The prison known as La Santé was situated in the rue de la Santé close to the Boulevard Arago, upon the left bank of the Seine. Founded and completed in the palmiest days of the French Empire, it was the newest and certainly long the best prison in Paris. Enthusiastic Frenchmen have, indeed, declared that it was the best and most beautiful building of the kind in Europe, but the statement is rather far-fetched. Coming twenty years later than Mazas, it was a marked advance upon that penitentiary, which it resembled in many respects. It consisted of two distinct divisions, or “sides,” and the inmates of each were subjected to different systems of imprisonment. In one, unbroken cellular confinement was the rule, in the other, prisoners occupied separate sleeping cells at night, but took their food and exercise, and worked together during the day. The former régime was applied to all sentenced for the first time, the latter to _récidivistes_, or habitual offenders, who fell into trouble again and again. The cellular division, that first reached when the threshold of the prison, with its sleepy gatekeepers and punctilious _greffier_, was passed, was cleaner and tidier than Mazas as I saw it, and altogether better kept. There were the same radiating wings, extending like the spokes of a wheel round a central nave, the _rond point_; in which was the same glass house or observatory, with an altar on top, towards which all the cell doors, as to their Mecca, religiously turned for the Mass. The cells were warmed and ventilated by an arrangement of hot water pipes and fresh air flues, just as is seen in every modern prison since the days of Sir Joshua Jebb. The cells at La Santé were spacious and fairly clean; their furniture and fittings of more modern design than those of Mazas. The hammock was replaced by an iron bedstead, the table was a flap, fastened on hinges to the wall, and a three-legged stool replaced the rush-bottomed chair chained by the leg. The floor was boarded, not paved with bricks, and no small pains were taken to polish the oak planks, which were rubbed vigorously till they shone like parquetry. All parts of the cells were not so entirely above reproach, and a severely critical eye would detect a certain want of neatness in the interior economy of many. Here and there rubbish was suffered to accumulate and lie untouched. Upon a shelf in one cell was a quantity of broken bread; in another several clay pipes and a half empty wine carafe; the walls of a third, occupied by a prison bookbinder, were hung with scraps of tawdry decoration, crucifixes, hearts, monograms shaped out of the gold leaf and colored paper which he used in his trade. Prisoners were permitted, too, to deface their cells with impunity by scribbling on the notice boards and writing on the walls. Remarks upon the articles supplied from the canteen appeared upon the price list. Expressions of regret, vows of vengeance, even, were recorded upon the boards of rules. The prison almanac, prepared by the good chaplain for the special behoof of prisoners, with appropriate texts and maxims, served really as a calendar, such as school boys keep, to mark off the days as they slowly dragged along towards release.