prisoners. There comes a time to many of them, especially if they have had any seeds of religious belief sowed in their minds in childhood, when the future both of this world and the next comes on them with a sense of horror, and then grace has an easy task with them. I could tell you of miracles wrought in the souls of these poor sinners that would sound like tales out of the lives of the saints, and we have had deathbeds among them little short of saintly. But, again, we too often see all our efforts fail, and they reject grace with a sort of demoniacal obduracy, and go back to their old lives without a moment’s passing compunction: nothing seems to touch them or frighten them.”
We asked if the nuns were not afraid of them, if they never threatened or insulted them.
“Oh! never!” replied the superioress emphatically; “the command we have over them, and the way they yield obedience and respect to us, is almost miraculous. You see these poor outcasts down there; I suppose there is nothing in the world more lost or degraded than they are; they are the lowest specimens of the lowest stratum of vice and every species of depravity. Well, the youngest nun in the community is as safe in the middle of them as if they were all honest mères de famille. I have been a religious twenty-two years, and out of that ten years at St. Lazare, and I have never known them use
an expression to any of us that called for reprimand.”
We may add that she said the great majority of these offenders were girls from the provinces, young and inexperienced for the most part, and who come to Paris expecting to make their fortune, and unprepared for the temptations awaiting them in this great trap for souls.
We saw the words Oratoire Israelite, Oratoire Protestant, painted over two doors, and the latter suggested the inquiry whether there were occasionally any English women amongst the inmates of St. Lazare.
“Oh! yes, I am sorry to say we have a good many English,” said the mother; and then, shaking her head and smiling, she added: “And I am sorry to tell you that they are the most unmanageable of all, for they are generally given to drink, and when this is the case they are like mad-women and we can do nothing with them. A little while ago we had one who got into such a fearful fit of fury that it was necessary to put her in the lock-up; her shrieks were so loud that they were heard half over the place, and terrified the young détenues; toward evening she grew so outrageous that the gardiens were sent to put her into the strait-waistcoat—they are powerful men with strong hands and iron nerves, and trained to the work—but she baffled four of them for two hours; they were not able to seize or hold her; at last they gave it up in despair, and said: It is no use, we must go for les sœurs! One of them came to fetch me, and beg me to come or send some one to help them. He was trembling in every limb, and the perspiration was pouring from his face as if he had been wrestling with a wild animal. I took one of the nuns with me, and we went down to the prison, where we were obliged to spend the whole
night with the prisoner, coaxing and caressing her, before we got her to calm down and cease shrieking.”
We asked to what class in life the English culprits generally belonged—if they were exclusively of the lowest? The superioress said, on the contrary, they were often persons very comme il faut in their manners, and evidently had had an education far above the class of domestic servants—some of them were in fact quite like ladies; she believed they were mostly governesses, or teachers who come over to Paris in search of situations or lessons, and, not finding either, are driven by hunger and despair to steal, or do worse; but theft is generally the offence of the English prisoners.