In the large open space between the two stairways is a high chair, almost a throne, on which sits Sister Léonide, the chief superintendent of the prison nuns. She is a woman of about forty. A handsome woman with a stern set face. The drawing of her in this volume was done specially for me by the well-known artist of St. Lazare, Monsieur Albert Morand. Monsieur Morand is one of the few men who have been authorized to make drawings of St. Lazare, and his work has the honour of a special place in the Carnavalet Museum. His drawings which are reproduced in this volume are probably unique. The nickname which the prisoners give Sœur Léonide is “Bostock,” after the famous American lion tamer, who, in his day, was a celebrity in Paris. Her severity is not more remarkable than is her power of quelling the first signs of mutiny among the prisoners by a mere glance, and it was the quick-witted appreciation of this power of the eye which gave her her name. Sister Léonide made a sign to one of the two women who stood by her. The woman, a prison attendant who goes by the ironically prison-given name of a _soubrette_, opened a door and motioned to No. 12 to walk straight on down a half-lighted misty corridor, painted a muddy brown. This corridor seems endless. It is like a street in a nightmare. There are doors on either side which seem to leap out of the half darkness, and at long, long intervals a little flame of gas. It is only quite recently that there is any incandescent gas in St. Lazare and what there is, even now, is quite inadequate, merely serving, as a former prisoner expressed it, “to show us the darkness around.” The anticipatory mental torture of this first long journey down the interminable corridor must be terrific to a woman whose life, before her imprisonment, has run on easy lines. The doors are named and numbered. Cell No. 8, Cell No. 9, Workshop No. 2, Library, and so forth. All of them have huge and heavy locks, and bolts and bars. “Here,” said the _soubrette_. She produced a huge key which she fitted into the lock of a door on which in big white letters were painted the words “Pistole No. 12.” She had to use both hands to turn the key. The door creaked and opened inwards. Cell No. 12 is fairly large. As a rule there are six little beds in it, and it has held as many as eight beds. The walls are painted black, from the floor up to three quarters of the distance to the ceiling. The top quarter is white-washed, but the whitewash is grey, from age and want of care. They use extraordinarily little soap and water in the prison of Saint Lazare. The heavy beams across the ceiling have been decorated for many years by a network of spiders’ webs, and though there was a rumour in the Paris Press at the time of her imprisonment that Cell No. 12 had been cleaned for Madame Caillaux’s reception, I am told that the webs and the spiders are there still.