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At any rate, the Marshal escaped from his imprisonment during our stay, probably to the relief of his jailers. That was a source of great excitement in itself, and it was heightened by rumours that an English girl had assisted the prisoner to break out. We were not personally in favour of Bazaine, but regarded him with distinct repulsion for surrendering at Metz.

He granted the request, but with the proviso that she should never return. Then she decided to remain with her husband, even at the risk of her life. Shall the miseries of their prison life be dwelt upon? Their jailers were the coarsest of human beings. They surpassed in brutality the slave drivers of Constantinople.

But gradually it all began to grow clear: the scurrying figures of his captors and jailers; the shouting of mounted soldiers; the wistful eyes of his beloved looking at him. "Ah, Annette; you again; my guardian angel!" It took but a few minutes to restore order.

When the train again started Charras heaved the deep, joyous sigh of a freed man, and said, "At last!" He raised his eyes, and perceived his two jailers by his side. They had got up behind him into the carriage. "Ah, indeed!" he said to them; "you there!" Of these two men there was only one who spoke, that one answered, "Yes, Colonel." "What are you doing here?" "We are keeping watch over you."

Could he be the "poor fellow" meant? Of course not; but then he might be. Such a summary disposition of prisoners was not unknown to Spanish jailers. While his mind was busy with this startling question the laughing voice, now lowered almost to a whisper, approached his door, and he became conscious of a scrutiny through the grating.

Often, in the days far gone, he had read of the wonders that had been effected, of the stones removed, and the bars filed, by the self-same kind of implement. He remembered that the most celebrated of those bold unfortunates who live a life against the law, had said, "Choose my prison, and give me but a rusty nail, and I laugh at your jailers and your walls!"

There have been some changes of late years in the care of criminals, but does public opinion yet everywhere demand that jailers and prison-keepers and executioners of the penal law should be men of refinement, of high character, of any degree of culture? I do not know any class more needing the best direct personal influence of the best civilization than the criminal.

It is related that one of the French soldiers who came to New England and who could not speak English resorted to Latin and found to his joy that the inhabitant of Connecticut, from whom he wished to purchase supplies for his regiment, could be communicated with by that obsolete medium; and what would Lafayette have done when imprisoned in an Austrian dungeon if he had not been able to converse with his official jailers in the Latin tongue!

For a while all eyes were so fixed upon this glittering array that there was scarce time to note the humble six, in their penitential robes, bare-footed, and carrying tapers, who appeared, attended by their jailers from the Fleet Prison, and were set upon the opposite platform, full in view of all.

In one cell, where a little light penetrated, a man had lived twenty-seven years without seeing the face of a human being lived in filth and wretchedness, with no companionship but his own thoughts, and they were sorrowful enough and hopeless enough, no doubt. Whatever his jailers considered that he needed was conveyed to his cell by night through a wicket.