“There, on your arm, on your shirt, on your bed-sheet. How came you to hurt yourself?”
“I don’t know; I hadn’t noticed it before; it must have been in the night, I must have torn the skin tossing about.”
“Come, come, that’s an impossible story! What could you have done it with?”
“There, look at the corner of the bed, there’s a blood stain there: that’s where I hurt myself, no doubt. I’ve had a shocking night—bad dreams, nightmare: my head aches, I feel tired out, I must have kicked about ever so in my bed, it’s no wonder I knocked the skin off banging my arm against one of the iron bars.”
“H’m! it don’t seem to me just as clear as daylight, somehow. Anyway be quick and get dressed, I must report to the Governor, and he’ll see what’s best to do.”
M. Chaigniste, the able and well-known Governor of the Santé prison was in his working room, engaged in reading through again a report he had drawn up the night before on the general condition of his establishment; he was rubbing his hands in token of satisfaction, equally pleased with the elegance of his own composition and his skill as an administrator that had enabled him up to the present to avoid any, even the most trifling, of those “affairs” that are the bête noire of persons in authority, when the warder appeared: “I’ve come, sir, to let you know I found Number 55 wounded in his cell when I went there this morning.”
“Number 55! Why, that’s Juve, is it not, the ex-police-officer?”
“Yes sir.”
“Is it serious?”
“No, sir, only a bit of a cut on the arm.”