A hardened criminal, then, knows neither poverty, hunger, nor cold. What matters to him the horror he inspires in honest men? He does not see them--he knows none. His crimes are his glory, influence, and strength with the bandits among whom he will henceforth pass his life. How can he fear shame? Instead of grave and charitable remonstrances, which might force him to blush and to repent, he hears savage plaudits, which encourage him to robbery and murder, Scarcely imprisoned, he meditates new misdeeds. What is more logical? If he is discovered, arrested anew, he will find repose, the personal care of the prison, and his joyous and bold companions in crime and debauchery. Is his corruption less great than that of the others? does he manifest, on the contrary, the slightest remorse that he is exposed to atrocious railings, infernal shouts, terrible threats? In fine--a thing so rare that it has become an exception to the rule--should a condemned man come out of this frightful pandemonium with a firm resolution to reform by prodigies of labor, courage, patience, and honesty, and be able to conceal his past offenses, a meeting with one of his old prison companions would be sufficient to overturn his plan of reformation so carefully designed. In this way: A hardened ticket-of-leave proposes a job to a repentant one; the latter, in spite of dangerous threats, refuses the criminal association; immediately an anonymous communication strips the veil from the past life of this unfortunate, who wishes, at any sacrifice, to conceal and expiate a first fault by honorable conduct. Then, exposed to the contempt, or, at least, the suspicion of those whose interest he had obtained by force of industry and probity, reduced to distress, soured by injustice, carried away by want, yielding, in fine, to these fatal derelictions, this man, almost restored, falls back again, and forever, to the bottom of the abyss from whence he had with so much difficulty escaped. In the following scenes we shall endeavor, then, to show the monstrous and inevitable consequences of promiscuous confinement. After ages of barbarous proofs and pernicious doubts, it begins to be understood how unreasonable it is to plunge into an atmosphere abominably vitiated, people whom a pure and salubrious air might have saved. How much time shall be required to find out that, to associate gangrened beings is to redouble the intensity of their corruption, which thus becomes incurable? How long to find out that there is but one remedy to this growing leprosy, which threatens the body social, Solitary confinement? We should esteem ourselves happy if our feeble voice could be, if not counted, at least heard, among all those which, more imposing, more eloquent than ours, demand, with so just and so impatient an importunity, the complete, absolute adoption of the _solitary system_.