for the prisoners.

The other communicates with the office, destined for strangers admitted to
visit the prisoners.

These interviews and conversations take place through the double grating of
iron, in presence of a warder, who remains inside, at the extremity of the
passage. The appearance of the prisoners assembled in the visiting room on
this day offered numerous contrasts: some were covered with wretched
vestments; some seemed to belong to the working class; others, again, to
the well-to-do class.

The same contrast of condition was observable among the persons who came to
see the prisoners; they were almost all of them women. Generally the
prisoners appear less sad than the visitors; for, strange as it may appear,
it is proved by experience, there are few sorrows and little shame which
resist three or four days of imprisonment passed in company.

Those who are most alarmed at this hideous communion are soon habituated;
the contagion reaches them; surrounded by degraded beings, hearing only
infamous words, a kind of ferocious emulation drags them on, and either to
impose upon their companions by rivaling their obduracy or to stupefy
themselves by this moral intoxication, almost always the newly-arrived show
as much depravity and insolent gayety as the old hands. Let us return to
the visitors' room.

Notwithstanding the humming noise of a great number of conversations
carried on in a low tone, from one side of the passage to the other,
prisoners and visitors succeeded, after some practice, in being able to
converse among themselves--on the absolute condition not to allow