Then some sort of classification was attempted, and three orders were established in the prison. The _Pistoliers_ were those who could afford to pay for the privilege of sleeping two in a bed. The _Pailleux_ lay huddled in parties, in dens or lairs, on piles of stale straw, "at the risk of being devoured by rats and vermin." Nougaret remarks that in some cells the prisoners on the floor at night had to protect their faces with their hands, and leave the rest of their persons to the rats. The _Secrets_ were the third class of prisoners, who made what shift they could in black and reeking cells beneath the level of the Seine. And the sick in the infirmary? Listen once more to Nougaret in his _Histoire des Prisons de Paris et des Départemens_: "There were frightful fevers there, and you took your chance of catching them. The patients, lying in pairs in filthy beds, were in as wretched a plight as ever mortals found themselves in. The doctors hardly condescended to examine them. They had one or two potions which, as they said, were 'saddles for all horses,' and which they administered quite indiscriminately. It was curious to see with what an air of contempt they made their rounds. One day, the head doctor approached a bed and felt the patient's pulse. 'Ah,' said he to the hospital warder, 'the man's better than he was yesterday.' 'Yes, doctor, he's a good deal better,—but it's not the same man. Yesterday's patient is dead; this one has taken his place.' 'Really?' said the doctor, 'that makes the difference! Well, mix this fellow his draught.'" When the prisoners were to be locked in for the night, there was always a great to-do in getting the roll called. Three or four tipsy turnkeys, with half-a-dozen dogs at their heels, passed from hand to hand an incorrect list, which none of them could read. A wrong name was spelled out, which no one answered to; the turnkeys swore in chorus, and spelled out another name. In the end, the prisoners had to come to the assistance of the guards and call their own roll. Then the numbers had to be told over and over again, and the prisoners to be marched in and marched out three or four times, before their muddled keepers could satisfy themselves that the count was correct. One seeks to know what the feeding was like in the "ante-chamber of the guillotine." When, in the midst of the Terror, Paris was pinched with hunger, the pinch was felt severely in the Conciergerie. Rations ran desperately short, and a common table was instituted. The aristocrats had to pay scot for the penniless, and came in these strange circumstances to "estimate their fortunes by the number of _sans-culottes_ whom they fed, as formerly they had done by the numbers of their horses, mistresses, dogs, and lackeys."