ollowed
by a turnkey instructed by the Governor as to the number of the cell in
which the prisoner was to be placed, was led through the subterranean
maze of the Conciergerie into a perfectly wholesome room, whatever
certain philanthropists may say to the contrary, but cut off from all
possible communication with the outer world.

As soon as he was removed, the warders, the Governor, and his clerk
looked at each other as though asking each other's opinion, and
suspicion was legible on every face; but at the appearance of the second
man in custody the spectators relapsed into their usual doubting
frame of mind, concealed under the air of indifference. Only in very
extraordinary cases do the functionaries of the Conciergerie feel any
curiosity; the prisoners are no more to them than a barber's customers
are to him. Hence all the formalities which appall the imagination are
carried out with less fuss than a money transaction at a banker's, and
often with greater civility.

Lucien's expression was that of a dejected criminal. He submitted to
everything, and obeyed like a machine. All the way from Fontainebleau
the poet had been facing his ruin, and telling himself that the hour of
expiation had tolled. Pale and exhausted, knowing nothing of what had
happened at Esther's house during his absence, he only knew that he was
the intimate ally of an escaped convict, a situation which enabled him
to guess at disaster worse than death. When his mind could command
a thought, it was that of suicide. He must, at any cost, escape the
ignominy that loomed before him like the phantasm of a dreadful dream.

Jacques Collin, as the more dangerous of the two culprits, was placed
in a cell of solid masonry, deriving its light from one of the narrow
yards, of which there are several in the interior of the Palace, in the
wing where the public prosecutor's chambers are. This little yard is
the airing-ground for the female prisoners. Lucien was taken to the
same part of the building, to a cell adjoining the rooms let to
misdemeanants; for, by orders from the examining judge, the Governor
treated him with some consideration.

Persons who have never had anything to do with the action of the law
usually have the darkest notions as to the meaning of solitary or secret
confinement. Ideas as to the treatment of criminals have not yet
become disentangled from the old pictures of torture chambers, of the
unhealthiness of a prison, the chill of stone