o’clock sickness” (_le mal de six heures_). It attacks all newcomers, and none escape it. It comes on after the walk in the courtyard, when night begins to close in, and the prison settles into silence till the morning. It is an attack of a kind of malarial fever, a shivering fit and a violent headache with a feeling of lassitude and nausea afterwards. When it comes on, the prisoners are given a cachet of quinine from the prison pharmacy. It does very little good. After dark the _pistolière_ is allowed two candles which she fixes in a piece of bread or fastens by means of their own wax to her wooden table. No lamps are allowed. I have seen it stated in the newspapers that Madame Caillaux is allowed a lamp, but I do not know whether the statement is true. The last ceremony of the day is “the roll call.” This, like most of the other ceremonies in Saint Lazare, is conducted in absolute silence. The door of the _pistole_ is opened, and Sœur Léonide appears with the big Book of Hours which she carries in her two hands. On either side of her is a _soubrette_, one of whom carries a big bunch of keys. Sister Léonide stands in the doorway of the _pistole_ for a moment, looks at the prisoner to make certain that she is there, bends her head, turns and goes. Not a word is spoken. And then comes the night. [Illustration: MADAME CAILLAUX’S CELL EXACTLY AS IT IS _Drawn by M. Albert Morand who received special permission from the prison authorities to make this sketch_] The one bright spot in this terrible life of monotony in the prison of Saint Lazare, the one relief from these never-ending days of the same food, the same walk, the same rats, the same silence, is Mass in the chapel. Here the _pistolière_ sits, silent, it is true, but with other women near her and round her. But even here she sits apart, and Madame Caillaux, I am told, has not attended mass. “There is only one hope in Saint Lazare,” said the former prisoner who gave me most of this information, “we all hope for our day of trial.” “All of you?” I asked. “Oh, yes,” she said. “No matter what we fear, nothing can be worse than the terrible monotony of life in the _pistole_. Our lives are those of prisoners in a dark gallery. The trial and the open law courts are the one glimpse of light and life at the end of the passage.” III THE CRIME AND THE PUBLIC