Use becomes second nature, and many _forçats_ could bring themselves to endure the miseries and discomforts of the life at the _bagne_. They had their hours of relaxation, which they spent in the manufacture of fancy articles, to be sold for the few francs that helped to increase and improve their daily rations according to their taste. Some kept and trained dogs to perform marvellous tricks or taught mice to draw a carriage. A convict well known in his time, nicknamed Grand Doyen, who had done forty out of sixty years in various prisons, is remembered for his extraordinary power of taming rats. By a strange contrast this Grand Doyen was a man of cruel character and abominable temper, who was ever at enmity with his fellows. He was constantly in gaol, now for fraud, now for robbery with violence, at last for murder, with extenuating circumstances. He spent all his life, from the age of nineteen, in detention of some sort. No one liked him, and in his loneliness he captured a young rat, and trained it to live with him. He began by drawing its teeth and shortening its tail. He taught it all kinds of tricks, harnessed it to a cart, and secured it with a collar and chain, which he fastened to a waistcoat button, leaving sufficient length to the chain to allow the vermin to shelter in his waistcoat pocket. Once, when at Bicêtre waiting for a chain, Grand Doyen let the rat loose to run about the yard, where it was pounced upon by the prison cat. Grand Doyen, in defence of his pet, promptly killed the cat with his wooden sabot. Then the rat got into trouble by gnawing a hole in a convict’s clothes, and an order for his execution was forthwith issued. Grand Doyen, in despair, saved his friend by substituting another rat, which he had caught on purpose, and decorated with the chain of his favorite before handing it up to justice. The warder asked why he had not killed the rat as ordered, and was put off by the excuse that he had not the heart, so he brought it now to the warder, who was not so sensitive, and hammered it on the head with his key. The pet rat was still alive, safely hidden by Grand Doyen, who was on the point of removal from Bicêtre. How was he to get it past the gates? Inventiveness was stimulated by the difficulty, and Grand Doyen, being in possession of one of those enormous loaves in which French ration bread is baked, tore out the crumb in the centre, and made a comfortable hole for his pet. Then, carrying his loaf under his arm, he took his place on the chain, and passed safely through the gates. [Illustration: _Hospice de la Bicêtre_ A celebrated hospital founded by Louis XIII in 1632 for invalid officers and soldiers. It is now devoted to the aged, the incurable poor, and the insane.]