He knew what and when to see
and not to see, and had his own measure of the legalities and the
proprieties. Little gusts of investigations and reforms passed by him as
the eddying dust of the street sweeps by granite skyscrapers. "_J'y
suis--J'y reste!_" was his motto. The subordinates had a general Irish
complexion to my feeling; they were there to gather tips under the
humorous guise of marshals of order. They were affable and easy, going as
far as they could with only so much show of resistance as might lend more
value to their yielding.
The prisoners were as heterogeneous as the contents of a rag-picker's
auction. Yet they associated with little friction, herding uniformly kind
with kind, only rarely lending themselves to transient ructions. They
played little jokes on each other; a fat and serious captive was sitting
of an evening at his cell door, absorbed in the perusal of a wide-spread
newspaper; a gnome-like passerby in the corridor lit an unsuspected match,
and suddenly the newspaper was a sheet of flame.
There were uglier spectacles; we had among us a fresh murderer, who after
killing his wife had retained grudge enough against her to hack off her
head. He kept darkly to his cell, sitting hour after hour with his head
leaning on his hand, and eyes unswervingly downcast. His crime was not
popular in that company, and none sought his companionship.
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