The prison stood high up on
Clichy Hill, walled and barred and guarded, like other jails, but within
it a fair margin of liberty was allowed the bankrupts, just sufficient
to make their fate terrible by temptation. Some good soul had endowed it
with a library; newspapers came every day; a cafe was attached to it,
where spirituous liquors were prohibited, to the wrath of the dry
throats and raging thirsts of the captives; there was a garden behind
it, and a billiard saloon, but these luxuries were not gratuitous; poor
Freckle could not even pay his one sou per diem to cook his rations, so
that the Prisoners' Relief Association had to make him a present of it.
He spent his time between his bare, cheerless bedroom and the public
hall. There were many Americans in the place; but none of them were
friendly with him when he was found to have no cash. Yet he heard them
speak together of their countrymen who had lain in the same jail years
before. Yonder was the room of Horace Greeley, incarcerated for a debt
which was not his own; here the blood-stains of the Pennsylvania youth
who looked out of the window, heedless of warning, and was shot dead by
the guard; there the ancient chair, in which Hallidore, the Creole, sat
so often, possessor of a million francs, but too obstinate to pay his
tailor's bill and go free.
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