The Amazon made haste to carry out her instructions, and I quietly left my desk to follow her. I shall not attempt to enter into a particular description of the prison in the interior of this strange city. Indeed, it would be impossible to describe with any degree of accuracy so irregular and rambling an edifice. The principal features consisted of a great hall and two courts or enclosures, one behind the other, in which the prisoners were permitted to walk at stated times. Three vaulted dungeons occupied three sides of the enclosures; immediately below these were the cells already described in my former book.[30] The upper cells were used more or less for the reception of women convicted of petty crimes, such as gambling, stealing, immodest language, etc. Besides these, there were other dungeons under the floor in various parts of the prison, some of them quite dark, and closed by huge trap-doors, designed for those whom it might be expedient to treat with peculiar severity. The prison was approached by two long corridors, opening into the courts; here were several small secret apartments, or cells, in which prisoners condemned to death, either by the Supreme Court or by the still more supreme will of the king, passed the last days of their existence. It was in one of these that the princess was confined. The opening of the prison doors attracted, as usual, a crowd of idle slave women and girls, who hailed the slightest event that broke the monotony of their lives with demonstrations of the liveliest joy; and as I stood there a guard of Amazons appeared, marching in file, and in the centre was the Laotian princess, followed by two of her countrywomen. She did not seem to notice the general sensation which her appearance created, nor the eager curiosity with which she was regarded, but walked on wearing the depressed and wearied look of one who sought to meditate on her sorrows in silence and privacy. Her features were remarkably stern, however, and she moved along with a firm and steady step. I followed with the crowd, who kept at a respectful distance. When the procession arrived at one of the nearest gardens, laid out in the Chinese style, the princess, with a proud intimation that she could go no farther, took her seat on the edge of an artificial rock beside a small pond of water in which gold and silver fish sported merrily together. She hung down her head, as if the fresh air had no power to remove the smallest portion of her sorrows and sufferings. A deep murmur of compassion now rose, not only from the idle crowd of women and girls, who gazed awe-stricken into her face, but from the "Amazonian Guard," those well-disciplined automatons of the royal palace of Siam. I could see that she just raised her dark, sad eyes to us, and then cast them down again; and that their expression, as well as that of her whole attitude, was one of mute and touching appeal against this most ungenerous usage.