In a listless attitude, almost unconscious, a young girl was seated at the end of a bench, quiet as a working woman who waits the price of her day’s labor. She wore the calico bonnet, and the sad costume of Saint-Lazare with an air of repose and of well-being, as though the prison régime were the best thing she had found in all her life. The guard, who sat beside her, seemed to find her much to his taste, and they laughed together softly. At the other end of the lobby, wholly in the shadow, was seated, handcuffs on wrists, the Desgrieux of this Manon. She had not seen him at first; but as soon as her eyes became accustomed to the darkness, she perceived him and trembled: “Why, that’s Pignou--hé! Pignou!”-- The guard silenced her. The prisoners are expressly forbidden to talk to each other. “Oh! I beg of you, only one word!” she said, leaning far forward toward the remotest part of the lobby. But the soldier remained inflexible. “No--no--it can’t be done--only if you have some message to give him, tell it to me, I will repeat it to him.” Then a dialogue was entered into between this girl and her Pignou, with the guard as interpreter. Much moved, without heeding those about her, she began: “Tell him I have never loved any one but him; that I will never love another in all my life.” The guard made a number of steps in the lobby, and redoubling his gravity as though to take from the proceeding all that was too kindly, he repeated: “She says she has never loved but you, and that she’ll never love another.” I heard a grumbling, a confused stammering which must have been the response of Pignou, then the guard went back with measured step toward the bench. “What did he say?” demanded the child all anxious, and as though waiting were too long: “Well, tell me what he said now?” “He said he was very miserable!”-- Then, carried away by her emotion and the custom of the noisy and communicative streets, she cried out loud: “Don’t be weary, m’ami--the good days will come again!” And in this voice, still young, there was something piteous, almost maternal. Plainly this was the woman of the people with her courage under affliction and her dog-like devotion. From the depths of the lobby, a voice replied, the voice of Pignou, wine-soaked, torn, burned with alcohol: “Va donc! the good days--I’ll have them at the end of my five years.” He knew his case well, that one!-- The guards cried: “Chut!--Keep quiet!”--But too late. * * * * * A door had opened, and the examining magistrate himself appeared on the sill.