France, in building the prison of Fresnes, may be said to have given to the world a model penitentiary. It is the perfection of penal architecture and structural fitness for the purpose intended. Before proceeding to its consideration, however, let us take up the story of La Grande Roquette and the later annals of criminality with which it is identified. Immediately opposite La Petite Roquette is the great prison of the same name. As I have already suggested, it is the final stage in the criminal career which began in some minor offence, punished by a few days’ detention in the boys’ prison, and here ends at the scaffold upon the Place de la Roquette. It is more by administrative design than definite design that these two extremes, the criminal cradle and the place of final doom, are thus brought into close juxtaposition. Various sites in Paris have been used from time to time for the dread performance of “law’s finisher” commonly styled in stilted legal language the “_executeur des hautes œuvres_,” the official instrument for completing capital punishment. He was the agent of High Justice and might hold his head above his fellows who feared and hated him because he was the vindicator of the law. The office was not exactly honorable, but it was lucrative, and its holder enjoyed many privileges. He was entitled to levy taxes on food, upon all the corn brought into the market, and on fruit, grapes, nuts, hay, eggs and wool. He collected a toll on all who passed the Petit Pont (the bridge near the Châtelet). Every leper paid him a fee, and he acquired, by right of office, all the clothes of which his victims died possessed. But he carried a badge of shame, a ladder embroidered on the breast of his coat and a ladder on the back. His office was hereditary; son succeeded father, and if the next in succession was of tender years a substitute was appointed, but the rightful executioner, sometimes no more than seven or eight, stood by the headsman as if to sanction his proceedings. The Sansons filled the awful post for seven generations, nearly two hundred years. They were for the most part in good repute and highly esteemed by their royal masters. Louis XI indeed made a chosen companion of his executioner, Tristan L’Hamitte, whom he ennobled. The ceremony of inflicting death was performed anywhere in early days, often from choice in the theatre of the crime. For a century or more the Place de la Grève was the favored spot, and was used until the revolution of 1830, but the scaffold was sometimes erected at the Halles (the central markets) or the Croix du Trahoir or in almost any wide street or square. The Barrier of Saint Jacques was substituted for the Place de la Grève in 1832. It was a convenient distance from the Conciergerie, in which prison the condemned found their last resting-place. The execution was fixed always for the afternoon, and the drive through the crowded streets was considered a scandal, so that a further change was decreed.