Chapter XXII: Explanations (7)

“We did,” says the reverend gentleman, “all that charity could
claim, and even more than prudence seemed to permit. We kept her
for seventeen days in our house, provided for all her wants, and
treated her well, and if she had minded us, and heeded our advice
and entreaties, she would never have been subjected to that
Indian. When she came first to our house, and told us that Five
Crows had sent for her to be his wife, we asked her what she
wanted to do. Did she want to go with him, or not? She said she
did not want to go with him. ‘Stay with us, then, if you like; we
will do for you what we can,’ was our offer. When the evening
came, the Indian chief called for her. The writer then requested
his interpreter to tell him that she did not want to be his wife,
and that, therefore, he did not want her to go with him. The
interpreter, who was an Indian, allied by marriage to the
Cayuses, and knew the chiefs disposition well, would not provoke
his anger, and refused to interpret. The writer, then making use
of a few Indian words he had picked up during the few days he had
been there, and with the aid of signs, spoke to the Indian
himself, and succeeded in making him understand what he meant.
The Indian rose furiously and without uttering a word went away.
The young woman then got frightened, and wanted to go for fear he
might come back and do us all an injury. The writer tried to
quiet her, and insisted that she should remain at our house, but
to no avail; she must go, and off she went. The Indian, still in
his fit of anger, refused to receive her, and sent her back. She
remained with us three or four days undisturbed; until one
evening, without any violence on the part of the Indian, or
without advising with us, she went with him to his lodge. She
came back the next morning, went off again in the evening, and
continued so, without being forced by the Indian, and part of the
time going by herself, until at last she was told to select
between the Indian’s lodge and our house, as such a loose way of
acting could not be suffered any longer. That was the first and
only time that she offered any resistance to the will of the
Indian; but, indeed, her resistance was very slight, if we can
believe her own statement.”

This is a very different account from that sworn to by Miss Bewley, but written by Spaulding, as he says himself, _Ex. Doc. No. 37_, p. 27: “I would go to an individual, and take down in writing what he or she knew, and then go before a magistrate, and the individual would make an oath to the statement, the officer certifying.” There is no mention that the parties were permitted to read what their amanuensis took down, and all who are acquainted with such _ex-parte_ depositions know how easily it would be to alter their sense and meaning by an unscrupulous person--which we are about to show Spaulding to be. In this very statement there are two interpolations, one of eight lines on page 35 of _Ex. Doc. No. 37_, beginning with the words “I arose,” and one of six on the following page, at “The next day,” which materially alter the whole meaning of the document. This alteration of a sworn statement by any but the affiant is at common law _forgery_, and ought to entitle the person who makes it to the delicate attention of the prosecuting attorney of his county. Whether the saint and angel, Miss Bewley, is now aware of the forgery connected with her name we know not, but we trust that the Senate will make a note of it for the benefit of future historians. But Spaulding, who is described by his co-missionary Gray as “quite impulsive and bitter in his denunciations of a real or supposed enemy,” in endeavoring to make out a case, is not content with altering one affidavit. That of Mr. Osborne (_Ex. Doc. No. 37_, p. 32) is also materially changed in several places from the original, and the official reports of Mr. McLane (_Ex. Doc._ p. 33) and of Dr. White are doctored in a manner 682 that we venture to say would render it difficult for the writers themselves to recognize them. Even the plain statements of _The Murder of Dr. Whitman_ are garbled in a most palpable and scandalous manner.

