ison for women, it is divided into two
sections, for those accused, and for those condemned to less than two
months' imprisonment; among the latter are women of the town, who have a
special hospital. The only _condamnees_ who remain for any length of
time within these walls are the sick, nursing women having a child less
than four years of age, and those enceinte. There is a special _creche_
for the newly-born babies,--for there are no less than fifty or sixty
births annually. The nursing mothers, whether convicted or only
accused, have special dormitories, and there is a shady garden for
the wet-nurses. The prostitutes are provided with a special section.
These unfortunates have not passed before any court; they have been
condemned without appeal by a Chef de Bureau of the Prefecture de Police
to an imprisonment of from three days to two months. During the day, the
inmates are assembled in a workroom under the surveillance of one of the
Sisters of the Order of Marie-Joseph, to whom is confided a general
oversight of the workrooms and the dormitories. These prisoners take
their meals in common, take their exercise walking in a long file, and
at night sleep in a great chilly and crowded dormitory. Those who have
merited it by their conduct are given one of the cells of the
_menagerie_, a double story of grated cells, furnished each with a bed,
a stool, a shelf, and an earthenware vessel. The menagerie was formerly
devoted to the service of the _correction maternelle_.

[Illustration: RECORD-OFFICE OF THE ROTUNDA OF THE DEPARTMENTAL PRISON
OF MAZAS. ABOVE IS THE PULPIT FROM WHICH MASS IS SAID EACH SUNDAY.

Engraved by E. Tilly.]

In the great dormitories, there may be witnessed each morning such a
scene as that reproduced in the illustration, the prayer addressed to
the image of the Virgin on the wall, decked out with faded artificial
flowers and with tapers in front of her; following the example of the
Sister, all stoop with more or less reverence before this symbol and
utter with more or less sincerity from impure lips the prayer for a pure
heart. This grand dormitory is a great hall containing more than eighty
beds arranged in four rows. The red tile floor is of irreproachable
cleanliness, the eighty beds, with their gray blankets and white
bolsters, are arranged with military symmetry. But this cleanliness and
this good order, it is claimed, count but for little in the amelioration
of these unfortunates, gathering c