sion, in which there are two wooden seats placed sideways,
as in an omnibus, on which the prisoners sit. They get in by a step
behind and a door, with no window. The nickname of Salad-basket arose
from the fact that the vehicle was originally made entirely of lattice,
and the prisoners were shaken in it just as a salad is shaken to dry it.

For further security, in case of accident, a mounted gendarme follows
the machine, especially when it conveys criminals condemned to death to
the place of execution. Thus escape is impossible. The vehicle, lined
with sheet-iron, is impervious to any tool. The prisoners, carefully
searched when they are arrested or locked up, can have nothing but
watch-springs, perhaps, to file through bars, and useless on a smooth
surface.

So the _panier a salade_, improved by the genius of the Paris police,
became the model for the prison omnibus (known in London as "Black
Maria") in which convicts are transported to the hulks, instead of the
horrible tumbril which formerly disgraced civilization, though Manon
Lescaut had made it famous.

The accused are, in the first instance, despatched in the prison van
from the various prisons in Paris to the Palais de Justice, to be
questioned by the examining judge. This, in prison slang, is called
"going up for examination." Then the accused are again conveyed
from prison to the Court to be sentenced when their case is only a
misdemeanor; or if, in legal parlance, the case is one for the
Upper Court, they are transferred from the house of detention to the
Conciergerie, the "Newgate" of the Department of the Seine.

Finally, the prison van carries the criminal condemned to death from
Bicetre to the Barriere Saint-Jacques, where executions are carried out,
and have been ever since the Revolution of July. Thanks to philanthropic
interference, the poor wretches no longer have to face the horrors of
the drive from the Conciergerie to the Place de Greve in a cart exactly
like that used by wood merchants. This cart is no longer used but to
bring the body back from the scaffold.

Without this explanation the words of a famous convict to his
accomplice, "It is now the horse's business!" as he got into the van,
would be unintelligible. It is impossible to be carried to execution
more comfortably than in Paris nowadays.

At this moment the two vans, setting out at such an early hour, were
employed on the unwonted service of conveying two accused prisoners
from t