Sainte-Pélagie (Maison de Correction), in the Rue du Puits-de-l'Ermite,
though one of the smallest and worst-conditioned prisons in Paris, is
one of the most celebrated, and the only one imprisonment in which is
made a subject of jest. This singular reputation it owes to the numerous
journalists and men of letters--Béranger, Alfred de Musset, Théophile
Gautier, Balzac, Eugène Suë, J. Richepin, Henri Rochefort, among
others--who have been sent here by a censorious government. These gentry
have so exploited the _Pavillon_, the section of the prison devoted to
the _politiques_, with its "great and little tomb," "little and great
Siberia;" they have so ostentatiously received their friends every
afternoon, from one to five, in their cells; they have so proudly worn
their beards and their usual garments, as to diffuse a popular
impression that imprisonment in this edifice is rather a joke than
otherwise. Nevertheless, the _Pavillon_, says M. Paul Strauss, "is only
one quarter of the ugliest, the most frightful prison in Paris;
fortunately, it is devoted to speedy destruction, and it is by this one
that the work of reformation of the penal institutions of the Seine will
doubtless be inaugurated; there is no demolition more urgently demanded
than this, in the unanimous opinion of all those who have visited it.
The extent to which the buildings are falling to decay, the narrowness
and lack of cleanliness in the workroom, corridors, and dormitories, are
not less offensive than the promiscuousness of the life in common, daily
and nightly. Nowhere is the defile of the prisoners at the sound of the
workroom bell, or from the sinister court-yard to the chapel refectory,
more lamentable; the gray or chestnut-colored garb of the prisoners is
more forlorn in its worn shininess than anywhere else, and the canvas
sack itself hangs more dismally at the prisoner's back. It is not the
fault of the penitentiary administration and the government of the
institution; the establishment itself is worthless, the life, moral and
material, that is there led is intolerable."
[Illustration: INTERROGATORIES BEFORE A "JUGE D'INSTRUCTION."