The Caillaux Drama

office of the Figaro to the police-station in her own luxurious car. She drove to Saint Lazare in one of the horrible red taxicabs which have rattled for too many years about th

d provisional and permanent detention for men. On July 13, 1789, when famine raged in Paris, the mob broke into Saint Lazare, and looted the enormous stock of food which the Lazarists were known to be keeping there. The monks were driven out, the building sacked and the store houses gutted by fire. The convent of Saint Lazare then became a State prison in which suspects were kept. It is now a prison [Pg 46] for women. There is room for about twelve hundred prisoners, but at a pinch the old building would hold 1600. The prisoners are divided into three categories. The first consists of women who are awaiting trial, or who have been sentenced to less than a year's imprisonment. The second division consists of girls under age who have been sentenced to confinement in a house of correction till they are twenty-one, the third division is that of unfortunates whose sentences of imprisonment are short ones. Saint Lazare prison, though of course under State control, is in practice ruled by a body of nuns who, while responsible to the authorities, have really the entire m

ster Léonide made a sign to one of the two women who stood by her. The woman, a prison attendant who goes by the ironically prison-given name of a soubrette, opened a door and motioned to No. 12 to walk straight on down a half-lighted misty corridor, painted a muddy brown. This corridor seems endless. It is like a street in a nightmare. There are doors on either side which seem to leap out of the half darkness, and at long, long intervals a little flame of gas. It is only quite recently that there is any incandescent gas in St. Lazare and what there is, even now, is quite inadequate, merely serving, as a former prisoner expressed it, "to show us the darkness around." The anticipatory mental torture of this first long journey down the [Pg 49] interminable corridor must be terrific to a woman whose life, before her imprisonment, has run on easy lines. The doors are named and numbered. Cell No. 8, Cell No. 9, Workshop No. 2, Library, and so forth. All of the

, is a woman called Jeanne (I do not know her surname), who murdered her husband with a penknife some months ago. She is a quiet, somewhat surly woman, and good conduct has obtained for her the privilege of acting as soubrette in two of the pistoles, for enforced idleness is one of the prison's worst punishments. One of the favourite newspaper stories which were in circulation soon after Madame Caillaux's imprisonment was [Pg 51] one which told of the furnishing of the pistole in which she had been put. Journalists had seen a big motor lorry arrive with her furniture, we were told, and the cell had been made as comfortable as a room in her own house. This story gained a semblance of truth from the reproduction in the papers of the ar

inen can be put, behind the bed a little trap through which the wardresses can peep into the cell at any moment. The floor of No. 12 is tiled with rough red tiles, much worn, and broken. There is a stove, but it has never warmed the cell, and in cold weather the damp and cold are very bitter. No. 12 has three [Pg 53] windows, strongly barred, and in addition to the bars there is wire netting. This wire netting has its reason. The windows of No. 12 look out on the courtyard in which, twice a day, the prisoners are allowed for exercise. This courtyard is quite pleasant in the summer, for there are several trees in it, but the prisoners have an unpleasant habit of attracting the attention of the inmates of pistole No. 12 by throwing stones at the windows, as a sign that chocolate or cakes would be acceptable. In this courtyard inside the old convent of Saint Lazare, which has the picturesque charm of great age, some of

and wire netting, the cruel silence and soul-deadening simplicity. No flowers, no ribbons, no armchair, no cushions, very little light after sundown, none of the thousand and one trifles which brighten the poorest room of the poorest woman. No conversation, no letters which have not been read first by strangers, visits hedged in with the severest of formality, no name, a number-in a word no life, merely existence, and existence without the sympathy which makes existence lovable. This is the mind-picture I have formed, and this is a true picture of Madame Caillaux's daily life in pistole No. 12. Her principal distraction is her occasional drive with two plain clothes policemen to the Palace of Justice, and her examination there by the magistrate. And yesterday this woman was fêted and cherished by society, had a large circle of friends, was busy every moment of the day. Now she has nothing to do but to think. She may write, she may [Pg 58] read, but she may only exist. Her existence has become a backwater without a ripple in it, a dark cul-de-sac into which no sunshine penetrates. Is it surprising that the constant presence of a soubrette of the prison should be considered necessary? A man smashed a water-bottle and cut his throat in Paris the other day to avoid six months imprisonment. He had been in prison before, awaiting trial, and he knew what it meant. And he was a rough man with no refined tastes, and no need of refinement. In Italy the other day a brigand went mad after solitary confinement. The prisoner in Saint Lazare is not even allowed to go mad. A great deal of nonsense has appeared in the English newspapers about Madame Caillaux's life in Saint Lazare. Paris papers have printed stories (the authorities have always contradicted them) drawing a picture of a comfortable room with carpet on the floor and curtains to the windows. The woman who described to me the real life in Saint Lazare assures me that the "carpet" is merely a strip of rug to keep the tiled floor, with the dangers of the broken tiles, from the prisoner's bare feet when she steps out of bed, and that it is a [Pg 59] physical impossibility that any curtains should be hung. Madame Steinheil was allowed to hang sheets in front of the windows. Perhaps Madame Caillaux has obtained this permission too. The prisoner is allowed to get her food from outside, but this food is of the plainest and simplest. She is allowed to receive visits, but the visits are rare ones, and she is never alone with her visitor. She may write, but what she writes is always read. She may receive letters but she knows that all her letters pass through other hands and are subject to careful scrutiny before she gets them. She has no privacy at all and knows that she is always under watch and that even when she is alone in her cell there is an eye at the little trapdoor which peeps into it over her bed. The prisoner in the pistole has not even the consolation of company during exercise hours, and she must sometimes envy the women whom she can see from her windows. She can talk to the nuns, but they answer as little as possible. She lives out her life in a whisper. The soubrette is a prisoner. She talks a little sometimes-prison talk. [Pg 60] She brings the pistolière her cup of soup at seven in the morning, and tells her all the prison news, but

men near her and round her. But even here she sits apart, and Madame Caillaux, I am told, has not attended mass. "There is only one hope in Saint Lazare," said the former prisoner who gave me most of this information, "we all hope for our day of trial." "All of you?" I asked. "Oh,