"Amongst the swarm of debtors, I recognised my old water-carrier, who needed little coaxing to tell me the story of his imprisonment.
"Léonard was a native of Auvergne. After hawking water in buckets for several years, his ambition rose to a water-cart; and behold him now with his sphere of operations extended from the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière to the Marais. Unluckily for Léonard the water-cart was not yet his own property, and he began to fall into arrears with his monthly payments. When the arrears had become what the bailiffs call an 'exploitable' sum, Léonard was haled to the bar. Here he suddenly ceased to be a water-carrier; they promoted him to the rank of 'merchant,' and under that style and dignity they condemned poor Léonard for debt. In this strait Léonard thought, "Why not become bankrupt at once?" but when he went to deposit his balance-sheet they told him he was not a 'merchant' at all, but a mere water-carrier. Fifteen days later, Léonard had joined the ranks of the impecunious in Sainte-Pélagie.
"His next idea was to lodge an appeal, and his brother was willing to bear the costs; but Léonard's debt was a bagatelle of £12, and the lawyer whom he consulted said that the blessings of appeal were reserved for persons owing £20 and upwards. The code of the Osages, if they have one, probably does not contain such exquisite burlesque as this.
"I asked Léonard what had become of his wife. 'Oh,' he said, 'poor Jeanne has gone back to Auvergne; otherwise they'd have had her too, for they made Jeanne a "merchant" also' (elle était aussi négociante).
"I gave Léonard a trifle, and he went off to drink it. It is the commonest recreation, when it can be indulged; and the majority of the debtors, when their day of liberation comes, return to their homes with the two incurable habits of idleness and liquor."
Another who came to touch his allowance was a tradesman whose clerk had robbed him of one thousand crowns. "The tradesman being unable in consequence to meet his engagements is condemned to spend five years in Sainte-Pélagie, and from the grating of his cell he can see in the penal wing the scoundrelly clerk, who gets off with six months' imprisonment!"
Another comes
"tripping cheerfully through the crowd; he is receiving his last payment; in a few days he will be a free man. An anonymous letter has loosed his bonds with the happy tidings that his creditor has been dead a year, and that a speculative bailiff has been prolonging his captivity on the chance of the debt being paid into his own pocket."
To this victim of a negligent law succeeded two who had made the law their dupe. One was an officer who had had himself arrested for debt to escape joining an expedition to Morea. The other was a tradesman "who was nobody's prisoner but his own, and who had arranged with a friend to deposit the monthly allowance for food. He was speculating on the article of the code which gave a general exemption from arrest for debt to all who had passed five consecutive years in the gaol."
A new-comer, "with his face all slashed," was