STORY OF A GALLEY-SLAVE
The next day Farrabesche and his son came to the chateau with game.
The keeper also brought, for Francis, a cocoanut cup, elaborately carved, a genuine work of art, representing a battle. Madame Graslin was walking at the time on the terrace, in the direction which overlooked Les Tascherons. She sat down on a bench, took the cup in her hand and looked earnestly at the deft piece of work. A few tears came into her eyes.
"You must have suffered very much," she said to Farrabesche, after a few moments' silence.
"How could I help it, madame?" he replied; "for I was there without the hope of escape, which supports the life of most convicts."
"An awful life!" she said in a tone of horror, inviting Farrabesche by word and gesture to say more.
Farrabesche took the convulsive trembling and other signs of emotion he saw in Madame Graslin for the powerful interest of compassionate curiosity in himself.
Just then Madame Sauviat appeared, coming down a path as if she meant to join them; but Veronique drew out her handkerchief and made a negative sign; saying, with an asperity she had never before shown to the old woman:--"Leave me, leave me, mother."
"Madame," said Farrabesche, "for ten years I wore there (holding out his leg) a chain fastened to a great iron ring which bound me to another man. During my time I had to live thus with three different convicts. I slept on a wooden bench; I had to work extraordinarily hard to earn a little mattress called a /serpentin/. Each dormitory contains eight hundred men. Each bed, called a /tolard/, holds twenty- four men, chained in couples. Every night the chain of each couple is passed round another great chain which is called the /filet de ramas/.
This chain holds all the couples by the feet, and runs along the bottom of the /tolard/. It took me over two years to get accustomed to that iron clanking, which called out incessantly, 'Thou art a galley- slave!' If I slept an instant some vile companion moved or quarrelled, reminding me of where I was. There is a terrible apprenticeship to make before a man can learn how to sleep. I myself could not sleep until I had come to the end of my strength and to utter exhaustion.
When at last sleep came I had the nights in which to forget. Oh! to /forget/, madame, that was something! Once there, a man must learn to satisfy his needs, even in the smallest things, according to the ways laid down by pitiless regulations. Imagine, madame, the effect such a life produced on a lad like me, who had lived in the woods with the birds and the squirrels! If I had not already lived for six months within prison-walls, I should, in spite of Monsieur Bonnet's grand words--for he, I can truly say, is the father of my soul--I should, ah! I must have flung myself into the sea at the mere sight of my companions. Out-doors I still could live; but in the building, whether to sleep or to eat,--to eat out of buckets, and each bucket filled for three couples,--it was life no longer, it was death; the atrocious faces and language of my companions were always insufferable to me.
Happily, from five o'clock in summer, and from half-past seven o'clock in winter we went, in spite of heat or cold and wind or rain, on 'fatigue,' that is, hard-labor. Thus half this life was spent in the open air; and the air was sweet after the close dormitory packed with eight hundred convicts. And that air, too, is sea-air! We could enjoy the breezes, we could be friends with the sun, we could watch the clouds as they passed above us, we could hope and pray for fine weather! As for me, I took an interest in my work--"
Farrabesche stopped; two heavy tears were rolling down his mistress's face.
"Oh! madame, I have only told you the best side of that life," he continued, taking the expression of her face as meant for him. "The terrible precautions taken by the government, the constant spying of the keepers, the blacksmith's inspection of the chains every day, night and morning, the coarse food, the hideous garments which humiliate a man at all hours, the comfortless sleep, the horrible rattling of eight hundred chains in that resounding hall, the prospect of being shot or blown to pieces by cannon if ten of those villains took a fancy to revolt, all those dreadful things are nothing,-- nothing, I tell you; that is the bright side only. There's another side, madame, and a decent man, a bourgeois, would die of horror in a week. A convict is forced to live with another man; obliged to endure the company of five other men at every meal, twenty-three in his bed at night, and to hear their language! The great society of galley- slaves, madame, has its secret laws; disobey them and you are tortured; obey them, and you become a torturer. You must be either victim or executioner. If they would kill you at once it would at least be the cure of life. But no, they are wiser than that in doing evil. It is impossible to hold out against the hatred of these men; their power is absolute over any prisoner who displeases them, and they can make his life a torment far worse than death. The man who repents and endeavors to behave well is their common enemy; above all, they suspect him of informing; and an informer is put to death, often on mere suspicion. Every hall and community of eight hundred convicts has its tribunal, in which are judged the crimes committed against that society. Not to obey the usages is criminal, and a man is liable to punishment. For instance, every man must co-operate in escapes; every convict has his time assigned him to escape, and all his fellow- convicts must protect and aid him. To reveal what a comrade is doing with a view to escape is criminal. I will not speak to you of the horrible customs and morals of the galleys. No man belongs to himself; the government, in order to neutralize the attempts at revolt or escape, takes pains to chain two contrary natures and interests together; and this makes the torture of the coupling unendurable; men are linked together who hate or distrust each other."