But in regard to adults the British prison is still the torture chamber it was in Wilde's time; prisoners are still treated more brutally there than anywhere else in the civilised world; the food is the worst in Europe, insufficient indeed to maintain health; in many cases men are only saved from death by starvation through being sent to the infirmary.

Though these facts are well known, _Punch_, the pet organ of the British middle-class, was not ashamed a little while ago to make a mock of some suggested reform, by publishing a picture of a British convict, with the villainous face of a Bill Sykes, lying on a sofa in his cell smoking a cigar with champagne at hand.

This is not altogether due to stupidity, as Oscar tried to believe, but to reasoned selfishness.

_Punch_ and the class for which it caters would like to believe that many convicts are unfit to live, whereas the truth is that a good many of them are superior in humanity to the people who punish and slander them.
While waiting for his wife to join him, Oscar rented a little house, the Chalet Bourgeat, about two hundred yards away from the hotel at Berneval, and furnished it.

Here he spent the whole of the summer writing, bathing, and talking to the few devoted friends who visited him from time to time.