This passage joins that of the better cells; and it is worth noting that the cell in which Louvel was imprisoned, one of the most famous of the regicides, is the room at the right angle formed by the junction of the two corridors.
Under the pretty room in the Tour Bonbec there is a spiral staircase leading from the dark passage, and serving the prisoners who are lodged in these cells to go up and down on their way from or to the yard.
Every prisoner, whether committed for trial or already sentenced, and the prisoners under suspicion who have been reprieved from the closest cells — in short, every one in confinement in the Conciergerie takes exercise in this narrow paved courtyard for some hours every day, especially the early hours of summer mornings.
This recreation ground, the ante-room to the scaffold or the hulks on one side, on the other still clings to the world through the gendarme, the examining judge, and the Assize Court.
It strikes a greater chill perhaps than even the scaffold.
The scaffold may be a pedestal to soar to heaven from; but the prison-yard is every infamy on earth concentrated and unavoidable.
Whether at La Force or at Poissy, at Melun or at Sainte–Pelagie, a prison-yard is a prison-yard.
The same details are exactly repeated, all but the color of the walls, their height, and the space enclosed.
So this Study of Manners would be false to its name if it did not include an exact description of this Pandemonium of Paris.
Under the mighty vaulting which supports the lower courts and the Court of Appeals there is, close to the fourth arch, a stone slab, used by Saint–Louis, it is said, for the distribution of alms, and doing duty in our day as a counter for the sale of eatables to the prisoners.
So as soon as the prison-yard is open to the prisoners, they gather round this stone table, which displays such dainties as jail-birds desire — brandy, rum, and the like.
The first two archways on that side of the yard, facing the fine Byzantine corridor — the only vestige now of Saint–Louis’ elegant palace — form a parlor, where the prisoners and their counsel may meet, to which the prisoners have access through a formidable gateway — a double passage, railed off by enormous bars, within the width of the third archway.
This double way is like the temporary passages arranged at the door of a theatre to keep a line on occasions when a great success brings a crowd.
This parlor, at the very end of the vast entrance-hall of the Conciergerie, and lighted by loop-holes on the yard side, has lately been opened out towards the back, and the opening filled with glass, so that the interviews of the lawyers with their clients are under supervision.
This innovation was made necessary by the too great fascinations brought to bear by pretty women on their counsel.
Where will morality stop short? Such precautions are like the ready-made sets of questions for self-examination, where pure imaginations are defiled by meditating on unknown and monstrous depravity.
In this parlor, too, parents and friends may be allowed by the authorities to meet the prisoners, whether on remand or awaiting their sentence.
The reader may now understand what the prison-yard is to the two hundred prisoners in the Conciergerie: their garden — a garden without trees, beds, or flowers — in short, a prison-yard.
The parlor, and the stone of Saint–Louis, where such food and liquor as are allowed are dispensed, are the only possible means of communication with the outer world.
The hour spent in the yard is the only time when the prisoner is in the open air or the society of his kind; in other prisons those who are sentenced for a term are brought together in workshops; but in the Conciergerie no occupation is allowed, excepting in the privileged cells.
There the absorbing idea in every mind is the drama of the Assize Court, since the culprit comes only to be examined or to be sentenced.
This yard is indeed terrible to behold; it cannot be imagined, it must be seen.
In the first place, the assemblage, in a space forty metres long by thirty wide, of a hundred condemned or suspected criminals, does not constitute the cream of society.
These creatures, belonging for the most part to the lowest ranks, are poorly clad; their countenances are base or horrible, for a criminal from the upper sphere of society is happily, a rare exception.
Peculation, forgery, or fraudulent bankruptcy, the only crimes that can bring decent folks so low, enjoy the privilege of the better cells, and then the prisoner scarcely ever quits it.
This promenade, bounded by fine but formidable blackened walls, by a cloister divided up into cells, by fortifications on the side towards the quay, by the barred cells of the better class on the north, watched by vigilant warders, and filled with a herd of criminals, all meanly suspicious of each other, is depressing enough in itself; and it becomes terrifying when you find yourself the centre of all those eyes full of hatred, curiosity, and despair, face to face with that degraded crew.
Not a gleam of gladness! all is gloom — the place and the men.
All is speechless — the walls and men’s consciences.
To these hapless creatures danger lies everywhere; excepting in the case of an alliance as ominous as the prison where it was formed, they dare not trust each other.
The police, all-pervading, poisons the atmosphere and taints everything, even the hand-grasp of two criminals who have been intimate.
A convict who meets his most familiar comrade does not know that he may not have repented and have made a confession to save his life.
This absence of confidence, this dread of the nark, marks the liberty, already so illusory, of the prison-yard.
The “nark” (in French, le Mouton or le coqueur) is a spy who affects to be sentenced for some serious offence, and whose skill consists in pretending to be a chum.
The “chum,” in thieves’ slang, is a skilled thief, a professional who has cut himself adrift from society, and means to remain a thief all his days, and continues faithful through thick and thin to the laws of the swell-mob.
Crime and madness have a certain resemblance.
To see the prisoners of the Conciergerie in the yard, or the madmen in the garden of an asylum, is much the same thing.
Prisoners and lunatics walk to and fro, avoiding each other, looking up with more or less strange or vicious glances, according to the mood of the moment, but never cheerful, never grave; they know each other, or they dread each other.
The anticipation of their sentence, remorse, and apprehension give all these men exercising, the anxious, furtive look of the insane.
Only the most consummate criminals have the audacity that apes the quietude of respectability, the sincerity of a clear conscience.
As men of the better class are few, and shame keeps the few whose crimes have brought them within doors, the frequenters of the prison-yard are for the most part dressed as workmen.
Blouses, long and short, and velveteen jackets preponderate.
These coarse or dirty garments, harmonizing with the coarse and sinister faces and brutal manner — somewhat subdued, indeed, by the gloomy reflections that weigh on men in prison — everything, to the silence that reigns, contributes to strike terror or disgust into the rare visitor who, by high influence, has obtained the privilege, seldom granted, of going over the Conciergerie.
Just as the sight of an anatomical museum, where foul diseases are represented by wax models, makes the youth who may be taken there more chaste and apt for nobler and purer love, so the sight of the Conciergerie and of the prison-yard, filled with men marked for the hulks or the scaffold or some disgraceful punishment, inspires many, who might not fear that Divine Justice whose voice speaks so loudly to the conscience, with a fear of human justice; and they come out honest men for a long time after.
As the men who were exercising in the prison-yard, when Trompe-la-Mort appeared there, were to be the actors in a scene of crowning importance in the life of Jacques Collin, it will be well to depict a few of the principal personages of this sinister crowd.
Here, as everywhere when men are thrown together, here, as at school even, force, physical and moral, wins the day.
Here, then, as on the hulks, crime stamps the man’s rank.
Those whose head is doomed are the aristocracy.
The prison-yard, as may be supposed, is a school of criminal law, which is far better learned there than at the Hall on the Place du Pantheon.
A never-failing pleasantry is to rehearse the drama of the Assize Court; to elect a president, a jury, a public prosecutor, a counsel, and to go through the whole trial.
This hideous farce is played before almost every great trial.