CHAPTER X.
FREDERICK'S PUNISHMENT.
The judge had scarcely uttered the last words of the sentence, when Frederick's arms were grasped on either side by a stalwart “Garde de Paris,” and he was hurried from the court-room. Instead of being taken back to the “Mazas” House of Detention, where he had been imprisoned until then, he was conveyed to “La Grande Roquette,” which he was to visit some years later under still more dramatic circumstances.
“La Grande Roquette,” besides containing the cells for prisoners under sentence of death, is used as a depot for convicts pending their transfer either to the penitentiaries or to the penal colonies.
On arriving within the gloomy walls of this terrible prison, from whose portals none step forth excepting to the scaffold or to undergo a long term of disgrace and social death, Frederick was taken to the “Greffe” (register's office). There he surrendered the name of “Wolff,” under which he had been sentenced, and received instead the numeral by which henceforth he was to be designated. From thence he was conducted to the barber-shop, where his beard was removed and his head shaved. The clothes which he had worn until then were now taken away from him, and he was forced to assume the hideous garb of a condemned prisoner.
FREDERICK IN HIS CONVICT DRESS.
A few days later a special train, consisting of eight railway carriages, partitioned off into small and uncomfortable cells, lighted only by ventilators from the roof, steamed out of the Gare d'Orleans on its way to St. Martin de Re. Among the number of blood-stained criminals of every imaginable category which constituted its living freight, was Frederick Count von Waldberg, alias Franz Werner, alias Baron Wolff, but now known only as No. 21,003.