In the courtyard of Sainte-Pélagie stands a chapel, built under the Restoration by the Duchess of Berri, which among other curiosities contains an altar-cloth worked by the Duchess de Praslin, whose tragic death at the hands of her husband has already been related, and a _Via Dolorosa_, painted by a prisoner who had been condemned for immoral pictures. All the Catholic prisoners, with the exception of those sentenced for political and press offences, are obliged to be present on Sundays and holidays at mass and at vespers. A platoon of infantry also assists at these ceremonies. The prisoners are divided into three categories. The first includes those who are exempted from work without being obliged to pay for the privilege; these are the political offenders and persons who have contravened the laws relating to the press. The second comprises those who, for a payment averaging from six or seven francs a fortnight, purchase the right not to labour. To the third belong all the prisoners who are obliged to work in the shops directed by the speculator who farms the prison. These last receive but a third part of the wages paid by the speculator. Of the two other thirds, one goes to the administration, the other to the prisoner the day he is set at liberty. A prison-workman gains on the average two francs twenty-five centimes a month, of which he receives, as his own particular share, five centimes or one sou per day, which he is allowed to spend in the prison canteen. In France, as in England, different views are entertained on the subject of prison-labour. The prisoners must work; and it is both wasteful and cruel to employ them without advantage to themselves or anyone else--as, for instance, in drawing water and then throwing it away. If, however, they are employed, like the occupants of Sainte-Pélagie and other French prisons, with useful work they are brought into competition with the honest workman outside. The political prisoners, and the prisoners who are allowed to liberate themselves from work by small payments, are permitted to order from the outside, by the intermediary of commissionaires attached to the prison for that purpose, whatever food and drink they may require. “Luxuries,” it is true, are not permitted by the prison regulations, but it rests with the officials to determine what a “luxury” really means. Prisoners at this, as at some of the other Paris prisons, are allowed to send out letters, but copies of them are made and kept in the governor’s office. By this system not only the prisoner but France and the whole world has, in some cases, profited. It was through copies being made of the eloquent and passionate, if not too edifying, epistles addressed by Mirabeau, during his confinement in the Bastille, to the young woman he was so desperately in love with that the now famous “Lettres à Sophie” were preserved.