in the fresh air save
twice a week, when the prisoners were turned out on the flat roof of
the tower, where they might sun themselves for an hour or two under
the muzzle of a guard.

Such was the treatment endured by twelve of my men during the year
they continued in France. There are some folks who may be charitable
enough to remark--_that slavers deserved no better!_

I believe that convicts in the central prisons of France, where they
were either made or allowed to work, fared better in every respect
than in the provincial lock-ups on the coast. There is no doubt,
however, that the above description at the epoch of my incarceration,
was entirely true of all the smaller jurisdictions, whose culprits
were simply doomed to confinement without labor.

Often did my heart bleed for the poor sailors, whom I aided to the
extent of prudence from my slender means, when I knew not how long it
might be my fate to remain an inmate of the chateau. After these
unfortunate men had disposed of all their spare garments to obtain now
and then a meagre soup to moisten their stony loaves, they were nearly
a year without tasting either meat or broth! Once only,--on the
anniversary of ST. PHILIPPE,--the Sisters of Charity gave them a pair
of bullock's heads to make a _festival_ in honor of the Good King of
the French!

CHAPTER XLVI.

As the apartment rented by us from the jailer was the only one in the
prison he had a right to dispose of for his own benefit, several other
culprits, able to pay for comfortable lodgings, were from time to time
locked up in it. These occasional visitors afforded considerable
entertainment for our seclusion, as they were often persons of quality
arrested for petty misdemeanors or political opinions, and sometimes
_chevaliers d'industrie_, whose professional careers were rich with
anecdote and adventure.

It was probably a month after we began our intimacy with this
"government boarding-house" that our number was increased by a
gentleman of cultivated manners and foppish costume. He was, perhaps,
a little too much over-dressed with chains, trinkets, and perfumed
locks, to be perfectly _comme il faut_, yet there was an intellectual
power about his forehead and eyes, and a bewitching smile on his lips,
that insinuated themselves into my heart the moment I beheld him. He
was precisely the sort of man who is considered by nine tenths of the
world as a very "fascinating individual."

Accordingly,