Page:Crainquebille, Putois, Riquet and other profitable tales, 1915.djvu/235



BOUT ten years ago, perhaps more, perhaps less, I visited a prison for women. It was an old chateau, built in the reign of Henry IV; and its high slate roofs frowned down upon a dark little southern town on the banks of a river. The governor of the prison had reached the age of superannuation. He wore a black wig and a white beard. He was an extraordinary governor. He had ideas of his own and kindly feelings. He had no illusions concerning the morals of his three hundred prisoners, but he did not consider them to be greatly inferior to the morals of any three hundred women collected haphazard in a town.

"Here as elsewhere we have all sorts and conditions," his gentle, tired glance seemed to say.

As we crossed the courtyard, a long string of prisoners was returning from a silent walk and going back to the workshops. Many of them were old and 221