corresponding in legal distinction to these three
degrees of suspicion, inquiry, and conviction. Mere imprisonment is a
light penalty for misdemeanor, but detention is imprisonment with hard
labor, a severe and sometimes degrading punishment. Hence, those persons
who nowadays are in favor of the penitentiary system would upset an
admirable scheme of criminal law in which the penalties are judiciously
graduated, and they will end by punishing the lightest peccadilloes as
severely as the greatest crimes.

The reader may compare in the _Scenes of Political Life_ (for instance,
in Une Tenebreuse affaire) the curious differences subsisting between
the criminal law of Brumaire in the year IV., and that of the Code
Napoleon which has taken its place.

In most trials, as in this one, the suspected persons are at once
examined (and from inculpes become prevenus); justice immediately issues
a warrant for their arrest and imprisonment. In point of fact, in most
of such cases the criminals have either fled, or have been instantly
apprehended. Indeed, as we have seen the police, which is but an
instrument, and the officers of justice had descended on Esther's house
with the swiftness of a thunderbolt. Even if there had not been the
reasons for revenge suggested to the superior police by Corentin, there
was a robbery to be investigated of seven hundred and fifty thousand
francs from the Baron de Nucingen.

Just as the first prison van, conveying Jacques Collin, reached
the archway of Saint-Jean--a narrow, dark passage, some block ahead
compelled the postilion to stop under the vault. The prisoner's eyes
shone like carbuncles through the grating, in spite of his aspect as of
a dying man, which, the day before, had led the governor of La Force to
believe that the doctor must be called in. These flaming eyes, free to
rove at this moment, for neither the officer nor the gendarme looked
round at their "customer," spoke so plain a language that a clever
examining judge, M. Popinot, for instance, would have identified the man
convicted for sacrilege.

In fact, ever since the "salad-basket" had turned out of the gate of La
Force, Jacques Collin had studied everything on his way. Notwithstanding
the pace they had made, he took in the houses with an eager and
comprehensive glance from the ground floor to the attics. He saw and
noted every passer-by. God Himself is not more clear-seeing as to the
means and ends of His creatures than th