themselves, for a moment, to be distracted or occupied with the
conversation of their neighbors, which created a kind of secret in the
midst of all this noisy exchange of words, each one being forced to hear,
but not to listen, to a word of that which was spoken around him.

Among the prisoners summoned to the visitors' room, and the furthest from
the place where the guardian was seated, was one whom we still
particularize.

To the sad state of dejection he was in on his arrest had succeeded
impudent assurance. Already the contagious and detestable influence of
imprisonment _in common_ bore its fruits. Without doubt, if he had been
immediately transferred to a solitary cell, this wretch, still under the
blow of his first detection, the thought of his crimes constantly before
him, alarmed at the punishment which awaited him, might have experienced,
if not repentance, at least a salutary alarm, from which nothing might have
distracted him. And who knows what effect may be produced on a criminal by
an incessant, forced meditation on the crimes which he had committed, and
their punishment? Far from this, thrown into the midst of a ruffianly crowd
in whose eyes the least sign of repentance is cowardice, or, rather,
_treachery_, which they dearly expiate, for, in their savage obduracy and
in senseless distrust, they look upon as a spy every man (if there should
be such a one) who, sad and mournful, regretting his fault, does not
partake of their audacious thoughtlessness, and shudders at their contact.

Thrown among the bandits, this man, knowing, for a long time and by
tradition, the manners and ways of prisons, overcame his weakness, and
wished to appear worthy of a name already celebrated in the annals of
robbery and murder.