More buildings were called for, and another court; and the political wing of Sainte-Pélagie became a colony by itself. A colonist of the early thirties bestowed on it the following appreciation:—"Sainte-Pélagie is death by wasting (_le supplice par la langueur_), torture by ennui, homicide by process of decline. It is a sort of pneumatic machine applied to the brain, which saps and exhausts it by inches. It is not an active irritation, and it is nothing resembling repose. It is not Paris, and it is not a desert solitude. It is a _mélange_ of everything: air, a modicum; elbow-room, rather less; friends, one or two; bores, any number. It is a prison with a mirage of the world; a world not made for a prison. It is not severe, and it is infinitely wearisome. It is a kind of civilised police; it is a prodigious and perpetual paradox.... Sainte-Pélagie is insupportable!" Here is another appreciation of about the same date:—"Sainte-Pélagie is a hurly-burly (_pêle-mêle_) of all imaginable ideas and opinions; a species of political Pandemonium. The _Caricature_ runs foul of the _Quotidienne_, the _Courrier de l'Europe_ elbows the _Revolution_, the _Gazette_ pirouettes between the _Tribune_ and the _Courrier Français_.... All colours and all races, all ages and all tongues are confounded. It is a Babel; it is a common camp in which friends and foes are flung together after a general rout. As a huge anomaly it is curious to see, but it has the depressing effect of a monster!" Let us turn to the debtors' side. Dulaure quotes in this connection a description given by De la Borde in his _Memoirs_, which is worth translating: "The debtors' wing of Sainte-Pélagie, which is intended to accommodate a hundred, has one hundred and twenty and sometimes one hundred and fifty tenants. The building is in three stories, each story consisting of one narrow corridor, the rooms in which receive no light except from loopholes beneath the roof. There are no fire-places in the rooms, some of which are cruelly cold, whilst in others the heat is unbearable. With proper space for three persons at the most, they are generally made to hold from five to six; and the dirt everywhere is revolting. The wretched occupants can only take exercise in a corridor four feet wide, and a courtyard thirty feet square. For years they have asked in vain for some contrivance which would give them a proper current of air; there is not a decent ventilator in the place. In winter they are locked in from eight P.M. until seven A.M.; and, whatever his necessities, not one of the five or six cell-mates can possibly quit his cell between those hours. The dirtiest and worst-kept part of the whole prison is the infirmary. Two or three patients are put into one bed,—an excellent means of spreading the itch, and other maladies." The reproach of this unseemly state M. de la Borde laid upon the chiefs of the prison service for their indifference, and the subordinates for their wholesale negligence.