The Representatives were allowed nothing whatever.  Isolation, close confinement, silence, darkness, cold, “the amount of ennui which engenders madness,” as Linguet has said when speaking of the Bastille.

To remain seated on a chair all day long, with arms and legs crossed:  such was the situation.  But the bed!  Could they lie down?

No.

There was no bed.

At eight o’clock in the evening the jailer came into the cell, and reached down, and removed something which was rolled up on a plank near the ceiling.  This “something” was a hammock.

The hammock having been fixed, hooked up, and spread out, the jailer wished his prisoner “Good-night.”

There was a blanket on the hammock, sometimes a mattress some two inches thick.  The prisoner, wrapt in this covering, tried to sleep, and only succeeded in shivering.

But on the morrow he could at least remain lying down all day in his hammock?

Not at all.

At seven o’clock in the morning the jailer came in, wished the Representative “Good-morning,” made him get up, and rolled up the hammock on its shelf near the ceiling.

But in this case could not the prisoner take down the authorized hammock, unroll it, hook it up, and lie down again?

Yes, he could.  But then there was the dungeon.

This was the routine.  The hammock for the night, the chair for the day.

Let us be just, however.  Some obtained beds, amongst others MM.  Thiers and Roger (du Nord).  M. Grevy did not have one.

Mazas is a model prison of progress; it is certain that Mazas is preferable to the piombi of Venice, and to the under-water dungeon of the Chatelet.  Theoretical philanthropy has built Mazas.  Nevertheless, as has been seen, Mazas leaves plenty to be desired.  Let us acknowledge that from a certain point of view the temporary solitary confinement of the law-makers at Mazas does not displease us.  There was perhaps something of Providence in the coup d’etat.  Providence, in placing the Legislators at Mazas, has performed an act of good education.  Eat of your own cooking; it is not a bad thing that those who own prisons should try them.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE EPISODE OF THE BOULEVARD ST. MARTIN

When Charamaule and I reached No. 70, Rue Blanche, a steep lonely street, a man in a sort of naval sub-officer’s uniform, was walking up and down before the door.  The portress, who recognized us, called our attention to him.  “Nonsense,” said Charamaule, “a man walking about in that manner, and dressed after that fashion, is assuredly not a police spy.”

“My dear colleague,” said I, “Bedeau has proved that the police are blockheads.”