dy of this huge caravanserai for the indifferent
reception of crime, of misdemeanour, and of misfortune. And those who
came under the two first titles were lodged here through all stages of
their connection with public justice; alike when mere objects of vague
suspicion to the police, when under examination upon a specific charge,
when fully committed for trial, when convicted and under sentence,
awaiting the execution of that sentence, and, in a large proportion of
cases, even through their final stage of punishment, when it happened to
be of any nature compatible with indoor confinement. Hence it arose that
the number of those who haunted the prison gates with or without a title
to admission was enormous; all the relatives, or more properly the
acquaintances and connections of the criminal population within the
prison, being swelled by all the families of needy debtors who came
daily either to offer the consolation of their society, or to diminish
their common expenditure by uniting their slender establishments. One of
the rules applied to the management of this vast multitude that were
every day candidates for admission was, that to save the endless trouble
as well as risk, perhaps, of opening and shutting the main gates to
every successive arrival, periodic intervals were fixed for the
admission by wholesale: and as these periods came round every two hours,
it would happen at many parts of the day that vast crowds accumulated
waiting for the next opening of the gate. These crowds were assembled in
two or three large outer courts, in which also were many stalls and
booths, kept there upon some local privilege of ancient inheritance, or
upon some other plea made good by gifts or bribes--some by Jews and
others by Christians, perhaps equally Jewish. Superadded to these
stationary elements of this miscellaneous population, were others, drawn
thither by pure motives of curiosity, so that altogether an almost
permanent mob was gathered together in these courts; and amid this mob
it was,--from I know not what definite motive, partly because I thought
it probable that amongst these people I should hear the case of Agnes
peculiarly the subject of conversation; and so, in fact, it did really
happen,--but partly, and even more, I believe, because I now awfully
began to shrink from solitude. Tumult I must have, and distraction of
thought. Amid this mob, I say, it was that I passed two days. Feverish I
had been from the first,--an