ad; their countenances are base
or horrible, for a criminal from the upper sphere of society is happily,
a rare exception. Peculation, forgery, or fraudulent bankruptcy, the
only crimes that can bring decent folks so low, enjoy the privilege of
the better cells, and then the prisoner scarcely ever quits it.

This promenade, bounded by fine but formidable blackened walls, by a
cloister divided up into cells, by fortifications on the side towards
the quay, by the barred cells of the better class on the north, watched
by vigilant warders, and filled with a herd of criminals, all meanly
suspicious of each other, is depressing enough in itself; and it becomes
terrifying when you find yourself the centre of all those eyes full of
hatred, curiosity, and despair, face to face with that degraded crew.
Not a gleam of gladness! all is gloom--the place and the men. All is
speechless--the walls and men's consciences. To these hapless creatures
danger lies everywhere; excepting in the case of an alliance as ominous
as the prison where it was formed, they dare not trust each other.

The police, all-pervading, poisons the atmosphere and taints everything,
even the hand-grasp of two criminals who have been intimate. A convict
who meets his most familiar comrade does not know that he may not have
repented and have made a confession to save his life. This absence
of confidence, this dread of the nark, marks the liberty, already so
illusory, of the prison-yard. The "nark" (in French, le Mouton or le
coqueur) is a spy who affects to be sentenced for some serious offence,
and whose skill consists in pretending to be a chum. The "chum," in
thieves' slang, is a skilled thief, a professional who has cut himself
adrift from society, and means to remain a thief all his days, and
continues faithful through thick and thin to the laws of the swell-mob.

Crime and madness have a certain resemblance. To see the prisoners of
the Conciergerie in the yard, or the madmen in the garden of an asylum,
is much the same thing. Prisoners and lunatics walk to and fro, avoiding
each other, looking up with more or less strange or vicious glances,
according to the mood of the moment, but never cheerful, never grave;
they know each other, or they dread each other. The anticipation of
their sentence, remorse, and apprehension give all these men exercising,
the anxious, furtive look of the insane. Only the most consummate
criminals have the audacity that apes the qui