lt road.

He was escorted along a corridor, through a room full of policemen, down
a narrow flight of steps, across a kind of cellar, and then up a steep
staircase which seemed to have no terminus.

Finally he reached a long narrow galley, upon which opened many doors,
bearing different numbers.

The custodian of the unhappy cashier stopped before one of these doors,
and said:

"Here we are; here your fate will be decided."

At this remark, uttered in a tone of deep commiseration, Prosper could
not refrain from shuddering.

It was only too true, that on the other side of this door was a man upon
whose decision his freedom depended.

Summoning all his courage, he turned the door-knob, and was about to
enter when the constable stopped him.

"Don't be in such haste," he said; "you must sit down here, and wait
till your turn comes; then you will be called."

The wretched man obeyed, and his keeper took a seat beside him.

Nothing is more terrible and lugubrious than this gallery of the judges
of instruction.

Stretching the whole length of the wall is a wooden bench blackened by
constant use. This bench has for the last ten years been daily occupied
by all the murderers, thieves, and suspicious characters of the
Department of the Seine.

Sooner or later, fatally, as filth rushes to a sewer, does crime
reach this gallery, this dreadful gallery with one door opening on the
galleys, the other on the scaffold. This place was vulgarly and pithily
denominated by a certain magistrate as the great public wash-house of
all the dirty linen in Paris.

When Prosper reached the gallery it was full of people. The bench was
almost entirely occupied. Beside him, so close as to touch his shoulder,
sat a man with a sinister countenance, dressed in rags.

Before each door, which belonged to a judge of instruction, stood groups
of witnesses talking in an undertone.

Policemen were constantly coming and going with prisoners. Sometimes,
above the noise of their heavy boots, tramping along the flagstones,
could be heard a woman's stifled sobs, and looking around you would
see some poor mother or wife with her face buried in her handkerchief,
weeping bitterly.

At short intervals a door would open and shut, and a bailiff call out a
name or number.

This stifling atmosphere, and the sight of so much misery, made the
cashier ill and faint; he was feeling as if another five minutes' stay
among these wretched creatures would mak