As to the other auxiliary charges against the Catholic missionaries, and the answers of Abernethy and a few others to questions propounded by Spaulding, we do not consider them worthy of serious attention. They are all directly or indirectly the creatures of Spaulding’s fertile imagination, who, if not crazy as Colonel Gilliam said, has allowed his hatred of Catholicity to carry him down to fearful depths of crime, to calumny, falsehood, and forgery. His motives are apparent, the gratification of his lust for revenge, and his hatred of our faith; that of the associations who have signed his outrageous statements is the present flourishing existence of the Catholic missions in every part of Oregon; and the end proposed is to compass their destruction by appealing to the religious prejudices of the authorities at Washington. We have too much confidence in the wisdom and good sense of the Executive and Congress to suppose that they will be influenced by such inflammatory appeals--bearing on their face the palpable impress of dishonesty and prejudice--and attempts to disturb the good fathers in their labor of love, as well as of hardships and suffering; and we expect soon to hear of those fanatics receiving a fitting rebuke in our Senate for attempting to make that august body the vehicle of perpetuating the vilest sort of falsehoods and slanders against the Catholics of this country.

[130] _Ex. Doc. No._ 37, U. S. Senate, XLIst Cong., IIId
Session. 1870-1.

[131] Victor’s _The River of the West_, p. 400.

[132] _Works of Stephen Olin_, vol. ii. pp. 427, 428.

[133] Gray’s _Hist. of Oregon_, pp. 231, 246.

[134] _History of Oregon._ By G. Hines.

[135] _Murder of Dr. Whitman_, pp. 23, 24.

[136] Gray’s _History of Oregon_, p. 235.

[137] _Murder of Dr. Whitman_, p. 89.

[138] _Murder of Dr. Whitman_, p. 46.

[139] _Murder of Dr. Whitman_, pp. 53-55.

[140] The five Cayuses who were hung in Oregon City, June 3,
1850, as accomplices in the massacre, were all Protestants,
and remained so till they received their death sentence. All
the others who are known as murderers, among whom were
Lumsuky, Tamahas, and the two sons of Tilokaikt, were also
Protestants. Joseph Stainfield, Jo Davis, and the other
half-breed, who, it is said, plundered the dead, if
anything, were certainly not Catholics. Three of the
condemned on the morning of the execution solemnly declared
that the Catholic missionaries had nothing whatever to do
with the murder. The following letter to the Bishop of Walla
Walla, from the Archbishop of Oregon City, will be found
interesting:

OREGON CITY, June 2, 1850.
The supposed Cayuse murderers will be executed to-morrow.
They have abandoned Dr. Whitman’s religion and have become
Catholics. I am preparing them for baptism and for death.
F. N. BLANCHET,
Archbishop of Oregon City.

[141] _Oregon American._

[142] Letter of R. T. Lockwood to Very Rev. J. B. A.
Brouillet, V.G., Sept. 29, 1871.

[143] Toupin’s statement.

----------

AFFIRMATIONS.

“Why does man go about organizing systems, when he himself must be reorganized?”

“The thing to be done will not unite the doers.”

“When man forgets what he is, he soon is put into a state of uneasiness, and made to suffer in pain what was designed for him to be pleasure.”

“We are always learning the way that heaven acts, but are very shy to invite it to act upon us, and are very unwilling to submit to the preparatory process.”

“Self-improvement by the selfish spirit is the most deceitful of all deceits.”

“While you persevere in washing a man’s face with dirty water, it will never be clean; you must get pure water to wash with.”

“A child is a religious being prior to its being an intellectual being; and must not be turned away from the divine order.”

----------

AN AFTERNOON AT ST. LAZARE. 683

We paid a visit yesterday (Sunday) to St. Lazare, and all that we saw and heard there struck us as so interesting, and so entirely different from our preconceived notions concerning that ill-famed centre of crime and punishment, that we cannot but think our readers will likewise be interested in hearing a detailed and accurate account of it.

We had been told that the famous _pétroleuse_, charged with the murder of Monseigneur Surat, was still there, and we could not resist the opportunity offered us by a friend of going to see this extraordinary type of female ferocity--the woman who put a pistol to the prelate’s head, and, when he mildly asked her what he had done to her that she should hate him so, replied: “You are a priest!” and shot him on the spot. On arriving, however, we found that she had left for Versailles the night before. There were still fourteen of her terrible compeers remaining out of the four hundred and thirty that had been taken on the barricades and in the general saturnalia of the Commune and locked up in St. Lazare.

