TRAINING FLIES, FLEAS, AND RATS

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1509, 31 January 1901, Page 54

TRAINING FLIES, FLEAS, AND RATS

HOW CONDEMNED ANARCHISTS

PASS THEIR TIME

In spite of /the natural abhorrence which one feels for such men as Breschi ,tlie assassin of King Humbert, and Lucheni, the cruel murderer of the beautiful Empress of Austria, most people—when they hear that these anarchist assassins are immured in small, almost dark cells, which they are never allowed to leave, and in which they are doomed to- remain, for the rest of their lives- in solitude and silence — exclaim: “Poor wretches/' and experience a. thrill of pity for the sufferings of these murderers.

Terrible, however, as their fate is, there can be little doubt that in the process of time, these men will be able to accommodate themselves to it and even extract a certain amount of pleasure out of what appearsl to be, that most terrible of all fates l , a living death. Few .perhaps, of the readers of that wonderful romance “Monte Christo” realise that the methods of self-destruction deL vised by Abbe Feria were founded on fact, and yet the authentic annals of life-long prisoners prove conclusively, fortunately for humanity, that it is absolutely impossible to devise a system of imprisonment that deprives prisoners of pleasure in their lives.

Take, for instance, the world-renowned anarchist Communist, Louise Michel, the "red virgin” of the Paris Commune, whose death sentence in 1871 was commuted to perpetual imprisonment in that French Convict inferno. New Caledonia. For the first three years of her existence there she was kept in solitary confinement in a palisaded hut, and during all that period she never once heard.a human voice, except when the sentinels were changed, when the military orders would perhaps reach her ears. The savage rigour of her confinement may be imagined when it is mentioned that once she fell ill, and remained in a comatose condition for some hours. No. one came near her, and to this day Louise Michel, who- now lives in this country, bears the scars on her neck and arms from the bites of the red ants, which almost devoured her alive while she remained insensible. (It would be difficult to imagine a more terrible fate, yet Louise states that ©he was happy. Probably her belief that she was suffering in the cause of humanity buoyed her up-; but apart from this she found an .apparently endless .source of amusement in taming and training flies. She found it possible to teach these insects to come to- her when she called, and by dint of infinite patience succeeded in training them to fly to her when required by allowing the docile ones to feast off moistened bread.

Strange to say, she remarked that the male flies were extremely selfish and always prevented the females from feasting, until they were satisfied. They, were also extremely jealous, and if their mistress paid extra attention to one particular fly, the others invariably fought him savagely. Ratsi and mice, it is well known, are favourite pets of prisoners, and Prince Peter Krapotkin, the well-known, philosophical anarchist and scientist, and the late Sergius Stepniak, both became proficient in these animals tricks, which served to solace the weary hours of confinement.

Some sixty years ago when an Italian named Rossi visited this country with a troupe of performing fleas, he stated that he had been in solitary confinement in an Italian, prison for fifteen years, and that while immured there he conceived the idea and succeeded in executing it, by dint of extraordinary patience ana perseverance, of making pets of some of the fleas that infested his cell.

Prisoners who are allowed books frequently become magnificent scholars during their incarceration.

Thirty years ago, for instance, Michael Davitt was an ignorant, though an intelligent lad. Now he speaks and writes fluently several European languages, having learnt their grammar, spelling and pronunciation through committing several foreign dictionaries to memory. --These facts show that existence under solitary confinement, though terrible is not absolutely" devoid of pleasure, and that at the present moment the condemned anarchist assassins may be obtaining some sort of amusement, despite the surroundir,g of the living tomb into which they are plunged.