still two of my brothers-in-law and a brother, hardly more than a child, but who had, in spite of this, been a prisoner for eight months." Just fancy it—a father guillotined, a brother-in-law guillotined, two brothers-in-law standing under the shadow of the scaffold, a brother, likewise, who is still a child; and Pasquier and his wife threatened with the same fate!
More terrible than almost any passage in these Memoirs is the description of a prison personage who played a prominent part in the economy of the gaols. One of the many grounds given for getting rid of obnoxious persons was a professed belief in prison conspiracies. "What added," says Pasquier, "to the horror of this mendacious invention was the means employed for giving practical effect to the principle." Here was the means:
"In every one of the large prisons were a certain number of scoundrels, apparently detained as prisoners like the others, but who were really there to select and draw up a list of the victims. Several of them had become known as spies, and, incredible as it may seem, their lives were spared by those in the midst of whom they fulfilled their shameful duty. On the contrary, the prisoners treated them gently and paid them court. I had scarcely passed the first wicket, and was following the jailer who was taking me to the room I was to occupy, when I found myself face to face with
