All this was theory when I first went into the convict establishment, but events, and things observed, soon came to confirm me in such views, and what I experienced so affected my system as to undermine its health. During the first summer I wandered about the place, so far as I was free to move, a solitary, friendless man. My moral situation was such that I could not distinguish those among the convicts who, in the sequel, managed to care for me a little in spite of the distance that always remained between us. There _were_ there men of my own position, ex-nobles like myself, but their companionship was repugnant to me. Here is one of the incidents which obliged me to see at the outset, how solitary a creature I was, and all the strangeness of my position at the place. One day in August, a fine warm day, about one o’clock in the afternoon, a time when, as a rule, everybody took a nap before resuming work, the convicts rose as one man and massed themselves in the court-yard. I had not the slightest idea, up to that moment, that anything was going on. So deeply had I been sunk in my own thoughts, that I saw nearly nothing of what was happening about me of any kind. But it seems that the convicts had been in a smouldering sort of unusual agitation for three days. Perhaps it had begun sooner; so I thought later when I remembered stray remarks, bits of talk that had come to my ears, the palpable increase of ill-humour among the prisoners, their unusual irritability for some time past. I had attributed it all to the trying summer work, the insufferably long days; to their dreamings about the woods, and freedom, which the season brought up; to the nights too short for rest. It may be that all these things came together to form a mass of discontent, that only wanted a tolerably good reason for exploding; it was found in the food. For several days the convicts had not concealed their dissatisfaction with it in open talk in their barracks, and they showed it plainly when assembled for dinner or supper; one of the cooks had been changed, but, after a couple of days, the new comer was sent to the right-about, and the old one brought back. The restlessness and ill-humour were general; mischief was brewing. “Here are we slaving to death, and they give us nothing but filth to eat,” grumbled one in the kitchen. “If you don’t like it, why don’t you order jellies and blanc-mange?” said another. “Sour cabbage soup, why, that’s _good_. I delight in it; there’s nothing more juicy,” exclaimed a third. “Well, if they gave you nothing but beef, beef, beef, for ever and ever, would you like _that_?” “Yes, yes; they ought to give us meat,” said a fourth; “one’s almost killed at the workshops; and, by heaven! when one has got through with work there one’s hungry, hungry; and you don’t get anything to satisfy your hunger.” “It’s true, the victuals are simply damnable.” “He fills his pockets, don’t you fear!” “It isn’t your business.”