alled a _tolard_, holds twenty-four men, chained
in couples. Every night the chain of each couple is passed round another
great chain which is called the _filet de ramas_. This chain holds all
the couples by the feet, and runs along the bottom of the _tolard_. It
took me over two years to get accustomed to that iron clanking, which
called out incessantly, 'Thou art a galley-slave!' If I slept an instant
some vile companion moved or quarrelled, reminding me of where I was.
There is a terrible apprenticeship to make before a man can learn how
to sleep. I myself could not sleep until I had come to the end of my
strength and to utter exhaustion. When at last sleep came I had the
nights in which to forget. Oh! to _forget_, madame, that was something!
Once there, a man must learn to satisfy his needs, even in the smallest
things, according to the ways laid down by pitiless regulations.
Imagine, madame, the effect such a life produced on a lad like me, who
had lived in the woods with the birds and the squirrels! If I had not
already lived for six months within prison-walls, I should, in spite of
Monsieur Bonnet's grand words--for he, I can truly say, is the father of
my soul--I should, ah! I must have flung myself into the sea at the
mere sight of my companions. Out-doors I still could live; but in the
building, whether to sleep or to eat,--to eat out of buckets, and each
bucket filled for three couples,--it was life no longer, it was
death; the atrocious faces and language of my companions were always
insufferable to me. Happily, from five o'clock in summer, and from
half-past seven o'clock in winter we went, in spite of heat or cold and
wind or rain, on 'fatigue,' that is, hard-labor. Thus half this life was
spent in the open air; and the air was sweet after the close dormitory
packed with eight hundred convicts. And that air, too, is sea-air! We
could enjoy the breezes, we could be friends with the sun, we could
watch the clouds as they passed above us, we could hope and pray for
fine weather! As for me, I took an interest in my work--"

Farrabesche stopped; two heavy tears were rolling down his mistress's
face.

"Oh! madame, I have only told you the best side of that life," he
continued, taking the expression of her face as meant for him. "The
terrible precautions taken by the government, the constant spying of the
keepers, the blacksmith's inspection of the chains every day, night and
morning, the coarse food, the hideou