In France, where in capital cases an appeal to the law for the revision of the proceedings is the rule, the convict is always buoyed up by the chance of reprieve, and never finally yields until the officials enter his cell on the last dread morning, and he is awakened to hear the words, “It is for to-day.” This means that death is imminent, and that within a few minutes, half an hour at the outside, the guillotine will have done its work. It is a cruel process, that of postponing all knowledge of the exact day until it has arrived; although in France murderers will exhibit the most ferocious tiger-like attitude when it comes. “Dread anticipation never leaves them,” a French chaplain, l’Abbé Crozes, of the Grande Roquette, has recorded. “As the inevitable day approaches they are consumed with the liveliest fears, and are possessed with one single idea, that of escaping death.” Two miscreants, guilty of the most bloodthirsty murders, Abadie and Gilles, who waited for three months before the end came, told the same good priest that every morning at four o’clock they awoke in an agony of terror, and only recovered about six, when the hour for communicating the dread news had passed for the day. A similar story is that of the French noble, lying with the rest of the prisoners in a Revolutionary prison, who, as often as he heard the list for execution each morning and missed his name, cried out with intense relief: “The little man has another day to live.” The French practice of withholding from the criminal information as to the day of his death until almost the moment for execution has arrived is cruel enough; but this chapter has shown an amelioration in French prison conditions of such extent that the cruelty of that practice may be condoned. CHAPTER VIII MAZAS AND LA SANTÉ Notable inmates of Mazas--Dr. de la Pommerais, the poisoner--Execution--Strange story of execution--Troppmann--Massacre of the Kinck family--Father suspected--Found to be Troppmann--His motives and measures--Troppmann’s trial and conviction--The theft of the Duke of Brunswick’s diamonds--La Santé Prison similar to Mazas--Its interior described--Labor on “contract” system--Objections--Variety of products--Mild rule--Religious tolerance--Prison library--Dietaries--No canteen and extras.