Book the First: Poverty Chapter 6 The Father of the Marshalsea

On these truly British occasions, the smugglers, if any, made a
feint of walking into the strong cells and the blind alley, while this
somebody pretended to do his something: and made a reality of walking
out again as soon as he hadn't done it--neatly epitomising the
administration of most of the public affairs in our right little, tight
little, island. There had been taken to the Marshalsea Prison, long before the day when
the sun shone on Marseilles and on the opening of this narrative, a
debtor with whom this narrative has some concern.

He was, at that time, a very amiable and very helpless middle-aged
gentleman, who was going out again directly. Necessarily, he was going
out again directly, because the Marshalsea lock never turned upon a
debtor who was not. He brought in a portmanteau with him, which he
doubted its being worth while to unpack; he was so perfectly clear--like
all the rest of them, the turnkey on the lock said--that he was going
out again directly.

He was a shy, retiring man; well-looking, though in an effeminate style;
with a mild voice, curling hair, and irresolute hands--rings upon the
fingers in those days--which nervously wandered to his trembling lip a
hundred times in the first half-hour of his acquaintance with the jail.
His principal anxiety was about his wife.

'Do you think, sir,' he asked the turnkey, 'that she will be very much
shocked, if she should come to the gate to-morrow morning?'