Of all the historical prisons of Paris one only can be said to exist to-day--the Conciergerie. It preserves an air of the past by virtue of a few antiquities which still belong to it: such as the two big towers on the quay, the large walls inside, the large table in the courtyard, at which Saint Louis is reported to have fed the poor, the room in which Damiens was confined, and the dungeon of Marie Antoinette. In 1830 Paris could boast--or perhaps one should say blush for--twenty civil prisons. Not a few of these consisted of old convents or other buildings converted into state gaols; and it may well be imagined that such places were neither salubrious nor secure. The prisoners were not even divided into categories. In the present day eight or nine prisons suffice for a much larger number of convicts, and admit of a regular classification. First, there is a lock-up, or _maison de dépôt_, at the prefecture of police. Then there are three “preventive” prisons--Mazas and La Santé for men and the Conciergerie for both sexes. One portion of Saint-Lazare is also set apart for the accommodation of the fair sex. Sainte-Pélagie and Saint-Lazare--the first for men and the second for women--are houses of correction for prisoners sentenced to one year or less. It is at Sainte-Pélagie that political prisoners are for the most part confined. In La Roquette are lodged prisoners under sentence of death and offenders condemned to more than one year. Clichy, once the debtors’ prison, has already in these pages been amply described. Nor should we omit to mention the military prison of the Rue du Cherche-Midi; the prison of the National Guard; the dépôt of Saint-Denis where mendicants are locked up; and La Petite Roquette, where, until 1865, were imprisoned, and subjected to the rigorous régime of cell confinement, children and youths guilty for the most part, as M. Jules Simon well expresses it, of having had unnatural parents. [Illustration: PRISON OF LA SANTÉ.] [Illustration: INSIDE THE WALLS, LA SANTÉ.]