“Say to my friends,” F. Olivaint wrote to one of his brethren, “that I do not find anything to complain of; health pretty good; not a moment of ennui in my retreat, which I continue up to the very neck.... I know nothing of my companions.” “I thank you from the bottom of my heart,” to another, “for your charity to the poor prisoners. Here is a work I did not fully comprehend until I was in prison. How well you practise it—I might almost say too well!... No, the time does not seem long to me.” ... “In reality,” he writes again, “I do very well in body; and as for the spirit, it seems to me that I am making a retreat of benediction, Deo gratias.” ... Later on: “I am at the twenty-fourth day of my retreat. I had never hoped that a retreat of a month would be granted me; and see, now I am touching that term. Well, if we do not regain our liberty by the end of the month, I shall not, I hope, lose anything in this way by the prolongation of the trial. You will understand that here we have no news to give. And those frightful cannon that never cease grumbling! But that, too, reminds me to pray for our poor country. If it were required to give my miserable life to put an end to its troubles, how quickly I would make the sacrifice!”
Those cannon jarred on the ears of the other captives. “We hear day and night the roar of cannon,” F. Clerc wrote to his brother. “I conclude that the siege and my detention will not end to-morrow.... People talk of the cloister of religious houses; that of Mazas is not to be despised.... We have neither Mass nor sacraments. Never, I well believe, did prisoners more desire them. I pray to the good God, I study, I read, I write a little, and I find time goes quickly, even at Mazas.... Do not take further measures to see me; I fear further efforts would bring you annoyance, and I have little hope of the result. These gates will be opened by another hand than yours; and, if they open not, we know well that we must be [pg 512] resigned.... I am proud and happy to suffer for the name I bear. You know well the blow did not take me by surprise. I did not desire to evade it, and I wish to support it. I do not hope for the deliverance of which you speak.... The less I am master of myself, the more I am in the hands of God; there will happen to me what he wills, and he will give me to do that which he wishes I should do. Omnia passum in eo qui me confortat.”
F. Caubert writes in the same tone: “My health up to the present remains good. For the rest, I have all that is necessary, and even over. Besides, the moral serves to strengthen the physical in giving courage and strength. Now, this comes to me because I am full of confidence in God, and most happy to do his will in all that he really demands of me. For the rest, the prison rule, in spite of its stern and austere side, is not in itself injurious to the health. They have us take the air every day for an hour, solitarily, and each in his turn. The delicate stomachs can obtain the food they need. Twice a week they give us soup and a bit of beef. The house is conducted with propriety, order, and regularity.... We can visit the doctor or the apothecary daily. There is a library comprising a pretty good number of books of great variety, and any one can ask for them to pass the time. As for the details of the ménage, that which they bring me is quite sufficient, and I need no more. It simplifies matters not to have my cell encumbered, otherwise I should get things a little pell-mell.”
To hear these good fathers, everything was right, everybody good to them. Undoubtedly they suffer, but, as they are patient, they suffer less than others; as they have hope, they endure better than others; finally, as they love Christ crucified, their joy is greater than their pain. A Frenchman and a Jesuit conquered by hard treatment or most distressing privation! Never! Starving, dying by inches, in stripes and in prison, under the tomahawk, at the stake, in hunger and thirst, in burning India or the snows of Canada, at the mercy of Western savages or Paris revolutionists, it is ever the same thing—everything is right and nice and fine; much better than could be expected. The story, fresh in our minds, of our own early missionaries, exiles of the first Revolution, prepares us to hear the sweet patience of the American forests echoing to-day in the prison of Mazas. God wills it. Ad majorem Dei gloriam.
M. Ponlevoy, who had the tender curiosity to visit the prison of Mazas on a holiday, when it could easily be inspected, says: “I saw those three stories of long corridors, with double galleries, radiating around a centre where lately there was a chapel—ah! if the Commune had but had at least the humanity to leave to the captives the divine Prisoner of the tabernacle—on both sides, on all the floors, the doors loaded with bolts and provided with regular gratings, and those narrow cells, of which the inventory could be made in a single glance! Facing the entrance, the grated window, which measured the air and light; in one corner the hammock; opposite, the little table, with just room enough for a straw chair; behind the door a plank for a cupboard, a broom, and some pieces of coarse crockery completed the furniture. As for the famous promenade so often [pg 513] mentioned in their letters, it was a little triangular prison-yard, shut in by a grating in front, and walls on the sides, without shelter anywhere, and no other seat than a stone in one corner. During their solitary recreation the captives could absolutely see no one, unless the guard under the arch who held them in surveillance.”
