aid to me, 'Would you rather have a year of solitary confinement?'
I should hold out my neck. A year all alone! Why, is it possible? What
do they suppose a man thinks of when he is alone?"

"Suppose you were carried there by main force?"

"Well, I wouldn't stay; I would make such use of my hands and feet that
I should escape," replied the Skeleton.

"But if you couldn't,--if you were unable to escape?"

"Then I'd kill the first person who came near me, in order to have my
head chopped off."

"But if, instead of sentencing such as us to death, they condemned us to
be in solitary confinement for life?"

The Skeleton appeared struck at this remark, and, after a moment's
silence, replied:

"Why, then, I'll tell you what I should do,--I should dash out my brains
against the walls. I would starve rather than be in a solitary cell.
What, all alone! all my life alone with myself,--and no chance of
escape! I tell you it is impossible. Well, you know, there's no man more
reckless than I am--I'd kill a man for a dollar, and for nothing if my
honour was concerned; they believe I have only killed two persons, but
if the dead could tell tales there are five tongues could say what I
have done."

The ruffian was boasting. The sanguinary declarations are still another
trait of the hardened criminals. A governor of a prison said to us, "If
the assassinations boasted of by these scoundrels were really committed,
the population would be decimated."

"And I, too," said Barbillon, desirous of bragging in his turn; "they
think I only silenced the husband of the milk-woman in the Cite, but I
did many others with tall Robert, who suffered last year."

"I was going to say," continued the Skeleton, "that I fear neither fire
nor devil. Well, if I were in a solitary cell, and certain I could not
escape,--thunder! I believe I should be frightened!"

"And so, if you had to begin your time over again as prig and throttler,
and if, instead of central houses, galleys, and guillotine, there were
only solitary cells, you would hesitate before such a chance?"

"_Ma foi!_ I believe I really should!" replied the Skeleton.

And he said truly. It is impossible to describe the vast terror which
such ruffians experience at the very idea of being in solitary
confinement. And is not this very terror an eloquent plea in favour of
this punishment?

* * * * *

An uproarious noise made by the prisoners in the yard inter