erve for a table; no
bed, a chair stuffed with straw. Under the feet, a brick floor; the
first impression was of darkness, the second, of cold." In addition to
the hammock and the bedding, the furniture consisted of a table with a
drawer, an earthenware vessel, a porringer, a cup in wrought-iron,
tinned over, a wooden spoon, a spittoon, called _genieux_, two brooms,
three shelves in whitewood, a wardrobe set in the wall. The round hole,
to which M. Hugo objected, was used by the prisoners as a means of
speech with each other; by conquering their scruples--if they had
any--and inserting their heads in this hole, they were able to make
their words carry from one cell to another and even the entire length of
the gallery, as through a speaking-tube. The authorities were not
unaware of this arrangement, and by placing an agent in the basement
they could have surprised these confidential communications.

The new arrival from the Depot, after being subjected to the usual
formalities, after having lost his civil personality and changed his
name for an official number, was at first disposed to rejoice in the
solitude of his cell after the hideous promiscuousness of the Depot, but
this solitary confinement would soon have become unendurable, had it not
been for the daily labor with which they were all occupied. Their
exercise was taken in the _preaux cellulaires_, oblong or converging
cells under low sheds, through the iron grating of one side of which
they could look out into the narrow space of the court-yard. All the
prisons of the department of the Seine are furnished by a contractor,
who supplies the provisions for the prisoners at a fixed price plus a
percentage of their small earnings.

[Illustration: SEARCHING A PRISONER AT SAINT-LAZARE, THE GREAT PRISON
FOR WOMEN.

After a drawing by G. Amato.]

This prison was built between 1845 and 1850 by the architects Gilbert
and Lecointe, on the general plans of the English prisons of the same
nature, and was considered at the time a model institution. It succeeded
the Prison de la Force, in the Rue Pavee-au-Marais, immortalized in a
chapter of _Les Miserables_; the new prison was known officially as the
Nouvelle-Force. Popular usage, however, gave it the name which it
retained, from the Place Mazas, at the end of the Pont d'Austerlitz,--the
name of the colonel of the Fourteenth Regiment of the line, killed at
Austerlitz. His family protested strongly against this usage, and in