We visited the prison from beginning to end. Nothing surprised us so much as the gentleness of the _régime_, and the absence of all mystery or personal restraint in the management of the prisoners. The jail had nothing of the repulsive paraphernalia of a prison about it, and but for its massive walls, its vast proportions, and a certain indescribable gloom in the atmosphere, inseparable, we suppose, from the mere presence of such a population, one might very well have mistaken it for an orphanage or any ordinary asylum conducted by a religious community.

The _salles_ are magnificently spacious and lofty, with broad, high windows opening on courts; there are four courts--_préaux_ they are called--one after another, within the precincts of the prison; the beds are like hospital beds; and there was nothing in the dress of the women, or the manner of the nuns toward them, to tell an uninitiated visitor that they were not patients rather than prisoners and malefactors of the worst kind. There was the same silence brooding over the place, the same quiet regularity in all the arrangements, the same supernatural sort of cleanliness that one never sees anywhere but in convents. The population of the prison varies from 1,200 to 1,800, and the government of these dangerous and desperate subjects is committed to the sole charge of a community of religious called _Sœurs de Marie-Joseph_. They are fifty in all. Their dress is black serge, with a black veil lined with a light-blue one. They were founded at the close of the last century by a Lyonnese lady, whose name the superioress told us, but we forgot it.

It was just two o’clock when we arrived, and the superioress and another nun gave up assisting at vespers in order to show us over the house, which from its immense size takes two hours to visit in detail. The prisoners are divided into several categories, and are kept distinctly separate from each other. There are first the _Prévenues_, who are put in on an accusation which has not been 684 investigated; then the _Détenues_, against whom proof is forthcoming, and who are awaiting their trial; then there are the _Jugées_, of whom the categories are various, as will be seen. These classes are never allowed to come in contact, even accidentally, with each other; they do not even meet at meals. Those who are condemned to one year’s imprisonment remain at St. Lazare, but if the sentence extends to a year and a day, they are sent off to one of the _Succursales_. When their term is expired (those who are sentenced to a year only), they may continue at St. Lazare if they choose. Many of them, touched with grace, and sincerely converted from their evil courses, dread going back to old scenes and temptations that have proved so fatal to them, and beg to be kept as _filles de service_ for the work of the house, or in the workshops, etc., and they are never refused. The superioress said they made very active official servants, and it is very seldom they fall away from their good resolves, and have to be expelled or punished. We were passing through one of the passages when a sudden noise of voices from the court made us go to the window and look out. We saw a troop of prisoners pouring out into the yard; they were running about, laughing and chatting, and apparently enjoying their momentary liberty with the zest of school-boys.

“Who are these, _ma mère_?” we inquired.

“_Hélas!_” The exclamation was accompanied by a sufficiently expressive gesture.

“They are generally a very numerous class here,” she explained; “but just now there are but some two hundred of them; the _pétroleuses_ were largely recruited from their ranks, and great numbers of them have been sent on to Versailles.”

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 685 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.

“Sometimes, indeed,” said the superioress, “it makes us laugh to hear the account of the thefts they commit, there is often something so comical in the way they do it, and the cunning and dexterity they display are beyond belief; the most accomplished French _filou_ cannot hold a candle to them.”

Sad as this testimony was, it could not be quite a surprise to any one living in Paris who had seen much of the class of English alluded to, but it will come probably as a new and terrible revelation to many in England; and if this paper should fall into the hands of any lone, friendless English girl hesitating about coming to Paris to earn her bread, the writer prays God she may ponder on the foregoing statement, and think twice before embarking on so perilous a venture.

