his old prison companions would be sufficient to overturn his plan of
reformation so carefully designed. In this way:

A hardened ticket-of-leave proposes a job to a repentant one; the latter,
in spite of dangerous threats, refuses the criminal association;
immediately an anonymous communication strips the veil from the past life
of this unfortunate, who wishes, at any sacrifice, to conceal and expiate a
first fault by honorable conduct.

Then, exposed to the contempt, or, at least, the suspicion of those whose
interest he had obtained by force of industry and probity, reduced to
distress, soured by injustice, carried away by want, yielding, in fine, to
these fatal derelictions, this man, almost restored, falls back again, and
forever, to the bottom of the abyss from whence he had with so much
difficulty escaped.

In the following scenes we shall endeavor, then, to show the monstrous and
inevitable consequences of promiscuous confinement.

After ages of barbarous proofs and pernicious doubts, it begins to be
understood how unreasonable it is to plunge into an atmosphere abominably
vitiated, people whom a pure and salubrious air might have saved.

How much time shall be required to find out that, to associate gangrened
beings is to redouble the intensity of their corruption, which thus becomes
incurable?

How long to find out that there is but one remedy to this growing leprosy,
which threatens the body social, Solitary confinement?