THE PRISON OF LA FORCE IN 1839. 13 day, seeing a destructive competition lessen THE PRISON OF LA FORCE IN 1839. their wages, the laborious artisans become [MARIE JOSEPH EUGENE SUE, born at Paris 1804, died 1857, is best known by his novels, “The Mysteries of Paris" and "The Wandering Jew." From the latter we extract.] Let us enter La Force. There is nothing sombre or repulsive in the aspect of this house of incarceration in the Rue du Roi de Sicile, in the Marcus. In the centre of one of the firsf courts there are some clumps of trees, thickened with shrubs, at the roots of which there are already, here and there, the green, precocious shoots of primroses and snowdrops. A raised ascent, surmounted by a porch covered with trellis work, in which knotty stalks of the vine entwine, leads to one of the seven or eight walks assigned to the prisoners. The vast buildings which surround these courts very much resemble those of a barrack or manufactory kept with exceeding care. There are lofty facades of white stone pierced with high and large windows, which admit of the free circulation of pure air. The stones and pavement of the enclosures are kept excessively clean. On the ground floor, the large apartments, warmed during the winter, are kept well ventilated during the summer, and are used during the day as places of conversation, work, or for the meals of the prisoners. The upper stories are used as immense dormitories, ten or twelve feet high, with dry and shining floors; two rows of iron beds are there arranged and excellent bedding it is, consisting of a palliasse, a soft and thick mattress, a bolster, white linen sheets, and a warm woolen blanket. At the sight of these establishments, comprising all the requisites for comfort and health, we are much surprised in spite of ourselves, being accustomed to suppose that prisons are miserable, dirty, unwholesome, and dark. This is a mistake. It is such dog-holes as that occupied by Morel the lapidary, and in which so many poor and honest workmen languish in exhaustion, compelled to give up their truckle bed to a sick wife and to leave, with hopeless despair, their wretched, famishing children, shuddering with cold in their infected straw that is miserable, dark, dirty, and pestilent! The same contrast holds with regard to the physiognomy of the inhabitants of these two abodes. Incessantly occupied with the wants of their family, which they can scarcely supply from day to dejected, dispirited: the hour of rest does not sound for them, and a kind of somnolent lassitude alone breaks in upon their over-tasked labour. Then, on awakening from this painful lethargy, they find themselves face to face with the same overwhelming thoughts of the present and the same uneasiness for the future. But the prisoner, indifferent to the past, happy with the life he leads, certain of the future (for he can assure it by an offence or a crime), regretting his liberty, doubtless, but finding much compensation in the actual enjoyment, certain of taking with him when he quits prison a considerable sum of money, gained by easy and moderate labour, esteemed, or rather dreaded by his companions, in proportion to his depravity and perversity, the prisoner, on the contrary, will always be gay and careless. Again we ask, what does he want? Does he not find in prison good shelter, good bed, good food, high wages, easy work, and, especially, society of his choice, a society, we repeat, which measures his consideration by the magnitude of his crimes? A hardened convict knows neither misery, hunger, nor cold. What is to him the horror he inspires honest persons withal? He does not see, does not know them. His crimes make his glory, his influ ence his strength, with the ruffians in the midst of whom he will henceforward pass his life. Why should he fear shame? Instead of the serious and charitable remonstrances which might compel him to blush for and repent the past, he hears the ferocious applauses which encourage him to theft and murder. Scarcely imprisoned, he plans fresh crimes. What can be more logical, when he finds in the repose, the bodily supplies of a prison, and his joyous and daring associates in crime and debauchery, so many rewards of a vicious career? If his experience in crimes be less than that of others, does he not for that evince the less remorse? it follows that he is exposed to brutal scoffing, infernal taunts and horrible threats. And a thing so rare that it has become the exception to the rule-if the prisoner leave this pandemonium with the firm resolution to return to the paths of honesty by excessive labour, courage, patience and honesty, and has been able to conceal the infamy of his past career, the meeting with one of his old comrades in gaol is sufficient to overturn this EUGENE SUE CITIZENS RETURNING FROM THE FROM RURAL ESSAYS. good intention for the restoration of his char- | him not the superfluities but the necessaries acter, so painfully struggled for. And in of life-the means of continuing healthy this way: a hardened, discharged convict and strong, active and industrious-and proposes a job to a repentant comrade; the consequently, honest and good, because his latter, in spite of bitter menaces, refuses this condition is rendered happy. The gloomy criminal association, forthwith an anony- regions of misery and ignorance are peopled mous information reveals the life of the un- with morbid beings with withered hearts. fortunate fellow who was desirous, at every Purify those moral sewers, spread instrucsacrifice, of concealing and expiating a first tion, the inducement to labour, fair wages, fault by honourable behaviour. Then