Several _salles_ are filled with a class of prisoners called _jeunes insoumises_; they are all very young, some merely children of the day; they are not always actual criminals, sometimes they are only subjects with dangerous propensities beyond the control of parents, and they are sent here to be trained to better ways; especial pains are directed 686 to these juvenile offenders, and the result is often very consoling. The superioress said they had lately had a baby of six years old brought in for stealing. “It was only a cake that tempted the poor little mite,” said the mother deprecatingly, “but she was very naughty and unmanageable otherwise, and the parents were glad of a pretext to get rid of her for a time.”

It was not only of such innocent culprits as this that the superioress spoke with indulgence, her large-hearted charity took in all the lost inhabitants of the dismal abode in which she dwelt and toiled; and there was something unspeakably touching in the way she every now and then seemed to try as it were to excuse the worst among them, to plead for them indirectly by showing up any remnant of good in them. We met the women we mentioned our seeing out at recreation on their way along a corridor; they walked singly, with their arms crossed; we were quite close to them as they passed us; and anything more ignoble than their features it would be difficult to conceive--the expression of the faces was scarcely human; they resembled vicious animals in human shape rather than women. This struck us all so forcibly that we could not help making the remark to the superioress. She seemed positively hurt, as if we had said something personally unkind to her, and, on my expressing some pagan surprise at it, she broke out into such a tender pleading for “those dear souls whom our Lord longs for and that cost him so dear” that, though I felt thoroughly rebuked, I could not be sorry for having called out her protest. It was like having laid one’s hand roughly and unawares on a vibrating instrument that sent out a strain of heavenly music.

“Oh!” she continued, with such a look as I shall never forget, “if we only knew what the value of a soul is, how precious it is in the eyes of God, we would never look with disgust at the poor wretched body that holds it; but I assure you when one comes near to those poor sinners the disgust soon wears off, and we think of nothing but their souls, their precious, immortal souls, that were bought at such a price!”

The more we listened to her and observed her, the less surprised we were at the universal respect, worship I might almost call it, that greeted her presence everywhere--it was so spontaneous and so free from anything like fear or servility. As soon as she appeared at the door of a work-room, or a class, or a dormitory, the prisoners rose immediately to salute her; and several times I noticed some of them make signs to others who were not looking, or touch them on the shoulder, to stand up and welcome the mother. She generally said a word to them _en passant_: “Good-morning, my children! Are you behaving well?” etc., and then there was a ripple of curtsies and a perfect clamor of “Yes, mother, thank you!” and the hard, bad faces would brighten for one moment with a smile.

The influence of the nuns with the prisoners is indeed little less than a permanent miracle, Among other instances of it, the superioress told us the following: “A desperate woman, charged with misdemeanors of the worst kind, was brought to the prison. She was the daughter of a butcher, and,” added the superioress, laughing, “I beg you to believe that her manners were just what might have been expected.” A few days after her arrival she broke out into a fit of mad fury, and the _gardiens_ had to be sent for to take her to the _cachot_; but as soon as she saw them enter the _salle_, she drew a huge pair of scissors 687 from her pocket--how she came by it we never discovered--and, holding it open and pointed at them with one hand, she beckoned them with the other to come on, yelling all the while like a raging lioness. The men tried to terrify her, to dodge her, but it was all useless, she baffled every attempt to seize her. They gave it up as hopeless, and came for me. She no sooner saw me than she cried out: ‘Send them away, and I will go with you; but I will never move a foot with these men!’ I sent them away, and told her to give me the scissors; she gave it at once, and then I took her by the hand and led her off without a word.

“On another occasion, one section of prisoners got up a scheme for killing the _gardiens_. They were to tie their wooden _sabots_ into clusters of eight together, and when the _gardiens_ came to convey some refractory subject to the _cachot_, the others were to fling several batches of these formidable missiles at their heads. The effect must have been fatal, but fortunately there was some delay in the appearance of the _gardiens_, and the prisoners, having all ready, grew impatient, and at last, losing all control, they began to yell and call out for them and brandish their _sabots_ furiously. The nun who was in waiting ran down to warn the _gardiens_ not to come up, and then came to tell me what had happened, and to consult about sending for the soldiers, who are always ready at the _poste_ outside the prison; the _gardiens_ were frightened, and advised this being done. I thought, however, the storm would subside without having recourse to such an extreme measure. I was not the least afraid of the women personally; I knew they would never lay a finger on one of _us_, whatever their fury might be, so I walked into the midst of them.

