This method of securing the prisoner has the disadvantage, if maintained for too long a period, of checking the circulation of the blood, and for longer journeys, by railway or steamboat, its employment is now superseded by that of iron-handcuffs, or _menottes_, of which there is a pleasing and instructive variety in use. The principle is always that of a double bracelet secured by a padlock, which permits the victim to move his arms only in a very restricted manner. For a very objectionable client, two anklets of iron, connected by a chain, are also applied. On those occasions on which one agent finds himself with several prisoners on his hands, or when he comes suddenly upon a sought-for malefactor and is quite unprovided with the tools of his trade, a very ingenious method is employed,--he cuts off all the buttons of his prisoner's trousers. The unhappy offender is thus compelled to hold on to the upper portion of this useful garment with both hands, and is quite incapable of either battle or flight, as at the first manifestation they come down about his heels! Thus is the dignity of Justice maintained, and the interests of society preserved, as may be seen in the illustration on page 235. Equally formidable, from the point of view of a perfect commonwealth, and, perhaps, even more to be commiserated, the immense army of the helpless and sickly poor,--paupers, paralytics, scrofulous, consumptive, idiotic, cancerous,--demands from the State or the municipal administration a machinery as complex and as extensive as the criminals. For a multitude of these unfortunates the words of Victor Hugo are true: "They begin in the hospital, and end in the hospice." "The child comes into the world in a _Maternité_, and, later, if life has not been generous to him, he finishes his days in one of the asylums for the aged, at Bicêtre, at the Salpêtrière, at Debrousse, at Brévannes, at Ivry, after having more than once paid his tribute to sickness in the wards of some hospital! And still more, at intervals, during certain difficult hours, he has been obliged to ask aid of the Bureau de Bienfaisance, so that, during the whole of his life, this unlucky one has been the pensioner of the _Assistance Publique_." [Illustration: ARREST OF A DANGEROUS MALEFACTOR BY "AGENTS DE LA SURETÉ" IN THE QUARTIER BELLEVILLE, CELEBRATED FOR ITS "GUINGUETTES." After a drawing by M. Martin.]