hin a prison;
the walls are double the thickness of the rest. The gratings are every
day carefully examined by jailers, whose herculean proportions and cold
pitiless expression prove them to have been chosen to reign over their
subjects for their superior activity and intelligence. The court-yard of
this quarter is enclosed by enormous walls, over which the sun glances
obliquely, when it deigns to penetrate into this gulf of moral and
physical deformity. On this paved yard are to be seen,--pacing to and
fro from morning till night, pale, careworn, and haggard, like so
many shadows,--the men whom justice holds beneath the steel she is
sharpening. There, crouched against the side of the wall which attracts
and retains the most heat, they may be seen sometimes talking to one
another, but more frequently alone, watching the door, which sometimes
opens to call forth one from the gloomy assemblage, or to throw in
another outcast from society.

The court of Saint-Bernard has its own particular apartment for the
reception of guests; it is a long rectangle, divided by two upright
gratings placed at a distance of three feet from one another to prevent
a visitor from shaking hands with or passing anything to the prisoners.
It is a wretched, damp, nay, even horrible spot, more especially when we
consider the agonizing conferences which have taken place between those
iron bars. And yet, frightful though this spot may be, it is looked upon
as a kind of paradise by the men whose days are numbered; it is so rare
for them to leave the Lions' Den for any other place than the barrier
Saint-Jacques or the galleys!

In the court which we have attempted to describe, and from which a damp
vapor was rising, a young man with his hands in his pockets, who had
excited much curiosity among the inhabitants of the "Den," might be seen
walking. The cut of his clothes would have made him pass for an elegant
man, if those clothes had not been torn to shreds; still they did not
show signs of wear, and the fine cloth, beneath the careful hands of
the prisoner, soon recovered its gloss in the parts which were still
perfect, for the wearer tried his best to make it assume the appearance
of a new coat. He bestowed the same attention upon the cambric front of
a shirt, which had considerably changed in color since his entrance into
the prison, and he polished his varnished boots with the corner of a
handkerchief embroidered with initials surmounted by a coro