“‘What is this row about?’ I said. ‘I am ashamed of you; let me hear no more of it.’ Then taking the ringleader--we always know the one to pitch upon--I told her I must put her in prison; she made no resistance, only stipulating that the _gardiens_ were not to touch her.”

“Are the _gardiens_ cruel to them that they hate them so much?” I asked.

“No, never,” she answered; “they have no opportunity for it if they felt so inclined; but they represent strength and justice, whereas the nuns represent only weakness and pity; the prisoners resent the one, but not the other.”

Some one asked the superioress if she had ever known a conspiracy attempted to kill or hurt any of the sisters. She replied never, on which we related to her an episode of the Roman prisons, told us recently by the Papal Nuncio. The female prisons in Rome are, like St. Lazare, conducted entirely by nuns, without even the moral support of a _poste_ at the gates to enforce their authority. One day a plot was organized for doing away with the nuns and making their own escape from the prison. The prisoners were sixty in number and the nuns twelve, so the scheme offered little serious difficulty. It was agreed that on a certain day when all the community were assembled with the prisoners in the workroom, the latter were to seize the nuns and fling them out of the windows into the yard. The signal agreed upon was the close of the work-hour, when the superioress clapped her hands for them to put aside their work. The secret was so well kept that not a hint transpired, but the superioress felt instinctively there was something abnormal brewing. She had no apprehension at the moment, 688 however, and gave the signal as usual when the clock struck the hour. No one moved. She repeated it. Still no one stirred. She gave it a third time more emphatically, and then the leader of the band walked straight up to her and struck her a blow on the face. The meek disciple of Jesus quietly knelt down, turned the other cheek, and said:

“If I have done you any harm, tell me so, but if not, why do you strike me?”

The woman fell upon her knees, burst into tears, and confessed everything. When the superioress had heard her to the end, she said:

“Now, my daughter, I must take you to the dungeon; you know this is my duty.”

“Yes, mother, I know it is,” and she gave her hand, and let herself be led away as meekly as a lamb.

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 689 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 the 690 government did not mean to carry out. It was like letting loose so many bloodhounds on France to set these women at large again.

“We have seen them _de près_,” continued the superioress, “and we are one and all convinced that the next attempt will be worse than the first; we have terrible days in store--the _pétroleuses_ have not said their last word.”

Speaking of the Commune led to our asking about her own experiences under it. It appears that the employees at St. Lazare, the director, inspector-general, and their assistants, were among the first turned out, and agents of the Hôtel de Ville installed in their places. The first thing these guardians of public justice did was to set free one-half of the population, such as were available for the public services; and able servants they proved themselves on the barricades and as incendiaries. To account for and in some measure palliate the superhuman ferocity displayed by the women of the Commune, we may as well mention here a fact not generally known, and which was told to us by a distinguished medical man, who was here all through that terrible saturnalia, and by a Sister of Charity, who could also speak from personal knowledge. It would seem that the snuff dealt out to the people from the government manufactories was mixed in large proportions with gunpowder. The effect of this ingredient, taken in very small quantities, is to excite the brain abnormally, but taken in large ones it brings on a kind of savage delirium tremens. The wine distributed to the _pétroleuses_ on the barricades and elsewhere was also heavily charged with some such element of madness. It seems to us that it is rather a consolation to hear this, for though it reveals a diabolical instinct of soul-hatred in the few, it explains, on the other hand, how it was that occasionally we saw young and hitherto mild, inoffensive women suddenly transformed into demons.

The superioress said that for the first three weeks that the nuns did duty for the Commune, nothing could exceed the respect and consideration they received from them.

