The prison of La Grande Roquette, when I visited it, struck me painfully from its gloomy and imposing architecture; and the effect was heightened as I passed into the inner yards, where behind a tall iron railing the bulk of the prison population were at exercise. As they patrolled it in couples, backwards and forwards, their wooden sabots made a hideous clatter on the stone pavement, which did not, however, drown the hum of their voices as they gossiped idly with one another, smoking their pipes in pleasant company. They were a rough, evil-visaged lot, for this was at a date anterior to the disturbance of 1886, before mentioned, and they were mostly habitual criminals (_récidivistes_), who had been convicted again and again. They could only be ruled by a strong hand, and the director, M. Beauquesnes, a resolute and determined man, had been specially selected for this responsible post. Before his time murderous assaults by prisoners upon their officers were common enough. Many trades are carried on in the prison, and desperate ruffians bent on mischief always found tools and dangerous weapons of offence ready to their hand. Outrages of this kind are now unknown. “How did you get the better of them?” I asked M. Beauquesnes, almost anticipating his answer as I met his clear gray eyes. “By constant surveillance, by being always on the lookout for mischief, and crushing it before it could make head.” “Your warders are all armed, of course?” “Not in the least. It is better to depend upon moral than physical force.” It did not seem to me fair or safe to leave officers entirely defenceless among so many desperate and easily excited prisoners without even the protection of a baton or club, and the evil result was presently seen in the outbreak already mentioned. From the yard I passed into the workshops,--long, low, dark rooms in which gas is never lighted, for labor begins and ends with daylight. The trades followed were of the prison class, such as shoemaking, tailoring and so forth. Industry and orderliness were generally observable, but I seemed to detect a certain unsettled air. The prisoners gazed furtively from under their peaked caps at a strange visitor and seemed continually on the lookout for something to happen. They were in fact constantly expecting the order to “move on,” and any day the van might arrive to take them elsewhere. It might be to the other end of the world.