Yes; for it is shown that, instead of correcting him, your
penitentiary system depraves. Instead of ameliorating, it makes worse;
instead of curing slight moral affections, it renders them incurable.
Your aggravation of punishment, applied without pity to the backslider,
is, then, iniquitous, barbarous, since this backsliding is, thus to
express it, a forced consequence of your penal institutions. The terrible
punishment which awaits this _double guilt_ would be just and excusable if
your prisons improved the morals, purified the prisoners, and if, at the
expiration of the sentence, good conduct was, if not easy, at least
generally possible. If any one is surprised at these contradictions of the
law, what would he be when he compares certain penalties to certain
crimes--either on account of their inevitable consequences, or on account
of the disproportion which exists in their punishment? The conversation of
the prisoner whom the bailiff came to see will offer to us one of these
afflicting contrasts.
CHAPTER V.
BOULARD.
The prisoner who entered at the moment that Pique-Vinaigre left it was a
man of about thirty years of age, with red hair, and a jovial, fat, and
rubicund face; his middling stature rendered still more remarkable by his
enormous corpulency. This prisoner, so rosy and stout, was wrapped up in a
long, warm coat of gray swan's-down, with gaiter trousers of the same
material.
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