through the grating in the door of the condemned cell,
he saw passing by: "Are there any pretty women in the
visitors' parlor this morning?" Another condemned man,
Avril (what a name!), in this same cell, bequeathed all
that he possessed--five francs--to a female prisoner whom
he had seen at a distance in the women's yard, "in order
that she may buy herself a fichu a la mode."

Between the male and female wretch dreams build a
Bridge of Sighs, as it were. The mire of the gutter
dallies with the door of a prison cell. The Aspasia of the
street-corner aspires and respires with the heart of the
Alcibiades who waylays the passer-by at the corner of a wood.

You laugh? You should not. It is a terrible thing.




II.



The murderer is a flower for the courtesan. The prostitute
is the Clytia of the assassin sun. The eye of the woman
damned languourously seeks Satan among the myrtles.

What is this phenomenon? It is the need of the ideal.
A sublime and awful need.