lf a fagot.--And finally, what name do malefactors
give to their prison? The college. A whole penitentiary system can be
evolved from that word.

Does the reader wish to know where the majority of the songs of the
galleys, those refrains called in the special vocabulary lirlonfa, have
had their birth?

Let him listen to what follows:--

There existed at the Chatelet in Paris a large and long cellar. This
cellar was eight feet below the level of the Seine. It had neither
windows nor air-holes, its only aperture was the door; men could enter
there, air could not. This vault had for ceiling a vault of stone, and
for floor ten inches of mud. It was flagged; but the pavement had rotted
and cracked under the oozing of the water. Eight feet above the floor,
a long and massive beam traversed this subterranean excavation from side
to side; from this beam hung, at short distances apart, chains three
feet long, and at the end of these chains there were rings for the
neck. In this vault, men who had been condemned to the galleys were
incarcerated until the day of their departure for Toulon. They were
thrust under this beam, where each one found his fetters swinging in the
darkness and waiting for him.

The chains, those pendant arms, and the necklets, those open hands,
caught the unhappy wretches by the throat. They were rivetted and
left there. As the chain was too short, they could not lie down. They
remained motionless in that cavern, in that night, beneath that beam,
almost hanging, forced to unheard-of efforts to reach their bread, jug,
or their vault overhead, mud even to mid-leg, filth flowing to their
very calves, broken asunder with fatigue, with thighs and knees giving
way, clinging fast to the chain with their hands in order to obtain some
rest, unable to sleep except when standing erect, and awakened every
moment by the strangling of the collar; some woke no more. In order to
eat, they pushed the bread, which was flung to them in the mud, along
their leg with their heel until it reached their hand.

How long did they remain thus? One month, two months, six months
sometimes; one stayed a year. It was the antechamber of the galleys.
Men were put there for stealing a hare from the king. In this
sepulchre-hell, what did they do? What man can do in a sepulchre, they
went through the agonies of death, and what can man do in hell, they
sang; for song lingers where there is no longer any hope. In the waters
of Malta, when