show that if the guilty is unfailingly punished, his family lose nothing, but rather gain in the esteem of the world, if by dint of courage and virtues they achieve the re-establishing of a tarnished name. Shall we say that the legislature desires to render the chastisement still more terrible by virtually striking the criminal father in the fortune of his innocent son? That would be barbarous, immoral, irrational. Is it not, on the contrary, of the highest moral consequence to prove to the people that there is no hereditary succession of evil; that the original stain is not ineffaceable? Let us venture to hope that these reflections will appear deserving of some attention from the new Society of Patronage. Unquestionably it is painful to think that the state never takes the initiative in these questions so vital and so deeply interesting to social organisation. The ancestor of the Martial family who first established himself on this islet, on payment of a moderate rent, was a _ravageur_ (a river-scavenger). The ravageurs, as well as the _debardeurs_ and _dechireurs_ of boats, remain nearly the whole of the day plunged in water up to the waist in the exercise of their trade. The _debardeurs_ bring ashore the floating wood. The _dechireurs_ break up the rafts which have brought the wood. Equally aquatic as these other two occupations, the business of a _ravageur_ is different. Going into the water as far as possible, the _ravageur_, or mud-lark, draws up, by aid of a long drag, the river sand from beneath the mud; then, collecting it in large wooden bowls, he washes it like a person washing for gold dust, and extracts from it metallic particles of all kinds,--iron, copper, lead, tin, pewter, brass,--the results of the relics of all sorts of utensils. The _ravageurs_, indeed, often find in the sand fragments of gold and silver jewelry, brought into the Seine either by the sewers which are washed by the stream, or by the masses of snow or ice collected in the streets, and which are cast into the river. We do not know by what tradition or custom these persons, usually honest and industrious, are called by a name so formidable. Martial, the father, the first inhabitant of this islet, being a _ravageur_ (and a sad exception to his comrades), the inhabitants of the river's banks called it the Ile du Ravageur. The dwelling of these freshwater pirates was placed at the southern end of the island. In daytime there was visible, on a sign-board over the door: "AU RENDEZVOUS DES RAVAGEURS. GOOD WINE, GOOD EELS, AND FRIED FISH. BOATS LET BY THE DAY OR HOUR."