The year is 1931 and before a Paris court is brought Papillon, an urchin twenty-five years old, accused of killing an insignificant character of the Parisian underworld and police informer. Papillon asserts his innocence and the evidence against him is weak so he expects to be exonerated. However, he is face to face with the most ruthless public prosecutor imaginable who claims for himself the mission to avenge society of crime in the flesh of disreputable personages as Papillon, with no concern to whether he is guilty or not of the circumstantial accusation, especially if this is so grave that allows his putting away forever. Pradel is the man and in his first speech to the jury intimidates everyone with a threat to Papillon’s face, telling him: "Prisoner at the bar, just you keep quiet and above all don’t you attempt to defend yourself. I’ll send you down the drain alright."
Predictably Papillon gets life and is sent to serve his sentence in the infamous penal colonies of French Guiana on the northern coast of South America. The reminiscence of Victor Hugo's Inspector Javert is inescapable and along with Alfred Dreyfus, artfully accused by his colleagues in arms of treason to France on false charges and whose real and famous case is revisited in the book, give ground to our thinking that there was a long period in which the French courts used questionable methods for dispensing justice and brutally cruel sentences.
