XXII FROM THE CONDEMNED CELL 295 XXIII AN UNEXPECTED EVENT 308 XXIV COMMUTATION 316 XXV TRANSPORTATION 322 XXVI THE LAST TEMPTATION 336 PROLOGUE On a certain afternoon in May, about four or five of the clock, I was standing at the open window of my room in that Palace to which Fortune leads her choicest favourites--the College, or Prison, as some call it, of the King's Bench. I was at the time a prisoner for debt, with very little chance of ever getting out. More fortunate than most of the tenants, I was able to carry on my business. For instance, all that morning I had been engaged in composing a song--it was afterwards sung with great applause at the Dog and Duck; and on the bed reposed the instrument with which I earned the greater part of my daily bread--my faithful violin. My window was on the ground-floor in the great building which was then new, for the Prison had been transferred from the other side two or three years before. This building contains more than two hundred rooms, and twice that number of prisoners. Many of the ground-floor rooms have been converted into shops--chandlers', grocers', mercers', hosiers'. You may buy anything in these shops, except a good book. I believe that there is no demand in the prison for such an article of commerce. Song-books and jest-books and cards on the other hand, are constantly called for. It was a day of bright sunshine. Outside, on the Grand Parade--otherwise called King Street--which is a broad footway flagged, strolled up and down in the sunshine an endless procession. They paced the pavement from East to West; they turned and paced it again from West to East. Among them were a few neatly attired, but by far the greater number, men and women, were slatternly, untidy, and slipshod. Their walk--nobody was ever seen to walk briskly in the Prison--was the characteristic scuffle easily acquired in this place; the men were mostly in slippers: some were in morning gowns: very few had their heads dressed: some wore old-fashioned wigs, rusty and uncombed: some, the poorer set, were bare-footed, and in such rags and tatters as would not be tolerated in the open streets. The faces of the people as they passed were various. There was the humorous face of the prisoner who takes fortune philosophically: there was the face always resentful: the face resigned: the face vacuous: the face of suffering: the face sodden with drink: the face vicious: the face soured: the face saddened: the face, like the clothes, ragged and ruined: everything but the face happy--that cannot be found in the King's Bench Prison. Children ran about playing and shouting: there were at this time many hundreds of children in the prison. Against the wall--'tis surely twenty-five feet