It is complained that notwithstanding all the divisions and subdivisions which have been made to prevent communication between the different sections of prisoners, the greatest promiscuity reigns at Saint-Lazare. Philanthropists and journalists have constantly raised their voice in the matter, and demanded that a special house should be instituted for young girls in which they would not get corrupted. “Every young girl who enters under correction at Saint-Lazare,” says M. Maxime Ducamp, “issues thence vicious and polluted to the depths of her heart. I have been turning over the leaves of two prayer-books found on a child of hardly sixteen, detained for three months, on the application of her father, in this accursed house, where the walls reek with vice. On the margins the little prisoner has written her thoughts; frequently the dates are indicated, and one can thus follow the progress of her ideas. The study is appalling.” The moral atmosphere of the place, that is to say, was one which the girl could scarcely breathe; though by degrees she became acclimatised, until her last reflections were an outrage against not only virtue, but nature itself. * * * * * We will conclude this chapter on the prisons of Paris with a few general observations. On the question of hygiene most of the governors of Paris prisons state, in their reports, that little on this head remains to be desired. Certain exceptions, however, must be made, as in the case of ancient convents whose age renders a perfect adaptation impossible. Now it is the dormitories which are defective, because the cubic quantity of air required by the regulations cannot be obtained; now it is the courts, which, as the sun can never penetrate to them, become damp and unwholesome; now it is the workshops, which are ill-suited to the industries exercised within them. On the whole, however, the central prisons are healthy enough. On the subject of food--one of the most important of hygienic considerations--the authorities have had this problem to solve: to avoid imposing such rigorous deprivations as would border upon inhumanity, whilst equally avoiding such a dietary system as would lend an attraction to the prisons, and cause destitute wretches to prefer confinement to their ordinary life of liberty. The regulation diet is at present as follows:--a daily ration of bread weighing 750 grammes for men and 650 for women; in the morning, on ordinary days, a bowl of vegetable soup with bread in it, and on Sundays, Thursdays, and fête days, a bowl of meat soup; in the evening similar soup, accompanied, on ordinary days, by a small quantity of dry vegetables, such as potatoes, peas, and lentils, and on Sundays and fête days by a portion of meat, without bone, weighing at least 75 grammes, as well as at least 3 decilitres of potatoes.