ontamination from each other in this
indiscriminate herding together.

According to the law, those merely accused, the _prevenues_, and those
actually convicted, are kept apart from each other, but in each of these
two classes no distinctions are made,--the homeless unfortunate,
arrested for _delit de vagabondage_, is associated with the criminal
guilty of infanticide or assassination. Even the little girls of ten and
twelve years are kept together in the same promiscuousness, those
already hardened in criminal ways corrupting the more innocent.

The prevenues enjoy certain privileges; they are not obliged to work,
though it is but seldom that they refuse to take up some of the light
sewing which occupies their leisure and brings them in small sums of
money; they are not obliged, when they take their exercise, to walk
round and round in a circle in the preau, forming in line only at the
entrance and the exit. The formalities of search and interrogation, upon
entering the prison, are the same for all, as are the general
regulations and the discipline. All rise at five o'clock in summer, and
at six or half-past six the rest of the year, and all go to bed at
eight; all receive meat with their bouillon only on Sundays. The
children are more favored in this respect, being furnished with eggs,
roast meat, etc.

[Illustration: SAINT-LAZARE: MORNING PRAYER IN THE SECTION DE FEMMES DE
MAUVAISE VIE. After a drawing by G. Amato.]

Everywhere are seen in these gloomy and unwholesome halls and corridors
"the austere and consoling figures" of the Sisters of Marie-Joseph. They
wear a dark robe, sometimes with a white apron, a white _cornette_ under
a black veil which has a blue lining, and they supervise all the details
of the monotonous life of the prison. Rising in the dawn, a half-hour
before any of the prisoners, they perform their devotions, and one of
them rings the bell which summons all to leave their beds; they direct
the workrooms in which the prisoners sew, a Sister sitting upright in a
high chair, like a teacher presiding over her class, and they keep a
watchful eye during the night on all the sleepers, in all the
dormitories, great and little. Their hours of service as guards are from
five or six o'clock in the morning to ten o'clock in the evening. After
this hour, until the morning again, two Sisters remain on watch in the
first section of the prison and one in the second. Their sole comfort
and recompense is found