“They were as docile as little girls to us,” she said, “and never did anything without coming to consult us. The _inspecteur-general_ named by the Commune happened to have formerly been a clerk at the prison. My surprise when I saw him in his new character, and with such credentials, was great; but he seemed himself very much ashamed, and when I asked him what had induced him to join the Commune, he replied that it was really devotion to the nuns; he had accepted the office because he knew we would want a protector, and he preferred being on the spot to watch over us. It was not laughing matter, or I could have laughed at his audacity. And he actually pleaded this argument on his trial at Versailles, and was acquitted on it! He had always been a well-conducted, honest man, and I am not sure but in the bottom of his heart this good intention toward us may not have been mixed up with a great many other less worthy ones. During all the time he was in constant communication with me, he never had the courage once to raise his eyes to my face. He told us a good deal about what was going on outside, and especially what the women were doing. He spoke in enthusiastic praise of their spirit and courage. He said the fort of Montrouge was lost one day but for a girl of seventeen, who, seeing the soldiers demoralized, and the gunners abandoning their guns and turning to fly, rushed up to one of them, and seized a light and put 691 it to the cannon, and so mocked the cowards, and taunted them all with cowardice and want of mettle, that she rallied every man of them and saved the place. But for this Versailles would have taken it. Ten minutes later, and the defence was abandoned. ‘Had it not been for this plucky little _diablesse_, we were lost!’ he exclaimed. Such traits as this prepared us for the _pétroleuses_ of a few weeks later, but he only saw patriotism and valor in them.”

Things went on very amicably between the gentlemen of the Commune and the sisters for three weeks. Then a change came over them. They were not openly rude, but there was what the superioress described as restrained fury in their manner toward the nuns, and the latter felt that the blood-fever was rising in them, and that they would soon break out into open mutiny. The superioress felt this more strongly than the rest, and she was sorely perplexed how to get her flock out of the way of the wolves while it was yet time. It was no easy matter, for, as she quaintly said, “One cannot send off fifty religious like fifty pins, in a box by mail,” and in the present state of mind of the Communists, to awake suspicion was to have the whole community seized and locked up forthwith. The first thing to be done was to procure permission from the Hôtel de Ville. She had been obliged to go of late several times to the prefecture on one business or another connected with her functions in the prison, so the authorities there knew her, and had always treated her with marked civility. She said that the first time she went there the faces of the so-called officials struck her as demoniacal, they were all of them half-drunk--men taken from the gutters of Belleville and Villette to fill offices of whose commonest outward forms they had no idea, yet they were as deferential to herself and the nun who accompanied her as so many priests might have been. This did not prevent her saying to her companion as soon as they were alone: “Well, if we did not believe in hell, the faces we have seen to-day would have revealed it to us.”

She applied for a permission to leave, and got it without any difficulty. She kept it in her pocket all that day, and the next morning she seemed to hear a voice saying to her interiorly: _Now is the moment_; send them off! The exodus was planned well, and carried out so discreetly, the nuns going in threes and fours at a time, that not a shadow of suspicion dawned on the employees--their jailers as they now considered them. All that day the superioress kept constantly with them, never letting them lose sight of her for a quarter of an hour at a time, coming and going perpetually, and making future arrangements for one thing or another, so as to put them more completely off the scent. It was only when evening came and there were but eight nuns in the house besides herself, that the flight was discovered. The rage of the director was undisguised. But if he could not catch the fugitives, he could revenge himself on the devoted ones who had shielded their flight at the peril of their own lives. The superioress was at work in the midst of the little remnant of her flock, when he rushed into the room, pistol in hand. A few words passed between them, angry on his part, calm and resolute on hers, then with an oath he left the room abruptly.

“I knew as well as if he had told me,” she said, “that he was gone to see if there was a vacant cell to put me in. I did not feel terrified--God gives such strong graces in moments like that!--but I 692 felt the same kind of internal voice saying to me: Now is your time; take the others and fly!

