"Amongst the class of swindlers, so numerous in Saint-Lazare, who boast their skill in exploiting the ambitious fools of Paris, you might recognise beneath the prison cap, so coquettishly worn, dames whom you had met perchance in the most elegant houses in town, and whose protection you might have sought. This one was a countess, that one a baroness, and, rightly or wrongly, the badge of nobility was painted on the panels of their carriages. Did you need the friendly word of a minister or the countenance of a capitalist, it was enough that you were known to have one of these angels for your friend. There were four of them in the sewing-room of Saint-Lazare,—rogues and swindlers of the first water! For years these corsairs have laid violent hands on all fortunes they could come at, but they continue to hold a position in society which is in itself a more scathing satire on the morals of the age than any which I am able to imagine. At intervals, these dames are lodged for a time at the country's cost in one or other of the houses of detention, without, however, losing one jot or tittle of their prestige in the world of fashion! When they reappear, society receives them open-armed, as poor banished exiles who have returned to the fatherland, or prodigal children whose wanderings are ended." Nothing delighted plebeian Saint-Lazare so much as to hear the countesses and baronesses discussing the merits, as a gallant, of this or the other minister, nobleman, poet, or banker of renown; and the interest culminated when the question arose as to which of the two could produce the greater number of letters signed by names with which all Paris was familiar. Roving like satellites around these gaudy planets were a small class of habitual criminals who, out of prison, served the noble adventuresses in several offices, as spies, go-betweens, receivers, etc. These also enjoyed a certain celebrity in the prison. One of them used to open chestnuts with a knife with which, in a passion of jealousy, she had all but murdered her lover, and which had become an object of the devoutest worship since the lover had gone to hide his scars under the red jacket of the galley-slave. Another woman arrived at the prison in a flutter of pride, eager to display a novel charm which decorated her ears. She also had lost her latest lover, but _Monsieur de Paris_ had been kind enough to extract for her two teeth from the head which he had just severed. The disconsolate mistress had had them set in gold as earrings! Nearly all these women carried on the neck, arms, and upper portion of the body specimens of the work of the professional tattooer; they preserved in this way the names of their successive lovers, and the figured emblems sometimes included the most ignoble devices.