The prison of La Grande Roquette had spare accommodation available. This place had been in existence some years under the name of Little Bicêtre, and had been used as a _dépôt des condamnés_, in which were lodged all sentenced to _travaux forcés_ while awaiting further removal to the seaport _bagnes_ or the great central prisons. The concentration of so many desperate characters under one roof led them to feel their strength and measure it against authority in a serious outbreak in 1886, in which the Director would have lost his life, but for the courageous intervention of a veteran chief warder. From that time forth the worst criminals were no longer sent to La Grande Roquette, but retained in the central prisons after sentence, from which when condemned to transportation they were collected by agents and taken on to St. Martin de Ré to take ship for the Antipodes. The _bagnes_ were abolished some time before those of Brest and Rochefort in 1850, and Toulon in 1872. But one quarter in La Grande Roquette was especially appropriated to convicts condemned to death, and they proceeded after a more or less lengthy detention direct from their cells to the guillotine. These were in all cases the most notable murderers only, for increasing reluctance to inflict the extreme penalty has been exhibited in France, and successive presidents of the Republic, from President Grévy on, have constantly commuted sentences to penal exile and spared lives that were clearly forfeited. For the last forty years all who were actually executed passed through La Grande Roquette, and a brief survey of the principal malefactors and the circumstances attending the last dread event will be given here.