Nevertheless the stomach craved, the hours passed by, they picked up the bread, and ended by eating it.  One prisoner went so far as to pick up the porringer and to attempt to wipe out the bottom with his bread, which he afterwards devoured.  Subsequently, this prisoner, a Representative set at liberty in exile, described to me this dietary, and said to me, “A hungry stomach has no nose.”

Meanwhile there was absolute solitude and profound silence.  However, in the course of a few hours, M. Emile Leroux—­he himself has told the fact to M. Versigny—­heard on the other side of the wall on his right a sort of curious knocking, spaced out and intermittent at irregular intervals.  He listened, and almost at the same moment on the other side of the wall to his left a similar rapping responded.  M. Emile Leroux, enraptured—­what a pleasure it was to hear a noise of some kind!—­thought of his colleagues, prisoners like himself, and cried out in a tremendous voice, “Oh, oh! you are there also, you fellows!” He had scarcely uttered this sentence when the door of his cell was opened with a creaking of hinges and bolts; a man—­the jailer—­appeared in a great rage, and said to him,—­

“Hold your tongue!”

The Representative of the People, somewhat bewildered, asked for an explanation.

“Hold your tongue,” replied the jailer, “or I will pitch you into a dungeon.”

This jailer spoke to the prisoner as the coup d’etat spoke to the nation.

M. Emile Leroux, with his persistent parliamentary habits, nevertheless attempted to insist.

“What!” said he, “can I not answer the signals which two of my colleagues are making to me?”

“Two of your colleagues, indeed,” answered the jailer, “they are two thieves.”  And he shut the door, shouting with laughter.

They were, in fact, two thieves, between whom M. Emile Leroux was, not crucified, but locked up.

The Mazas prison is so ingeniously built that the least word can be heard from one cell to another.  Consequently there is no isolation, notwithstanding the cellular system.  Thence this rigorous silence imposed by the perfect and cruel logic of the rules.  What do the thieves do?  They have invented a telegraphic system of raps, and the rules gain nothing by their stringency.  M. Emile Leroux had simply interrupted a conversation which had been begun.

“Don’t interfere with our friendly patter,” cried out his thief neighbor, who for this exclamation was thrown into the dungeon.

Such was the life of the Representatives at Mazas.  Moreover, as they were in secret confinement, not a book, not a sheet of paper, not a pen, not even an hour’s exercise in the courtyard was allowed to them.

The thieves also go to Mazas, as we have seen.

But those who know a trade are permitted to work; those who know how to read are supplied with books; those who know how to write are granted a desk and paper; all are permitted the hour’s exercise required by the laws of health and authorized by the rules.