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a moment before was replaced by a heavy stiff shirt of unbleached cloth, and my handsome suit by a jacket and pants of coarse sackcloth. My shoes vanished and I shoved my feet into a pair of sabots. Until that day we had looked like normal men. I glanced at the other six: what a horror! Our individuality was gone; in two minutes we had been transformed into convicts.
    “Right turn, single file! Ready, march!”
    With our escort of twenty guards we came to the courtyard, where, each in turn, we were wedged into the narrow cells of a police van. We were off to Beaulieu, the jail in Caen.
THE JAIL IN CAEN
    We were led into the director’s office as soon as we arrived. He sat enthroned behind an Empire desk on a platform three feet high.
    “Attention! The director will now address you.”
    “Prisoners, this is a way station while you wait to leave for the bagne . It’s a prison. Silence is required at all times. You’ll have no visitors, no letters. Bend or you’ll break. There are two doors available to you: one, if you behave, leads to the bagne , the other to the cemetery. Bad behavior, even the smallest infraction, is punished by sixty days in the dungeon with only bread and water. No one has survived two consecutive sentences there. You’ve been warned!”
    He addressed Pierrot le Fou, who had been extradited from Spain. “What was your profession?”
    “Toreador, sir.”
    Infuriated by the answer, the director shouted, “Take this man away!” Immediately the toreador was knocked down, bludgeoned by four or five guards and carried out. We could hear him shout, “You shitheads! You’re five against one and you have to use clubs, you dirty bastards!” We heard then the “Ah!” of a mortally wounded beast; after that, nothing. Only the sound of something being dragged along the cement floor.
    By a stroke of luck, Dega was put in the cell next to me. But first we were introduced to a one-eyed, red-headed monster at least six foot five who held a brand-new bullwhip in his right hand. He was the trusty, a prisoner who served the guards as official torturer. With him around, the guards could beat the men without exerting themselves, and if someone died in the process, they were guiltless in the eyes of the Administration.
    Later on, during a short stay in the infirmary, I learned all about this human beast. The director deserved congratulations for having chosen his executioner so well. He had been a quarryman by profession. One day, in the small northern town where he lived, he had the idea of committing suicide and killing his wife at the same time. For this purpose he used a good-sized stick of dynamite. He lay down next to his sleeping wife (there were six tenants in the house), lit a cigarette and held it to the wick of the dynamite, which was in his left hand between his head and his wife’s. Ghastly explosion. Result: his wife literally had to be gathered up in spoonfuls, part of the house collapsed, three children were crushed to death under the debris, together with a woman of seventy. Others were injured in varying degrees.
    As for Tribouillard, he lost part of his left hand—only his little finger and part of his thumb remained—and his left eye and ear. He also had a head wound that required surgery. But now, since his conviction, he was in charge of the jail’s disciplinary cells, a maniac free to do what he pleased with the unfortunates who ran afoul of him.
    One, two, three, four, five, and turn … one, two, three, four, five, and turn.... So began again the interminable shuttle between the wall and the door of the cell.
    You were not allowed to lie down during the day. At five in the morning a strident whistle woke you up. You had to get up, make your bed, wash, and either walk or sit on a stool attached to the wall. You were not allowed to lie down! Crowning refinement of the penal system: the bed folded against the wall, and there it remained. This way the prisoner couldn’t lie down and he