How omnipotent is the power of love, and how lovely this world would be if love were allowed to rule over it everywhere!
Before we had finished our inspection of the house, we went to benediction in the prison chapel. There was a short sermon first on the gospel of the day. About eight hundred of the prisoners were present. Some were yawning, and evidently only there because they could not help themselves, others assisted with edifying devotion, but all were respectful in their attitude and demeanor. The organ was played by one of the nuns, and the choir, was formed of prisoners from the class already alluded to. The singing was not very scientific, but it struck us all as peculiarly touching, the more so, no doubt, from the associations connected unconsciously with the choristers. The superioress said it was looked upon as a great privilege to sing in the choir, and it is held
out as a reward for sustained efforts and good conduct. As we saw the little altar lighted up, and the golden rays of the monstrance shining down upon the singular congregation, one could not but think what a grand and beautiful manifestation of redeeming love it was, this presence of the God of holiness, a willing prisoner in such a temple. There were the Sisters of Marie-Joseph, women of the purest, most unblemished lives, self-devoted victims to the God who died on Calvary for outcasts and sinners, kneeling side by side in unloathing sisterhood with the vilest offscourings of this great Babylon. A sight wonderful beyond all human understanding if the mystery were not explained to us by the voice from out the little crystal prison-house: “I came to seek sinners, and to dwell with them.... And whatsoever you do to the least of these, you do likewise to me.... And there is more joy in heaven for the return of one sinner than for ninety-nine of the just.”
And many are the joys given to him and his saints by the inmates of this great emporium of sinners. Last All Saints’ day five hundred of the prisoners approached the sacraments, some in the most admirably penitent spirit, but all of their own free will, and for the moment at least with hearts touched by grace and turned away from evil. They were prepared for the feast by a retreat of eight days, preached by a Marist father.
After benediction we resumed our inspection, and came finally to the pétroleuses. There was nothing in the room where they were, or their surroundings, to distinguish them from the other prisoners, and if the superioress had not whispered to us as we were entering the dormitory that these were the women, we should never have suspected the bright, orderly
room to be the den of wild beasts it was. An American lady who was of our party amused the nuns by asking repeatedly: “But where are the wicked ones?” She could not persuade herself—and indeed it was difficult—that the hundreds of women we saw so gently ruled, and held as it were with silken cords, were the most dangerous and abandoned characters of the metropolis. The fourteen pétroleuses were not dressed in the prison livery, but wore their own clothes: some of them were very spruce and comfortable, but all were tidy and clean—none of them had a poverty-stricken look. They were nearly all of them standing in sullen silence beside their beds; one woman was dandling a baby, a white-faced, shrivelled little object, tricked out in a fine blue frock with little flounces. We think we said there had been four hundred and thirty of these pétroleuses in the prison. The superioress said they had behaved very well there, and never once obliged the soldiers to interfere. They were cold-blooded, defiant creatures, but this was not their sphere of action; they bore no ill-will to the sisters; quite the contrary, many shed tears on going away. They fell into the discipline of the prison with great docility as to hours and rules, and seldom broke silence. On one point only they were intractable—they would not work.
“It’s bad enough to be conquered and butchered by Versailles,” they would answer, “but we are not going to work for them.” And neither threats nor entreaties could induce them to take a needle in their hand, or to sit down to a sewing-machine. It was no use explaining to them that they would not be working for Versailles, that they would work for themselves, and might buy extra food at the cantine with their day’s earnings;
no, they got it into their heads that Versailles would in some way or other be the better for their working, and nothing could get it out of them. The very name of Versailles used to rouse them to fury; it was like a red rag to a bull. They boasted of their exploits during the Commune as things to glory in. One swore she had set fire to five buildings, and her only regret was that she had been too late to set fire to St. Lazare. Many of her companions expressed the same regret with quiet effrontery, that would have been amusing if it had not been so appalling. Every one of them declared that if it were to begin over again, they would do just the same, only better, because now they had more experience.
“And what is your opinion, ma mère?” we said; “do you think it will begin again, and that the pétroleuses are still in existence, or was it a type born with the Commune, and passed away with it?”
She replied unhesitatingly that she believed it would begin again, and that the pétroleuses would come out in greater force than ever; that they were neither daunted nor disarmed by the failure of the Commune, but rather infuriated by defeat, and more resolute and reckless than before—reckless to a degree that only bad women can be, and ready to stake body and soul on their revenge. She said that the conduct of Versailles was weak and ill-judged beyond her comprehension; that they had far better have left these women free at once on the plea that they were women, if they did not mean to deal out their deserts to them; but now these desperate creatures were exasperated by incarceration, and by a mockery of a trial that either liberated them or sentenced them to a punishment they knew perfectly well