ex- just rewards, and then these unhealthy faces, posed to the contempt, or at least, the dis- these perishing flames, will be restored to trust, of those whose good will he had ac- virtue which is the health, the life and the quired by dint of industry and probity, this soul. man, reduced to distress, and urged by want, yielding at length to incessant temptations, although nearly restored to society, will again fall, and for ever, into the depths of that abyss whence he had escaped with such difficulty. In the following scenes we shall endeavour to demonstrate the monstrous and inevitable consequences of confinement in masses. After ages of barbarous experiments and pernicious hesitations, it seemed suddenly understood how irrational it is to plunge into an atmosphere of deepest vice persons whom a pure and salubrious air could alone save. How many centuries to discover that in placing in dense contact diseased beings, we redouble the intensity of their malignity, which is thus rendered incurable! How many centuries to discover that there is, in a word, but one remedy for this overwhelming leprosy which threatens society - Isolation! We should esteem ourselves happy if our feeble voice could be, if not relied upon, at least spread amongst all those which, more imposing, more eloquent than our own, demand with such just and impatient urgency, the entire and unqualified application of the cell system. One day perchance, society will know that wickedness is an accidental, not an organic malady, that crimes are mostly the results of perverted instincts, impulses, still good in their essence, but falsified, rendered evil, by ignorance, egotism, or by the carelessness of governments; and that the health of the soul, like that of the body, is unquestionably kept subordinate to the laws of a healthy and preserving system of control. God bestows on all passions that strive for predominance strong appetites, the desire to be at ease, and it is for society to balance and satisfy these wants. The man who only participates in strength, good will, and health, has a right-a sovereign right to have his labours justly remunerated, in a way that shall assure to Perhaps the foundation of all the miscal. culations that arise, as to expenditure in forming a country residence, is, that citizens are in the habit of thinking every thing in the country cheap. Land in the town is sold by the foot, in the country by the acre. The price of a good house in town is, perhaps, three times the cost of one of the best farms in the country. The town buys every thing: the country raises every thing. To live on your own estate, be it one acre or a thousand, to have your own milk, butter and eggs, to raise your own chickens and gather your own strawberries, with nature to keep the account instead of your grocer and market-woman, that is something like a rational life: and more than rational, it must be cheap. So argues the citizen about retiring, not only to enjoy his otium cum dignitate, but to make a thousand dollars of his income, produce him more of the comforts of life than two thousand did before. Well; he goes into the country. He buys a farm (run down with poor tenants and bad tillage). He builds a new house, with his own ignorance instead of architect and master-builder, and is cheated roundly by those who take advantage of this masterly ignorance in the matter of bricks and mortar; or he repairs an old house at the full cost of a new one, and has an unsatisfactory dwelling for ever afterwards. He undertakes light farming, and knowing nothing of the practical economy of husbandry, CITIZENS RETURNING FROM THE COUNTRY. Now there is no objection to all this for its own sake. On the contrary, good buildings, good fences, and rich pasture fields are what especially delight us in the country. What is the reason that, as the country place gets to wear a smiling aspect, its citizen owner begins to look serious and unhappy? Why is it that country life does not satisfy and content him? Is the country, which all the poets and philosophers have celebrated as the Arcadia of this world, is the country treacherous? Is nature a cheat, and do seed-time and harvest conspire against the peace of mind of the retired citizen? 15 every bushel of corn that he raises costs him | have the best of laboring men for twenty or the price of a bushel and a half in the market. thirty cents a day. Here you must pay Used in town to a neat and orderly condi- them a dollar, at least our amateur must, tion of his premises, he is disgusted with though the farmers contrive to get their old tottering fences, half drained fields and labor for eight or ten dollars a month and worn-out pastures, and employs all the la- board. The citizen's home once built, he boring force of the neighborhood to put his looks upon all heavy expenditures as over; grounds in good order. but how many hundreds-perhaps thousands has he not paid for out-buildings, for fences, for roads, &c. Cutting down yonder hill, which made an ugly blotch in the view,— it looked like a trifling task; yet there were five hundred dollars swept clean out of his bank account, and there seems almost nothing to show for it. You would not believe now that a hill ever stood there or at least that nature had not arranged it all (as you feel she ought to have done), just as you see it. Your favorite cattle and horses have died, and the flock of sheep have been sadly diminished by the dogs, all to be replaced-and a careful account of the men's time, labor and manure on the grain fields, Alas! It is a matter of money. Every show that for some reason you cannot unthing seems to be a matter of