I said before, there were to be found among them men of open character, resolute, intrepid, accustomed to self-command. These were held involuntarily in esteem. Although they were very jealous of their reputation, they endeavoured to annoy no one, and never insulted one another without a motive. Their conduct was on all points full of
1 An allusion to the two rows of soldiers, armed with green rods, between which convicts condemned to corporal punishment had to pass.
dignity. They were rational, and almost always obedient, not on principle, or from any respect for duty, but as if in virtue of a mutual convention between themselves and the administration-a convention of which the advantages were plain enough.
The officials, moreover, behaved prudently towards them. I remember that one prisoner of the resolute and intrepid -type, known to possess the instincts of a wild beast, was summoned one day to be whipped. It was during the summer, and no work was being done. The governor of the prison was in the orderly room near the principal entrance, ready to assist at the punishment. This officer was dreaded by the prisoners, whom he had brought to such a state that they trembled before him. Severe to the point of insanity, ‘he threw himself upon them,’ to use their expression. But it was above all his look, as penetrating as that of a lynx, that was feared. It was impossible to conceal anything from him: he saw, so to say, without looking. On entering the prison, he knew at once what was going on. Accordingly the convicts one and all called him the man with eight eyes. His system was bad, for it had the effect of irritating men who were already irascible. But for the deputy governor, a well-bred and reasonable man who moderated the savage onslaughts of his superior, the latter would have caused sad misfortunes by his incompetent administration. I do not understand how he managed to retire from the service safe and sound. It is true that he left after being called before a court martial.
A prisoner, though he turned pale when summoned, generally lay down courageously and without uttering a word to receive the terrible rods; then he got up and shook himself. He bore the misfortune calmly, philosophically, it is true, though he was never punished at random, nor before careful inquiries had been made. But this time the victim considered himself innocent. Pale with fear, he walked quietly towards the escort of soldiers, but as he did so he managed to conceal in his sleeve a shoemaker’s awl. Now the prisoners were strictly forbidden to carry sharp instruments about them; examinations were frequently, minutely, and unexpectedly made, and all infractions of the rule were severely punished.
But as it is difficult to deprive a criminal of what he is determined to conceal, and as, moreover, sharp instruments are necessarily used in the prison, they were never destroyed. If an official managed to confiscate them the convicts very soon procured new ones.
On the occasion in question all the convicts were pressed against the palisade, with palpitating hearts, peering through the crevices. It was known that this time Petroff would not allow himself to be flogged, that the governor’s end had come. But at the critical moment the latter got into his carriage and departed, leaving the direction of the punishment to a subordinate. ‘God has saved him!’said the convicts. As for Petroff, he underwent his punishment quietly. Once the governor had gone his anger abated. Prisoners are submissive and obedient up to a point, but there is a limit which must not be crossed. Nothing is more curious than these strange outbursts of disobedience and rage. Often a man who has for years endured the cruellest punishment will revolt for a trifle, for a mere nothing. He might pass for a madman; that, in fact, is what is said of him.
I have already stated that during many years I never remarked the least sign of repentance nor even the slightest uneasiness in a man with regard to his crime, and that most of the convicts considered neither honour nor conscience, holding that they had a right to art as they thought fit. Certainly vanity, bad example, deceitfulness, and false shame were responsible for much. On the other hand, who can claim to have sounded the depths of those hearts given over to perdition, and to have found them closed to all light? It would seem indeed that during all those years I should have been able to detect some indication, however fugitive, of some regret, of some moral suffering. I positively saw nothing of the kind. One cannot judge of crime with ready-made; opinions: its philosophy is a little more complicated than people think. It is acknowledged that neither convict prisons, nor the hulks, nor any system of hard labour ever reformed a criminal. These forms of chastisement only punish him and reassure society against the offences he might commit. Confinement, regulation, and excessive work have no effect but to develop in these men profound hatred, a thirst for forbidden enjoyment, and frightful recalcitration. On the other hand I am convinced that the celebrated cellular system gives results which are specious and deceitful. It deprives a criminal of his initiative, of his energy, enervates his soul by weakening and frightening it, and at last exhibits a dried-up mummy as a model of repentance and amendment.
The criminal who has revolted against society hates it, and considers himself in the right; society was wrong, not he. Has he not, moreover, undergone his punishment? Accordingly he is absolved, acquitted in his own eyes. In spite of different opinions, everyone will acknowledge that there are acts which everywhere and always, under no matter what legal system, are beyond doubt criminal, and should be regarded as such so long as man is man. It is only in prison that I have heard related with childish, unrestrained laughter the strangest, most atrocious offences. I shall never forget a certain parricide, formerly a nobleman and a public functionary. A true prodigal son, he had caused his father great grief. The old man had tried in vain to restrain him by remonstrance on the fatal slope down which he was sliding. But the son was heavily in debt, and as his father was suspected of having, besides an estate, a sum of ready money, he killed him in order to enter more quickly into the inheritance. This crime was not discovered until a month afterwards, during which time the murderer, who meanwhile had informed the police of his father’s disappearance, continued his debauches. At last, during his absence, the police discovered the old man’s corpse in a drain. The grey head was severed from the trunk, but replaced in its original position. The body was entirely dressed. Beneath, as if in derision, the assassin had placed a cushion.
The young man confessed nothing. He was degraded, deprived of his nobiliary privileges, and condemned to twenty years’ hard labour. As long as I knew him I always found him to be indifferent to his position. He was the most light-minded, inconsiderate man that I ever met, although he was far from being a fool. I never observed in him any strong tendency to cruelty. The other convicts despised him, not on account of his crime, of which there was never any question, but because he was without dignity. He sometimes spoke of his father. One day for instance, boasting of the hereditary good health of his family, he said: ‘My father, for example, until his death was never ill.’
Animal insensibility carried to such a point is most remarkable-it is, indeed, phenomenal. There must have been in this case some organic defect in the man, some physical and moral monstrosity hitherto unknown to science, and not simply crime. Naturally I did not believe so atrocious a crime; but people from the same town as himself, who knew all the details of his history, told me of it. The facts wereso clear that it would have been madness not to accept them. The prisoners once heard him cry out during his sleep: ‘ Hold him! hold him! Cut his head off, his head, his head!’
Nearly all the convicts dreamed aloud, or were delirious in their sleep. Insults, words of slang, knives, hatchets, seemed constantly present in their dreams. ‘ We are crushed!’ they would say; ‘we are without entrails; that is why we shriek at night.’
Hard labour in our fortress was not an occupation, but an obligation. The convicts did their job; they worked the number of hours fixed by law, and then returned to the prison. They hated their free time. If a convict did not do some voluntary work, he could not have endured his con finement. How could these men, all strongly constituted who had lived sumptuously and desired so to live again, who had been brought together against their will after society had cast them off-how could they live in a normal and natural manner? Man cannot exist without work, without legal, natural property. Depart from these conditions, and he becomes perverted and changed into a wild beast. Accordingly, every convict, through natural requirements and by the instinct of self-preservation, had a trade-an occupation of some kind.
The long summer days were occupied almost entirely by hard labour. The night was so short that we had only