Nougaret gives us a curious picture of the interior of Sainte-Pélagie under the bloody rule of Robespierre.[18] The prison itself he describes as "damp and unwholesome" (_humide et malsaine_). There were about three hundred and fifty prisoners, detained they knew not why, for they were not allowed to read the charges entered on the registers.
_Histoire des Prisons de Paris et des Départements._
To each prisoner was allotted a cell six feet square, "with a dirty bed and a mattress as hard as marble." The turnkey's first question to a new-comer was: "Have you any money?" If the answer was, Yes, he was supplied with "a basin and a water-jug and a few cracked plates, for which he paid triple their worth." If the prisoner entered with empty pockets, it was: "So much the worse for you; for the rule here is that nothing buys nothing" (_on n'a rien pour rien_). In this plight, says Nougaret, the prisoner was obliged to sell some poor personal effect in order to obtain the strictest necessaries of life. "A citizen who occupied, in the month of Floréal, cell number 10 in the corridor of the second story, sacrificed for twenty-five francs a gold ring worth about £20, to procure for himself those same necessities." The rations at this date consisted of "a pound and a half of bad bread and a plate of flinty beans [_haricots très-durs_], larded with stale grease or tallow." Prisoners who could afford it paid an exorbitant price for a few supplementary dishes. Later, the diet was rather more generous.
Although communication between the prisoners was forbidden, they had invented a sort of club; perhaps the most singular in the annals of clubdom. The "meetings" were at eight in the evening, but no member left his cell. Despite the thickness of the doors, it was found that, by raising his voice, a prisoner could be heard from one end of the corridor to the other; and by this means the members of the club exchanged such news as they had gleaned during the day from the warders on duty. In order that no one might be betrayed or compromised (in the event of the conversation being overheard by the gendarmes posted under the windows), instead of saying "I heard such-and-such a thing to-day," the formula was, "I dreamt last night."