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In the canton of the Grisons there is still in common use an imprecation, "Mist, go away, or I'll heal you," which points to an old custom of burning up the fog with fire. A longer form of the curse lingers in the Vallée des Bagnes of the canton Valais. It runs thus: "Mist, mist, fly, fly, or St.
"Ay Bras de Fer alias Coupe-gorge alias Triphot alias Lenoir alias a hundred other names. Bras de Fer was the one he went by at Toulon and a real devil he was in the Bagnes! He escaped three times, and was twice caught and brought back again. The third time he killed one sentry, injured another for life, and got clear off. That was five years ago, and I left soon after.
The annals of Norfolk Island, and the Bagnes of Toulon, would be outraged by their recital. I should be sorry to apply to a minister of any religion the opprobrious epithet of a "Surpliced Ruffian." It would seem, however, that Archdeacon Laffan aspires to the "bad eminence" of the apologist of assassins.
The bill further provided, besides this mitigation of the solitary confinement system, that the "Bagnes," where galley slaves had hitherto labored, should be replaced by houses of hard labor, and that smaller prisons should be erected for minor offenses instead of sending criminals convicted of them to the great central prisons.
I am sorry that the Americans ascribe to Louis Napoleon and to the French people the hostility to human rights as shown by those échappés des bagnes de la littérature. Louis Napoleon and the French people have nothing in common with those literary blacklegs. The Journal des Débats, the Opinion Nationale, the Presse, the Siècle, etc., constitute the true and honest organs of opinion in France.
Having reason to believe that he was living in Paris under an assumed name, and wearing a decoration to which he had no right, I prosecuted certain inquiries about him. The result of those inquiries led me to conclude that he was an escaped convict from the Bagnes of Toulon. Never having seen him at Toulon, I was unable to prove this fact without assistance.
One must read of the martyr-filled prisons of the Inquisition, of the crowds chained together in the Bagnes, of the hot, lead chambers of Venice, and the black, wet gulf of the wells be thoroughly shaken by these pictures of misery, that we may with a quieter pulsation of the heart wander through the gallery of the prison-cells. Here is light, here is air; here it is more humane.
At Toulon they visited the "Bagnes," or prison for the galley slaves. These poor wretches fared horribly, while the loss of life among them was terrible. They worked very hard, slept on boards, and were fed upon bread and dry beans.
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