But the human heart is still human, however resigned the will. Say what they would, the prison was still a prison, and Mazas certainly was more like Calvary than paradise. After all, Christians are not stoics, and the martyr himself feels the weakness of the flesh, that he may overcome it by the vigor of the spirit.
“This poor heart!” writes brave F. Ducoudray. “It sometimes will be tempted to escape and to bound. The imagination willingly takes its part. Neither lets itself be ruled as much by reason as I would wish. Thence come, at times, certain fits or impressions of weariness, the suffering of the soul, throwing it into languor, discouragement, uneasiness, and disgust. ‘Magnum est et val de magnum, tam humano quant divino posse carere solatio et pro honore Dei, libenter exilium cordis velle sustinere.’[115] There is matter in that one comprehends only when one feels it. I had the good thought, when leaving the house, to put into my pocket a small volume containing the New Testament and the Imitation. I have read S. Paul much. What a great and admirable heart! It expands my soul to read it, for it has been ‘in laboribus plurimus, in carceribusabundantius,’[116] as he writes himself. And I, though I am yet but a carcere uno, I boast of suffering somewhat. But if we are those of whom it is written: ‘Eritis odio omnibus propter nomen meum,’[117] how contemptible our tribulations in comparison with those of the great apostle!” “I am still,” he wrote at another time, May 5, “more ill omened than the greatest pessimist. You tell me they fix the 20th as the final term of the civil war. I much fear it will be prolonged even to the 30th. Military operations go slowly. The war beyond the ramparts offers difficulties; the war of the streets has its difficulties also—most bloody ones, alas!... We touch upon the week of great events, or, at least, the beginning of great events.... What a punishment! It was expected. It is here.”
Two or three human consolations were vouchsafed the prisoners, after a time. On May 5 they were permitted to read several of the daily papers approved by the Commune, and about the same time F. Ducoudray had the inestimable privilege of twice seeing and saluting, at a short distance, F. Clerc, and of once seeing far off F. Bengy, his beloved brethren and fellow-prisoners.
In May another favor was vouchsafed. F. Clerc's brother had been incessant in his attempts to obtain an interview with him, but without any success; at last a dear friend, a lady, received permission to visit the prisoner, and, as a French lady must needs have an escort, she took M. Clerc for hers. This was an inexpressible happiness to the noble-hearted priest, and his thanks to God for the favor were boundless. F. Caubert, whose simple and exquisite letters, full of golden [pg 514] thoughts, we would gladly linger over if there were only space enough, received, May 11, a visit from the Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States, which was very agreeable to him. “It appears,” he said, “that I had been recommended to him by some person of his acquaintance. He came to inquire most cordially, in true American style, how I got along, and if I had need of anything.” Here, in uncertainty, inaction, and shut out from all the world, these brave men made light of all the trials and privations to which their bodies were so long and painfully subjected. The Communists knew too much, however, to think of breaking their spirit by bodily suffering; they had the means of creating cruel anguish in the heart of every priest within those prison walls, and well they knew how to use it. From every cell came a cry such as no rack or stake could draw from them.
On Easter Sunday, fifth day of their confinement, F. Clerc wrote to his brother: “To-day is the feast of feasts, the Pasch of the Christians, the day the Lord has made. For us there is no Mass to say or hear.” Just at the hour of leaving the Conciergerie, FF. Olivaint and Caubert had the happiness, so longed for and so unexpected, of receiving the “Consoler himself.” Then came the long days at Mazas, and no such consolation possible. “Oh! if we could but soon ascend the altar!” cries F. Ducoudray in the early days at Mazas. “Here is a privation to which I can never become accustomed.”