voured, by their good conduct, to efface the remembrance of past wrongs, were enveloped in the meshes, and confounded with thieves by profession: there was not the least chance of reclaiming them, for, confined in the depot, they were led the next day before the terrible Limodin, who compelled them to undergo an interrogatory. Such an interrogatory, gracious heaven!
"Your name, your residence? You have been under sentence before?"
"Yes, sir, but I have been at my trade since, and—"
"Enough—bring up another."
"But, Monsieur Limodin, I beg"
"Silence! another; I am understood, I hope."
The man on whom silence was imposed was about to allege reasons in his favour. Liberated for several years, he could produce testimonies of his honesty, and prove, by a thousand testimonies, that he had returned to laborious habits; in fact, that he was irreproachable in every way: but M. Limodin had not leisure to hear him.
"I should never have done," he said, "if I am to have my time taken up by such chattering."
Sometimes in a morning this brutal interrogatory was carried on with such speed, that a hundred persons; men or women, were sent off, some to Bicêtre, and the others to Saint-Lazare. It was pitiless: in his eyes nothing could atone for a momentary error. How many poor devils, who had forsaken the paths of vice, have been thrown into them again by him! Many of the victims of this implacable severity repented that they had ever betaken themselves to honest modes of life, and swore, in their rage, to become determined robbers.
"Of what use," said these unfortunates, "has been our return to the paths of rectitude? See how we are treated: it would be better to have been a rogue always. Why make laws, if they are not observed? Why were we condemned for a time, if they will not allow that we can be reformed? It would have been better for us to have received sentence for life or death,
