Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/533

 places of confinement are revolting. The end of one of the large stables through which we passed was made to serve for every purpose. Those who, weary of standing, lay upon the ground, were on damp straw or the bare earth. Horrible faces scowled at us as we passed through the unsavory throng. Probably our gendarme had a revolver under his cloak; but they might have closed in upon our little group, and have strangled or torn us to pieces in an instant had they been so minded. Of course they would have paid dearly for the freak, probably a volley or two would have been sent among them. To prevent outbreaks, and secure many thousand desperate characters, who are neither handcuffed nor under bolts and bars, great precautions and severity are necessary. In the walls of the inclosure holes have been made, through some of which the mouths of cannon grin, charged with grape and canister, while at others sentries are stationed. The night before last a prisoner approached one of these embrasures and persisted in looking through. The sentry warned him to retire, once, twice, and thrice, and then he blew his brains out. The top of his skull, we were told, flew over the wall. The victim had evidently sought his death. All round the inclosure outside there is a double line of sentries, and gendarmes stand thick in front of the stables. The slightest symptom of insubordination suffices to provoke summary punishment, and the only punishment known in such cases is death. The guard consists of gendarmes, police agents, and a battalion detached from the camp outside.

"Before leaving, we visited the women's prison, which is a two-story house in a corner of the enclosure near the entrance gate. There were about two hundred of them, for most part such as are commonly found in the neighborhood of soldiers' barracks, or in the lowest outskirts of Paris, squalid and dangerous localities, of which sketches