Then for the two prisoners began that weary cycle of the prisons, days so incredible that even those who survived looked back to them, doubting their memory. Everything became monotonous; scenes of heart-rending grief, partings of mothers and children, husbands torn from their wives, the experience of every day cloyed in the lassitude that came from too much suffering. Toward six in the afternoon they assembled in the main halls, listening at first with faltering courage, and then with indifference, to the turnkey reading the list of those summoned to the bar of the Revolutionary Tribunal. The accused passed out, sullen, resigned, hoping, trusting to a straw, indifferent, tired, and their names were heard no more until the following day, when a turnkey, with brutal exultation, read the list of those who had perished on the guillotine. A shriek, a sob, a curse, perhaps, would be heard, a sudden converging where a woman had fallen unconscious; but the rest stolidly, dully, counted the hours to the next summons. New arrivals, the daily papers, an occasional letter, brought them news of the fantastic, heaving outer world. It was Frimaire, with tales of the drownings at Nantes--republican marriages, where man and woman, tied together, were thrown into the river with brutal jests; Ventose, with its incredible news that Hébert, the savage Père Duchesne, and the bull-dogs of the Terror had fallen; Germinal, more amazing than all--Danton the lion and Camille Desmoulins, beloved of all, swept into the common fate. And all the time the prisons were bursting with suspects arriving by hundreds from the sections, faster than the guillotine could serve them. In Nivôse the names of the Citoyen and Citoyenne Barabant were called, and hand in hand, without a word, they presented themselves. They entered the rolling chariot, seeing again the unfamiliar streets; but it was not to trial that they were borne, but to another prison, the Bénédictins Anglais. In Germinal they were again called, and once more expecting death, were again transferred, this time to the Prison des Quatre Nations, with a glimpse of the sun on the warm waters of the swollen Seine and the breath of the spring that, as in mockery, brought to their laps a shower of petals from the flowering trees. Twice again transferred, they passed through the Hôtel des Fermes and arrived in Fructidor at Les Carmes. Here new tortures awaited them from the hands of their captors, clamoring for measures that would empty the prisons of this constantly swelling horde of suspects. First, the newspaper was forbidden them, then all communication with the outside world. On pretext that the aristocrats were tempting the guards by bribery, a search was instituted and all money and valuables were seized. Later, another search was ordered, and all knives, forks, razors, and pins were confiscated, until for a woman to keep a hair-pin exposed her to immediate trial.