The Count of Monte Cristo

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Chapter 107. The Lions' Den.

One division of La Force, in which the most dangerous and desperate
prisoners are confined, is called the court of Saint-Bernard. The
prisoners, in their expressive language, have named it the "Lions' Den,"
probably because the captives possess teeth which frequently gnaw the
bars, and sometimes the keepers also. It is a prison within a prison;
the walls are double the thickness of the rest. The gratings are every
day carefully examined by jailers, whose herculean proportions and cold
pitiless expression prove them to have been chosen to reign over their
subjects for their superior activity and intelligence. The court-yard of
this quarter is enclosed by enormous walls, over which the sun glances
obliquely, when it deigns to penetrate into this gulf of moral and
physical deformity. On this paved yard are to be seen,--pacing to and
fro from morning till night, pale, careworn, and haggard, like so
many shadows,--the men whom justice holds beneath the steel she is
sharpening. There, crouched against the side of the wall which attracts