The examination began, and the magistrate thought it advisable not
to put one of the members of the Patron Minette band in solitary
confinement, as it was hoped he might chatter. This was Brujon,
the hairy man of the Rue du Petit Banquier; he was turned into the
Charlemagne Court, and the eyes of the spies were kept upon him.
This name of Brujon is one of the recollections of La Force. In the
hideous yard called the Bâtiment Neuf,--which the governor named the
Court of St. Bernard, and the robbers christened the Lion's Den,--and
on the wall covered with scars and leprosy, that rose on the left to
the height of the roof, and close to a rusty old iron gate which led
to the old chapel of the ducal house of La Force, converted into a
sleeping-ward for prisoners, there might have been seen, twelve years
ago, a species of Bastille, clumsily engraved with a nail in the stone,
and beneath it this signature,--
BRUJON, 1811.
The Brujon of 1811 was the father of the Brujon of 1832. The latter,
of whom we could only catch a glimpse in the Gorbeau trap, was a very
crafty and artful young fellow, with a downcast and plaintive air. It
was in consequence of this air that the magistrate turned him loose,
believing him more useful in the Charlemagne yard than in a secret
cell. Robbers do not interrupt their labors because they are in the
hands of justice, and do not trouble themselves about such a trifle.
Being in prison for one crime does not prevent another being commenced.
There are artists who have a picture in the Exhibition, but for all
that work at a new one in their studio. Brujon seemed stupefied by
prison; he might be seen standing for hours in the yard near the
canteen man's stall, contemplating like an idiot the mean tariff of
prices of the canteen which began with "garlic, fifty-two centimes,"
and ended with "cigar, five centimes." Or else he passed his time in
trembling, shaking his teeth, declaring he had the fever, and inquiring
whether one of the twenty-six beds in the Infirmary were vacant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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