“We hurried down the stairs just as we were and went out. We turned to the left, and walked on as fast as we could, without running, toward the _Gare du Nord_. We could hardly have turned the corner of the street when the director was in pursuit of us. _Les Détenues_, who saw us leave the house and take to the left, called out to him: To the right, citoyen! They are not forty yards ahead! He followed the direction, and this saved us. We reached the station just as the train was about to move. The guards saw us coming, and cried out to us to make haste and jump in. ‘But our tickets! We have not taken them!’ I said.

“‘Never mind, jump in! You will pay at the other end,’ and they hustled us into the nearest carriage. We had not seated ourselves when the director appeared on the platform pistol in hand, and crying out frantically to the train to stop. But it moved on, and landed us safely at Argenteuil.”

A few days after the _Sœurs Marie-Joseph_ had cleared out from St. Lazare, the nuns of Picpus were taken there. This the superioress thought was one reason why the officials were anxious to get them out of their way; they meant to put the others there, and they did not want any inconvenient witnesses of their own proceedings.

When we had seen all that was to be seen in the vast building, the superioress took us to the private chapel of the community. It was formerly the cell of St. Vincent of Paul, that is to say, the space occupied by the sanctuary; the altar stands where his little bed used to be, and the window step is worn away by the pressure of his feet, when his increasing infirmities obliged him to have recourse to the solace of a footstool. The prison itself was formerly a Lazarist monastery; the refectory is exactly as it was in the time of St. Vincent, unchanged in all except its occupants; and the great, sombre corridors echoed for twenty years to the footsteps of the sweet apostle of charity. His memory is held in great veneration throughout the prison, and the population speak of him with a sort of rough, filial affectionateness that, the nuns told us, is often very touching; they seem to look on him as a friend who ought to stand by them.

I had nearly forgotten one incident in our visit that had a peculiar beauty of its own. We were passing by the open door of what seemed an infirmary; all the beds were occupied, and there were several nuns sitting in the room, when one of them ran out and said:

“Oh! _ma mère_, you will not pass without coming to say _bonjour_ to our old women. Ever since they heard you were showing the house, they have been watching for you.”

The superioress said it was late, and she really had not time just now, but the nuns begged harder, and said that the old women knew she was going into retreat that evening, so they would not see her for eight days, and the old women, seeing they were in danger of being refused, began to cry out so piteously that the mother, asking us if we would not mind walking down the ward, yielded, and we went in. These old women are all infirm and incurable, and have been sent as such from one hospital or another to St. Lazare. Their delight when the superioress came in and spoke a word to each was almost rapturous. I stood to speak to one old soul, but instead of detailing her own aches and pains after the usual manner of those dear, blessed, garrulous poor people, she burst out confidentially into ecstatic 693 praises of _notre mère_--how sweet and kind she was, and how she loved them all, and what she did for them, and what an angel she was altogether, “as indeed all the good sisters were,” the good soul made haste to assure us. We found, on comparing notes with our friends, that those to whom they spoke had improved the opportunity in the same way. It seemed quite a treat to them to find an audience for their grateful praises of the _Sœurs_. Indeed, as far as our view of them went, the Sisters of Marie-Joseph fully justify the love they receive so plentifully. The superioress is what the French would call _une maîtresse femme_, a combination of energy and gentleness, with a certain frank brightness of manner that is very winning to a stranger, and must be a great help, independent of stronger agencies, in enabling her to win the confidence and disarm the rebellious spirit of the women she has to deal with. It was wonderful to watch her as she passed on from _salle_ to _salle_, saying just the right little word to all of them, and bringing a smile on all the faces, old and young, good and bad. Her manner, while it was perfectly simple and familiar, never lost its dignity; but there was not the faintest shadow of that spirit which too often hinders the salutary influence of virtue over vice--keep off; for I am holier than you! With these infirm old women she was affectionate and caressing as a mother, petting them like children, and encouraging their fearless familiarity toward herself. They had been here all through the Commune, they told us, and witnessed from their windows--the infirmary is on the ground floor--all the scenes enacted in the court by _ces dames_, as they mockingly styled them, who had come to replace the _Sœurs_. But the worst of that terrible interval to them was the terror they were in of being burnt to death. They saw the flames rising on all sides from the conflagrations in the neighborhood of St. Lazare, and they were in momentary expectation of seeing the prison itself fired. The doors were opened for them to fly, but “_à quoi bon, puisque nous n’avions pas de jambes pour fuir?_” they observed jocosely. This was the last _salle_ we saw. Before the superioress took leave of the incurables, she asked them to pray for the nuns during their retreat, which was to begin that evening. They promised in chorus that they would, and one said: “We will offer up all our suffering this week for the good sisters,” and all the others pledged themselves to do the same.

