A few minutes afterwards, Rigolette, having put on her goloshes and taken her umbrella, left the prison more joyfully than she had entered it. During the conversation of Germain and the grisette, other scenes were passing in one of the prison yards, to which we will now conduct the reader. CHAPTER IX. THE LIONS' DEN. If the appearance of a house of confinement, constructed with every attention to salubrity and humanity, has nothing repulsive in its aspect, the sight of the prisoners causes a very different feeling. At the sight of the criminals who fill the gaols, we are at first seized with a shudder of fear and horror. It is only after some reflection that this is overcome, and feelings of pity mixed with bitterness overcome us. To understand the feeling of horror and fear, our reader must follow us to the Fosse aux Lions (the Lions' Den), one of the yards in La Force so called. In this are usually placed the most dangerous criminals, whose ferocity, or the charges against whom, are most serious. At this time they had been compelled to place there, in consequence of the alterations making in the prison, many other prisoners. These, although equally under accusations and awaiting the assizes, were almost all respectable persons in comparison with the usual occupants of the Lions' Den. The sky, gloomy, gray, and rainy, cast a dull light over the scene we are about to depict, and which took place in the centre of the yard of considerable extent, square, and enclosed by high white walls, having here and there several grated windows. At one end of this yard was a narrow door with a wicket; at the other end, at the entrance to the day-room, a large apartment with a stove in the centre, surrounded by wooden benches, on which were sitting and lying several prisoners conversing together. Others, preferring exercise, were walking up and down the walks, four or five in a row, arm in arm. It requires the pencil of Salvator or Goya, in order to sketch the different specimens of physical and moral ugliness, to render in its hideous fantasy the variety of costumes worn by these men, for the most part covered with squalid rags,--for being only accused, _i. e._ supposed innocent, they were not clad in the usual uniform of the central houses. Some, however, wore it; for on their entrance into gaol, their rags appeared so filthy and infected that, after the usual washing and bath, they had the frock and trousers of coarse gray cloth, as worn by the criminals, assigned to them.