e hour for airing in the prison-yard," said the turnkey;
"you have not been out for three days; if you choose to take air and
exercise, you may."

Jacques Collin, lost in his absorbing thoughts, and taking no interest
in himself, regarding himself as a garment with no body in it, a perfect
rag, never suspected the trap laid for him by Bibi-Lupin, nor the
importance attaching to his walk in the prison-yard.

The unhappy man went out mechanically, along the corridor, by the cells
built into the magnificent cloisters of the Palace of the Kings, over
which is the corridor Saint-Louis, as it is called, leading to the
various purlieus of the Court of Appeals. This passage joins that of the
better cells; and it is worth noting that the cell in which Louvel was
imprisoned, one of the most famous of the regicides, is the room at
the right angle formed by the junction of the two corridors. Under the
pretty room in the Tour Bonbec there is a spiral staircase leading from
the dark passage, and serving the prisoners who are lodged in these
cells to go up and down on their way from or to the yard.

Every prisoner, whether committed for trial or already sentenced, and
the prisoners under suspicion who have been reprieved from the closest
cells--in short, every one in confinement in the Conciergerie takes
exercise in this narrow paved courtyard for some hours every day,
especially the early hours of summer mornings. This recreation ground,
the ante-room to the scaffold or the hulks on one side, on the other
still clings to the world through the gendarme, the examining judge,
and the Assize Court. It strikes a greater chill perhaps than even the
scaffold. The scaffold may be a pedestal to soar to heaven from; but the
prison-yard is every infamy on earth concentrated and unavoidable.

Whether at La Force or at Poissy, at Melun or at Sainte-Pelagie, a
prison-yard is a prison-yard. The same details are exactly repeated,
all but the color of the walls, their height, and the space enclosed. So
this Study of Manners would be false to its name if it did not include
an exact description of this Pandemonium of Paris.

Under the mighty vaulting which supports the lower courts and the Court
of Appeals there is, close to the fourth arch, a stone slab, used by
Saint-Louis, it is said, for the distribution of alms, and doing duty
in our day as a counter for the sale of eatables to the prisoners. So as
soon as the prison-yard is open to the prison