experience a sensation of satisfaction directly his foot touched
the pavement of the courtyard, that he drew a long breath, and then
stretched and shook himself, as if to regain the elasticity of his
limbs, cramped by confinement in the narrow compartment from which he
had just emerged. Then he glanced around him, and a scarcely perceptible
smile played upon his lips. One might have sworn that the place was
familiar to him, that he was well acquainted with these high grim walls,
these grated windows, these heavy doors--in short, with all the sinister
belongings of a prison.

"Good Lord!" murmured Lecoq, greatly chagrined, "does he indeed
recognize the place?"

And his sense of disappointment and disquietude increased when, without
waiting for a word, a motion, or a sign, the prisoner turned toward
one of the five or six doors that opened into the courtyard. Without an
instant's hesitation he walked straight toward the very doorway he was
expected to enter--Lecoq asked himself was it chance? But his amazement
and disappointment increased tenfold when, after entering the gloomy
corridor, he saw the culprit proceed some little distance, resolutely
turn to the left, pass by the keeper's room, and finally enter the
registrar's office. An old offender could not have done better.

Big drops of perspiration stood on Lecoq's forehead. "This man," thought
he, "has certainly been here before; he knows the ropes."

The registrar's office was a large room heated almost to suffocation by
an immense stove, and badly lighted by three small windows, the panes
of which were covered with a thick coating of dust. There sat the clerk
reading a newspaper, spread out over the open register--that fatal book