money now-derstand, the crop-which is a fair one, has a-days. The country life of the old world, actually cost you a trifle more than it is of its poets and romances, is cheap. The worth in a good market. country life of our republic is dear. It is for the good of the many that labor should be high, and it is high labor that makes country life heavy and oppressive to such men-only because it shows a balance, increasing year after year, on the wrong side of the ledger. Here is the source of all the trouble and dissatisfaction in what may be called the country life of gentlemen amateurs, or citizens, in this country-" it don't pay." Land is cheap, nature is beautiful, the country is healthy, and all these conspire to draw our well-to-do citizen into the country. But labor is dear, experience is dearer, and a series of experiments in unprofitable crops the dearest of all; and our citizen friend, himself, as we have said, is in the situation of a man who has set out on a delightful voyage, on a smooth sea, and with a cheerful ship's company; but who discovers, also, that the ship has sprung a leak-not large enough to make it necessary to call all hands to the pump-not large enough perhaps to attract any body's attention but his own, but quite certain that he must leave her or be swamped-and quite large enough to make his voyage a serious piece of business. Every thing which a citizen does in this country, costs him an incredible sum. In Europe (heaven save the masses), you may To cut a long story short, the larger part of our citizens who retire upon a farm to make it a country residence, are not aware of the fact, that capital cannot be profitably employed on land in the Atlantic States without a thorough practical knowledge of farming. A close and systematic economy, upon a good soil, may enable, and does some gentlemen farmers that we could name, to make a good profit out of their land-but citizens who launch boldly into farming, hiring farm laborers at high prices, and trusting operations of others that should be managed under the master's eye-are very likely to find their farms a sinking fund that will drive them back into business again. To be happy in any business or occupa tion (and country life on a farm is a matter of business), we must have some kind of success in it; and there is no success without profit, and no profit without practical knowledge of farming. The lesson that we would deduce from these reflections is this; that no mere amateur should buy a large farm for a country residence, with the expectation of finding pleasure and profit in it for the rest of his life, unless, like some citizens that we have known-rare exceptions-they have a genius for all manner of business, and can master the whole of farming, as they would learn a running hand in six easy lessons. | tablished, even on a small place in the counFarming in the older States, where the na- try. And so it is, if we proceed upon the tural wealth of the soil has been exhausted, fallacy, as we have said, that every thing in is not a profitable business for amateurs- the country is cheap. Labor is dear; it but quite the reverse. And a citizen who costs you dearly to-day, and it will cost you has a sufficient income without farming, dearly to-morrow and the next year. There had better not damage it by engaging in so fore, in selecting a site for a home in the expensive an amusement. country, always remember to choose a site where nature has done as much as possible for you. Don't say to yourself as many have done before you "Oh! I want occupation, and I rather like the new place-raw and naked though it may be. I will create a paradise for myself. I will cut down yonder hill that intercepts the view, I will level and slope more gracefully yonder rude bank, I will terrace this rapid descent, I will make a lake in yonder hollow." Yes, all this you may do for occupation, and find it very delightful occupation too, if you have the income of Mr. Astor. Otherwise, after you have spent thousands in creating your paradise, and chance to go to some friend who has bought all the graceful undulations, and sloping lawns, and sheets of water, natural, ready made as they may be bought in thousands of purely natural places in America, for a few hundred dollars, it will give you a species of pleasureground-dyspepsia to see how foolishly you have wasted your money, and this, more especially, when you find, as the possessor of the most finished place in America finds, that he has no want of occupation, and that far from being finished, he has only begun to elicit the highest beauty, keeping and completeness of which his place is capable. "But we must have something to do; we have been busy near all our lives, and cannot retire into the country to fold our hands and sit in the sunshine and be idle." Precisely so. But you need not therefore ruin yourself on a large farm. Do not be ambitious of being great landed proprietors. Assume that you need occupation and interest, and buy a small piece of ground-a few acres only-as few as you please-but without any regard for profit. Leave that to those who have learned of farming in a more practical school. You think, perhaps, that you can find nothing to do on a few acres of ground. But that is the greatest of mistakes. A half a dozen acres, the capacities of which are fully developed, will give you more pleasure than five hundred poorly cultivated. And the advantage for you is, that you can upon your few acres, spend just as little or just as much as you please. If you wish to be prudent, lay out your little estate in a simple way, with grass and trees, and a few walks, and a