cases, even through their final stage of punishment, when it happened
to be of any nature compatible with in-door confinement. Hence it arose
that the number of those who haunted the prison gates, with or without
a title to admission, was enormous; all the relatives, or more properly
the acquaintances and connections of the criminal population within the
prison, being swelled by all the families of needy debtors who came
daily, either to offer the consolation of their society, or to diminish
their common expenditure by uniting their slender establishments. One
of the rules applied to the management of this vast multitude that were
every day candidates for admission was, that to save the endless
trouble as well as risk, perhaps, of opening and shutting the main
gates to every successive arrival, periodic intervals were fixed for
the admission by wholesale; and as these periods came round every two
hours, it would happen at many parts of the day that vast crowds
accumulated waiting for the next opening of the gate. These crowds were
assembled in two or three large outer courts, in which also were many
stalls and booths, kept there upon some local privilege of ancient
inheritance, or upon some other plea made good by gifts or bribes--some
by Jews and others by Christians, perhaps equally Jewish. Superadded to
these stationary elements of this miscellaneous population, were others
drawn thither by pure motives of curiosity, so that altogether an
almost permanent mob was gathered together in these courts; and amid
this mob it was,--from I know not what definite motive, partly because
I thought it probable that amongst these people I should hear the cause
of Agnes peculiarly the subject of conversation; and so, in fact, it
did really happen,--but partly, and even more, I believe, because I now
awfully began to shrink from solitude. Tumult I must have, and
distraction of thought. Amid this mob, I say, it was that I passed two
days. Feverish I had been from the first--and from bad to worse, in
such a case, was, at any rate, a natural progress; but, perhaps, also