passed through the gaoler’s hands to the Prefecture of Police, where it was generally lost. The worst feature of La Force was that children of tender years, often no more than seven years of age, were committed to it for the most trifling misdeeds. They were cruelly ill-used by the gaolers, whip in hand, and they passed their time in idleness, associating with the worst criminals with the result that they grew up thoroughly corrupt. We have a glimpse of La Force from the record of the imprisonment of the poet, Béranger. The French governments after the Restoration continued to be very sensitive, and frequently prosecuted their critics, even versifiers of such genius as Béranger. They desired to make people good, religious and submissive by law, and invoked it pitilessly against the poet who dared to encourage free-thinking in politics and religion. They were resolved to put down what they deemed the abuse of letters, and to punish not only the preaching of sedition but the open expression of impiety. So, as the persecuted said at the time, poetry was brought into court, and songs, gay and light-hearted, written to amuse and interest, were held to be mischievous, and their writers were sent to prison. Béranger was tried at the assizes in 1822 for having exercised a pernicious influence upon the people, and he was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment which he endured at St. Pélagie. He was again arraigned in 1829 on charges akin to the first, and now found himself sentenced to La Force for nine months, and to pay a fine of 10,000 francs, greatly to the indignation of the general public. It was considered a shameful perversion of the law to send the joyous singer to herd with criminals, and he was visited by crowds of right-thinking people from outside, eager to show their sympathy. While in La Force, Béranger devoted himself to exposing some of the worst evils of the régime, especially the improper treatment of the juvenile offenders. On the day of his arrival, when the gate was opened to admit him, he heard a childish voice exclaim, “Look at the street; how beautiful!” The view within must have been dreary enough to force the contrast with that without--the muddy, dirty side-street with its poor shop-fronts and ugly, commonplace passers-by. He was still more disgusted when they brought the daily rations for these poor little ones: a coarse vegetable soup in great tin cans, which was distributed in rations to each child to be eaten anyhow, without knife, fork or spoon, very much like dogs from a trough. The poet made a vigorous protest to the governor, adding that he wondered these human beings were not obliged to walk like beasts on all fours. The answer he got was that it would cost money to supply utensils; whereupon Béranger took all the expense on himself. He was in fact continually employed in charitable deeds. While in prison he visited all parts of it: the various courts, the “Milk Walk” the “Debtors’ Side” and the “Lions’