The Happy Jail

Up to 1947, the prisoners pent behind the grim stone walls of the old prison in the little Normandy town of Pont-l'Eveque were an unimaginative crew--mostly drunks, chicken thieves, wife-beaters and petty racketeers--and their prison life was as dreary as their crimes. Then, on a certain hot afternoon in July, a new warden took over. Pert as a pouter pigeon, rotund little Fernand Billa was a jailer less interested in penology than in poetry and strong pastis (a variant of absinthe). With plenty of verses and good drink to hand, Billa could find even a prison wilderness paradise enow.

On his very first rounds of Pont-l'Eveque prison, Warden Billa found a kindred spirit in Rene Grainville, a forger and car thief. "You know," Rene told him, "I'm only here because of wild oats sown in my youth. I'm really a poet, and I've written several novels." Billa was fascinated. "You," Billa said at last, "are obviously misplaced. I appoint you prison accountant."

The Special Cases. Scarcely had Grainville moved into his new post when another prisoner, a petty thief named Jean Manguy, caught the warden's ear with some choice views on Baudelaire, Proust and Dramatist Henry Bernstein. "Ah," said Warden Billa, "I appoint you my private secretary."

From then on, life within the walls of Pont-l'Eveque underwent a subtle change. With Convicts Grainville and Manguy in virtually complete charge, the new chief warden found plenty of time to enjoy his poetry and his pastis. The prisoners got keys to their cells and were permitted to move about at will. Unexplained guests came and went. Rude prison fare was augmented with Epicurean delicacies. Many prison inmates began to take their breakfast in bed, and often, at the dinner hour, they wandered out for an aperitif in the village cafes. A crude guard who protested such goings-on was sternly reprimanded by Warden Billa. "These men," said the warden, "are intellectuals. This is a special case." To Billa himself, the prisoners returned kindness for kindness. One night, when two prisoners found Billa lying drunk on the sidewalk, they thoughtfully loaded him into a wheelbarrow and trundled him back to jail.

Only Words. Like all good things, however, the happy life at Pont-l'Eveque was eventually soured by those who took too great advantage of it. The principal serpent in Warden Billa's paradise was an ardent, free-lancing lover who sent so many uncensored love letters that authorities took notice. An investigation followed, and the carefree warden was arrested along with eight of his prisoners.

Last week, no longer a warden, Fernand Billa went on trial for "criminal negligence." One of the beneficiaries of his kindness, himself on trial for forging his own passes out of the prison, did his best to help. "Sometimes I gave him a swig of red Bordeaux or a chicken wing," testified the prisoner. "He was my guest, that's all." Billa's lawyer entered an eloquent appeal: "Billa is a pioneer of the new penitentiary doctrine which, so far as possible, would keep the prisoner from any contact with the prison." But all this was of no avail. Ex-Warden Billa was sentenced to serve three years at hard labor in a tougher prison, where liberte, egalite and fraternite are only words on official documents.

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