artments; the women (though I heard they were
not always so fortunate) were shut up in quarters of their own. Others
retired in batches to chambers, for the use of which they had clubbed
together in bands of twenty or thirty. The rest of us, comprising all
the poorer prisoners, were huddled into great foul, straw-strewn rooms
to sleep and pass the night as best we might.

Rough countryman as I have been, the thought of those nights in the
Conciergerie turns my stomach even now. The low ceiling and small
windows made the atmosphere, laden as it was with dirt of all sorts,
choking and intolerable. The heat, even on a winter night, was
oppressive. The noise, the groaning, the wrangling, the fighting, the
pilfering, were distracting. Only twice in the night silence, and that
but for a few moments at a time, prevailed.

Once was when the guard, accompanied by great dogs, made their nightly
round, kicking us who lay in their way this side and that, and testing
every bar and grating of our prison with hammers and staves. For the
sake of the dogs, who were stern disciplinarians, we kept the peace till
the bolt was once more turned upon us.

The other time the hush was of a more terrible kind, as I discovered
that first night. A jangle of keys without imposed a sudden lull on the
noise. The door opened, and in came the concierge and his turnkeys.
Every eye turned, not on the man or his myrmidons, but on the paper that
he held in his hand. It was the list of prisoners who to-morrow were to
appear before the Tribunal--that is to say, of the victims who the day
after to-morrow were to ride in the tumbrels to the guillotine.

A deadly silence prevailed as the reading proceeded, broken only by the
agonised shriek of some unfortunate, and the gradual sighs of relief of
those whose names were omitted.

The ceremony over, the door (on the outside of which a turnkey had
chalked the doomed names) swung to, and all once more was noise and
babel. The victims drew together, embracing their friends and uttering
their farewells. The others laughed louder than ever, like schoolboys
who have escaped the rod. Morning came, and with it the summons. Those
who quitted us we knew we should never see again. They would spend that
night in the dungeon of the _condamnes_; the next day the lumbering roll
of the tumbrels would announce to us that they were on their way to the
Place de la Revolution.

The first night, I confess, I was d