the entrance to the workshop, where boats are built, you will find a
dentist's table filled with instruments. In a pretty frame on the wall,
rows of plates are exhibited, and when you pass, the artist utters a
little speech to advertise his ability. He stays in his place all day,
polishing his instruments and stringing teeth; he can talk to visitors
without feeling the restraint of being watched, be informed of what is
going on in the medical world, and practise his profession like a
licensed dentist. At the present time, I daresay, he must use ether.
More than that, he may have pupils and give lectures. But the man who
has the most enviable position of all is the cure Delacollonge.[3] He is
the mediator between the convicts and the ban; the authorities use his
ascendency over the prisoners, and they, in turn, address themselves to
him when they want to obtain any favours.

He lives apart from the rest of them in a neat little room, has a man to
wait on him, eats big bowls of Plougastel strawberries, takes his coffee
and reads the newspapers.

If Delacollonge is the head of the penitentiary, Ambroise is its arm.
Ambroise is a superb negro almost six feet tall, who would have made a
fine servant for a sixteenth century man of quality. Heliogobalus must
have kept some such fellow to furnish amusement for himself and his
guests by strangling lions and fighting gladiators single-handed. His
polished skin is quite black, with steely reflections; his body is well
knit and as vigorous as a tiger's, and his teeth are so white that they
almost frighten one.

King of the penitentiary by right of strength, all the convicts fear and
admire him; his athletic reputation compels him to test every newcomer,
and up to the present time, all these contests have turned out in his
favour. He can bend iron rods over his knee, carry three men with one
hand, and knock down eight by opening his arms; he eats three times as
much as an ordinary man, for he has an enormous appetite and a heroic
constitution.

When we saw him, he was watering the plants in the botanical garden. He
is always hanging around the hot-house behind the plants and the
palm-trees, digging the soil and cleansing the wood-work.

On Thursday, when the public is admitted, Ambroise receives his
mistresses behind the boxed orange-trees; he has several of them, in
fact, more than he wishes. He knows how to procure them, whether by his
charms, his strength or his money, whic