At this remark, uttered in a tone of deep commiseration, Prosper could not refrain from shuddering.
It was only too true, that on the other side of this door was a man upon whose decision his freedom depended.
Summoning all his courage, he turned the door-knob, and was about to enter when the constable stopped him.
“Don’t be in such haste,” he said; “you must sit down here, and wait till your turn comes; then you will be called.”
The wretched man obeyed, and his keeper took a seat beside him.
Nothing is more terrible and lugubrious than this gallery of the judges of instruction.
Stretching the whole length of the wall is a wooden bench blackened by constant use. This bench has for the last ten years been daily occupied by all the murderers, thieves, and suspicious characters of the Department of the Seine.
Sooner or later, fatally, as filth rushes to a sewer, does crime reach this gallery, this dreadful gallery with one door opening on the galleys, the other on the scaffold. This place was vulgarly and pithily denominated by a certain magistrate as the great public wash-house of all the dirty linen in Paris.
When Prosper reached the gallery it was full of people. The bench was almost entirely occupied. Beside him, so close as to touch his shoulder, sat a man with a sinister countenance, dressed in rags.
Before each door, which belonged to a judge of instruction, stood groups of witnesses talking in an undertone.