“In the middle of La Cour Royale are eight dreadful dungeons down sixteen steps; each about thirteen feet by nine, with two strong doors; three chains fastened to the wall and a stone funnel, at one corner of each cell, for air. From the situation of these dreary caverns and the difficulty I found in procuring admittance, I conclude hardly any other stranger ever saw them. That is my reason, and I hope will be my apology, for mentioning the particulars. “Prisoners make straw boxes, toothpicks, etc., and sell them to visitants. I viewed the men with some attention and observed in the looks of many a settled melancholy; many others looked very sickly. This prison seems not so well managed as those in the city; it is very dirty; no fireplace in any of the rooms, and in the severe cold last winter several hundred perished.” The condition of Bicêtre during the Napoleonic epoch was almost inconceivably bad. It was very convenient for the officials of the Prefecture, who committed to it almost every one who came into their hands. Disastrous overcrowding was the natural result. When so many were herded together within its narrow limits, fevers and scurvy were epidemic; diseases were particularly engendered by the waters of the wells, which were charged with deleterious constituents. All classes were associated together pell-mell. Prisoners of State, of good character and cleanly life, lived constantly with the dregs of Paris society. The interior régime was regulated upon the same lines as those of the prisons already described. The same tyrannical treatment prevailed, the same extortion, the same lack of even the smallest physical comforts. It might well be styled the new sewer of Paris, and the word Bicêtre was rightly adopted into the current _argot_ as a pseudonym for misery and misfortune. In corroborative testimony of the horrors of Bicêtre I will quote here the description given of it by another witness, who had personal experience of the prison. We shall hear more of Vidocq on a later page, the well-known ex-convict who turned thief catcher and, in a measure, originated the French detective police system.