single man to take care of it. If you wish to indulge your taste, you may fill it with shrub beries, arboretums, and conservatories, and flower-gardens, till every tree and plant and fruit in the whole vegetable kingdom, of really superior beauty and interest, is in your collection. Or, if you wish to turn a penny, you will find it easier to take up certain fruits or plants and grow them to high perfection so as to command a profit in the market than you will to manage the various operations of a large farm. We could point to ten acres of ground from which a larger income has been produced than from any farm of five hundred acres in the country. Gardening, too, offers more variety of interest to a citizen than farming; its operations are less rude and toilsome, and its pleasures more immediate and refined. Citizens, ignorant of farming, should therefore, buy small places, rather than large ones, if they wish to consult their own true interest and happiness. But some of our readers, who have tried the thing, may say that it is a very expensive thing to settle oneself and get well es LETTER FROM SCARRON. 17 to enter the list with Louis le Grand? Thou valuest thyself upon firing a church, but how? when the mistress of the house was gone out to assist Olympias. 'Tis plain, thou hadst not the courage to do it when the goddess was present, and upon the spot. But what is this to what my royal master can boast of, that had destroyed a hundred and a hundred such foolish fabrics in his time?" virtuosos, that since the days of Dioclesian, puny insect as thou art have the impudence no prince has been so great a benefactor to hell as yourself; and as much a master of eloquence as I was once thought to be at -Paris, I want words to tell you how much you are commended here for so heroically trampling under foot the treaty of Ryswick (1697), and opening a new scene of war in your great climacteric, at which age most of the princes before you were such recreants as to think of making up their scores with Heaven, and leaving their neighbours in peace. But you, they say, are above such sordid precedents: and rather than Pluto should want men to people his dominions, are willing to spare him half a million of your own subjects, and that at a juncture, too, when you are not overstocked with them. This has gained you universal applause in these regions; the three Furies sing your praises in every street; Bellona swears there's never a prince in Christendom worth hanging besides yourself; and Charon bustles for you in all companies. He desired me about a week ago to present his most humble respects to you; adding that if it had not been for your majesty he, with his wife and children, must long ago been quartered upon the parish; for which reason he duly drinks your health every morning in a cup of cold Styx next his conscience. Last week, as I was sitting with some of my acquaintance in a public-house, after a great deal of impertinent chat about the affairs of the Milanese and the intended siege of Mantua, the whole company fell a talking of your majesty, and what glorious exploits you had performed in your time. "Why, gentlemen,' says an ill-looked rascal, who proved to be Herostratus, "for Pluto's sake, let not the Grand Monarch run away with all your praises. I have done something memorable in my time too: 'twas I who, out of the gaieté de cœur, and to perpetuate my name, fired the famous temple of the Ephesian Diana, and in two hours consumed that magnificent structure, which was two hundred years a-building; therefore, gentlemen, lavish not away all your praises, I beseech you, upon one man, but allow others their share." 66 Why, thou diminutive, inconsiderable wretch," said I in a great passion to him—" thou worthless idle loggerhead-thou pigmy in sin-thou Tom Thumb in iniquity, how dares such a VOL. VIII. He had no sooner made his exit, but, cries an odd sort of spark, with his hat buttoned up before, like a country scraper: "Under favour, sir, what do you think of me?" "Why, who are you?" replied I to him. "Who am I?" answered he; "Why, Nero, the sixth emperor of Rome, that murdered my ""Come," said I to him, "to stop your prating, I know your history as well as yourself-that murdered your mother, kicked your wife down stairs, despatched two apostles out of the world, begun the first persecution against the Christians, and, lastly, put your master Seneca to death.' [These actions are made light of, and the sarcastic shade proceeds] Whereas, his most Christian majesty, whose advocate I am resolved to be against all opposers whatever, has bravely and generously starved a million of poor Huguenots at home, and sent t'other million of them a-grazing into foreign countries, contrary to solemn edicts and repeated promises, for no other provocation, that I know of, but because they were such coxcombs as to place him upon the throne. In short, friend Nero, thou mayst pass for a rogue of the third or fourth class; but be advised by a stranger, and never shew thyself such a fool as to dispute the pre-eminence with Louis le Grand, who has murdered more men in his reign, let me tell thee, than thou hast murdered tunes, for all thou art the vilest thrummer upon catgut the sun ever beheld. However, to give the devil his due, I will say it before thy face and behind thy back, that if thou hadst reigned as many years as my gracious master has done, and hadst had, instead of Tigellinus, a Jesuit or two to have governed thy conscience, thou mightest, in all probability, have made a much more magnificent figure, and been inferior to none but the mighty monarch I have been talking of." 171 TOM BROWN, |