So ended our visit to St. Lazare. It was a sad and yet an unutterably consoling one. We hear a great deal about the atheism and immorality and wickedness of Paris--and God knows there is plenty of them--but there is much also that is bright and pure and beautiful mixed up with the bad, if only we looked for it and proclaimed it. We would find the pearls of purity, and the rubies of charity, and the emeralds of hope, and the salt of the Holy Spirit, scattered everywhere amidst the general corruption, healing and redeeming it.

----------

THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION [144] 694

The Labor Question has become one of the most formidable questions--perhaps the most formidable question--of the day; and the worst feature of the question is that, though it has been looming up in the distance for nearly a century, and constantly coming nearer and nearer, and more and more pressing for a solution, the statesmen, reformers, and philanthropists of no country seem to know what answer to give it, or how to treat it. There is no lack of nostrums, and every petty politician is ready with his “Morrison pill”; but no one gives a satisfactory diagnosis of the case, and the remedies offered or applied have served thus far only to aggravate the symptoms of the disease.

There is a very general conviction among the workingmen themselves that, in the distribution of the joint products of capital and labor, capital gets the lion’s share. Capitalists, or they who can command capital or its substitute, credit, grow rich, become millionaires, from the profits of the labor they employ, while the laborer himself, with the most rigid economy and frugality, can barely keep soul and body together, and not always even that. Yet, if we look at the millions deposited by the laboring classes in our savings-banks, and the large sums collected from them for eleemosynary and other purposes not necessarily included in the expenses of living, this statement seems exaggerated. Then, too, the majority of the millionaires with us, and, perhaps, in England and France, began life as workmen, or, at least, without capital and with very little credit.

It is not easy to say precisely what the special grievances of the workingmen are, at least in our country, since comparatively few of the wealthy or easy classes of to-day inherited their wealth, or had to start with any appreciable advantages, pecuniary, educational, or social, over their compeers who have remained in the proletarian class. The International Association of Workingmen do not tell us very distinctly what their special grievances are, nor can we gather them from the eloquent lecture of their mouthpiece, Mr. Wendell Phillips, the candidate of the labor unions of Massachusetts for governor of that state. The evils he complains of, if evils, grow out of what is called “modern civilization,” and seem to us to be inseparable from it. This is also clearly his opinion, and _The Dublin Review_ shows that it is the view taken by the Internationals in England and France. Mr. Phillips says:

“Modern civilization is grand in seeming large and generous in
some of its results, but, at the same time, hidden within are
ulcers that confront social science and leave it aghast. The
students of social science, in every meeting that gathers itself,
in every debate and discussion, confess themselves at their wits’
end in dealing with the great social evils of the day. Nobody
that looks into the subject but recognizes the fact that the
disease is very grave and deep; the superficial observer does not
know the leak in the very body of the ship, but the captain and 695
crew are suffering the anticipation of approaching ruin.
Gentlemen, I am not here with the vain dream that we shall ever
abolish poverty. My creed of human nature is too bitter for that.
There will always be men that drink, and as long as there are
such, there will always be poor men--shiftless men. There are
always half-made men--nobody knows why they were born.