The Terror seems almost to have emptied Sainte-Pélagie, and it is not until the days of the Empire that we find its cells once more in the occupation of political prisoners. Prisoners of that quality were not lacking there in Buonaparte's despotic era; but (and this may have been of design) the registers were not too well kept, and prisoners' names and the motives of their imprisonment are hard to arrive at. Had we the lists in full, however, they would excite small interest at this day. Between 1811 and March, 1814, when the records were more precise, two hundred and thirty-four persons were confined in this prison for causes more or less political. In April, 1814, we have the Russian Emperor giving their freedom to some seventy of the prisoners of Napoleon. The Restoration sends the officers of the old Imperial Guard to Sainte-Pélagie. The record of the Hundred Days, so far as this prison is concerned, is a clean one; but Charles X. continues the use of Sainte-Pélagie as a prison of State, and Béranger, Cauchois-Lemaire, Colonel Duvergier, Bonnaire, Dubois, Achille Roche, and Barthélemy are amongst the names on the gaoler's books. The Constitutional Monarchy from 1830 to 1848, the Republic succeeding it, and the reign of Napoleon III. (who swept into it five hundred citizens in the space of a few days) kept alive the political tradition of Sainte-Pélagie. M. Rochefort, who had his turn there from 1869-1870, was one of the last of Napoleon III.'s prisoners, to whom the revolution of the 4th of September gave back their liberty. From that date, the "political boarders" of Sainte-Pélagie were few, the governments of MM. Thiers and De Broglie preferring rather to suppress newspapers than to pursue their editors. Under the Empire and the Restoration the organisation and administration of Sainte-Pélagie evidently left much to be desired. It was not rare, says one chronicler, for accused persons to remain six or seven months without being interrogated. A certain M. Poulain d'Angers lay there a quarter of a year quite ignorant as to the cause of his arrest. Another accused, a certain M. Guillon, who had been attached to the Emperor's Council, weary of the perpetual shufflings of the police of the succeeding reign, constituted himself a prisoner _de facto_ without having received judgment; and remained six months a captive, although there was no entry against his name: one morning, they showed him the door, _malgré lui_. An adventure which befell this gentleman attests sufficiently the disorder which reigned in the prison service.