A few days after the removal of Benoît, the prisoners awoke one morning to find that sentinels had been posted at every door. A stolid police officer named Wilcheritz, a Pole by birth, who had been nominated to a principal post in the prison, came round with the order that there was to be no communication between the suspects. They, believing that they were on the eve of another September massacre, prepared to bid each other farewell. On this occasion, however, it was merely a question of stripping them of their belongings. Money, paper notes, rings, studs, pins, shoebuckles, penknives, razors, scissors, keys, were gathered in cell after cell, and deposited in a heap in one of the larger rooms; no notes or inventory being taken. Wilcheritz and his inquisitors were the objects of some pleasantries which, it is said, "annoyed them greatly." One prisoner, after handing over his writing-case was asked for his ring. "What!" said he, "isn't the stationery enough? Are you setting up in the jewellery line too?" Another, when it was pointed out to him that he had retained the gold buckles of his garters, replied: "I think, citizens, you had better undress me at once." They entered the cell of the playwright Parisau. "Citizens," said the author, "I am really distressed; you have come too late. I had three hundred livres here, but another citizen has just relieved me of them. I hope that you will have better luck elsewhere. They tell me, however, that you are leaving us fifty livres apiece, and as I have only just five and twenty, no doubt you will make up the sum to me." "Oh no, citizen," returned the stolid Pole.—"Ah! I see. You are merely 'on the make,' citizen. It is unfortunate in that case that there are gentry in the prison more active than you. However, if you follow the other citizen, I dare say you will catch him up, and then you can settle accounts with him. You are the ocean, citizen, and all the little tributaries will join themselves to you." In another apartment it was proposed to carry off his silver coffee-pot from a prisoner, who, to preserve it, explained that it was "not exactly silver," but "some sort of English metal." That was possible, observed Wilcheritz, for he had one just like it himself. "Ah!" returned the prisoner, "now that you mention it, I remember there was another like mine in the prison!" Suspects belonging to the working-classes,—tailors shoemakers, engravers, and the like—were allowed to retain the tools of their crafts; and the barbers received their razors in the morning, returning them to the gaolers at night. To all requests addressed to him by the prisoners, imploring information as to their fate, the phlegmatic Pole made answer: "Patience! Justice is just. This durance will not endure for ever. Patience!"