The neighbouring houses were ransacked for tools proper to effect an entrance, and the doors were burst open. The mob poured in; and there, bound hand and foot on the flags in the courtyard of the prison, they found the governor and his wife. "Citizens," cried Bouchotte, "you arrive too late! My prisoners are gone. They got warning of your coming, and after binding my wife and myself as you see us, they made their escape." Bouchotte was taken at his word, he and his wife were released from their cords, and the red-bonnets went off to wreak a double vengeance at Bicêtre. At the risk of his own and of his wife's life, the admirable Bouchotte had tricked the cut-throats. He had uncaged his birds and given them their liberty through a private postern, and had then ordered his warders to tie up his wife and himself. Honour to the brave memory of Bouchotte! The history of the French Revolution has few brighter passages than this. Nougaret gives us a curious picture of the interior of Sainte-Pélagie under the bloody rule of Robespierre.[18] The prison itself he describes as "damp and unwholesome" (_humide et malsaine_). There were about three hundred and fifty prisoners, detained they knew not why, for they were not allowed to read the charges entered on the registers. Footnote 18: _Histoire des Prisons de Paris et des Départements._ To each prisoner was allotted a cell six feet square, "with a dirty bed and a mattress as hard as marble." The turnkey's first question to a new-comer was: "Have you any money?" If the answer was, Yes, he was supplied with "a basin and a water-jug and a few cracked plates, for which he paid triple their worth." If the prisoner entered with empty pockets, it was: "So much the worse for you; for the rule here is that nothing buys nothing" (_on n'a rien pour rien_). In this plight, says Nougaret, the prisoner was obliged to sell some poor personal effect in order to obtain the strictest necessaries of life. "A citizen who occupied, in the month of Floréal, cell number 10 in the corridor of the second story, sacrificed for twenty-five francs a gold ring worth about £20, to procure for himself those same necessities." The rations at this date consisted of "a pound and a half of bad bread and a plate of flinty beans [_haricots très-durs_], larded with stale grease or tallow." Prisoners who could afford it paid an exorbitant price for a few supplementary dishes. Later, the diet was rather more generous.