" No
more, no less, a signature, a seal, and everybody is bound to obey.
But from the moment of receiving this order until the prisoner is
again incarcerated, the governor of the prison is relieved of all
responsibility. Whatever may happen, his hands are clear. Minute
precautions are taken, however, so that a prisoner may not escape during
his journey from the prison to the Palais. He is carefully locked up in
a compartment of one of the lugubrious vehicles that may be often
seen waiting on the Quai de l'Horloge, or in the courtyard of the
Sainte-Chapelle. This van conveys him to the Palais, and while he is
awaiting examination, he is immured in one of the cells of the gloomy
jail, familiarly known as "la Souriciere" or the "mouse-trap." On
entering and leaving the van the prisoner is surrounded by guards; and
on the road, in addition to the mounted troopers who always accompany
these vehicles, there are prison warders or linesmen of the Garde de
Paris installed in the passage between the compartments of the van
and seated on the box with the driver. Hence, the boldest criminals
ordinarily realize the impossibility of escaping from this ambulatory
prison.
Indeed, statistics record only thirty attempts at escape in a period
of ten years. Of these thirty attempts, twenty-five were ridiculous
failures; four were discovered before their authors had conceived
any serious hope of success: and only one man actually succeeded in
alighting from the vehicle, and even he had not taken fifty steps before
he was recaptured.
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