Alas! it is because reason is still stronger than love, and logic
more tenacious than crime; it is because here as everywhere in
our civilization there reigns an insoluble contradiction. Let us
not wander into fantastic worlds; let us embrace, in all its
frightful nudity, the real one.
Le crime fait la honte, et non pas l'echafaud,[27]
says the proverb. By the simple fact that man is punished,
provided he deserved to be, he is degraded: the penalty renders
him infamous, not by virtue of the definition of the code, but by
reason of the fault which caused the punishment. Of what
importance, then, is the materiality of the punishment? of what
importance all your penitentiary systems? What you do is to
satisfy your feelings, but is powerless to rehabilitate the
unfortunate whom your justice strikes. The guilty man, once
branded by chastisement, is incapable of reconciliation; his
stain is indelible, and his damnation eternal. If it were
possible for it to be otherwise, the penalty would cease to be
proportional to the offence; it would be no more than a fiction,
it would be nothing.
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