King of the penitentiary by right of strength, all the convicts fear and admire him; his athletic reputation compels him to test every newcomer, and up to the present time, all these contests have turned out in his favour.  He can bend iron rods over his knee, carry three men with one hand, and knock down eight by opening his arms; he eats three times as much as an ordinary man, for he has an enormous appetite and a heroic constitution.

When we saw him, he was watering the plants in the botanical garden.  He is always hanging around the hot-house behind the plants and the palm-trees, digging the soil and cleansing the wood-work.

On Thursday, when the public is admitted, Ambroise receives his mistresses behind the boxed orange-trees; he has several of them, in fact, more than he wishes.  He knows how to procure them, whether by his charms, his strength or his money, which he always carries in quantities about his person and spends lavishly whenever he wishes to enjoy himself.  So he is very popular among a certain class of women, and the people who have put him where he is, have never perhaps been loved as much as Ambroise.

In the middle of the garden, in a little lake shaded by a willow-tree and bordered by plants, is a swan.  With one stroke of its leg it can swim from one side of the pond to the other, and although it crosses it a hundred times a day and catches gold fishes to while away the time, it never thinks of wandering away.

Further on, in a line against the wall, are some cages for rare animals from foreign lands destined for the Museum of Paris.  Most of the cages, however, were empty.  In front of one, in a narrow grated yard, a convict was teaching a young wild-cat to obey commands like a dog.  Hasn’t this man had enough of slavery himself?  Why does he torment this poor little beast?  The lashes with which he is threatened he gives the wild-cat, which, some day, will probably take its revenge by jumping over the iron railing and killing the swan.

One moonlit evening, we decided to take a stroll through the streets known to be frequented by filles de joie.  They are very numerous.  The navy, the artillery, the infantry, each has its own particular streets, without mentioning the penitentiary, which covers a whole district of the city.  Seven parallel streets ending at its walls, compose what is called Keravel, and are filled by the mistresses of jailers and convicts.  They are old frame houses, crowded together, with every door and window closed tight.  No sound issues from them, nobody is seen coming out, and there are no lights in the windows; at the end of each street is a lamp-post which the wind sways from side to side, thus making its long yellow rays oscillate on the sidewalk.  The rest of the quarter is in absolute darkness.  In the moonlight, these silent houses with their uneven roofs projected fantastic glimmerings.

When do they open?  At unknown hours, at the most silent time of the darkest nights.  Then comes the jailer who has slipped away from his watch, or the convict who has managed to escape from the prison, though sometimes they arrive together, aiding and abetting each other; then, when daylight dawns, the jailer turns his head away and nobody is the wiser.