orders; he gave them a little piece of bread, after which he sent them back to their holes by giving them a gentle tap on the tail.”

Rats and mice played a great part in the amusement and affection of prisoners, but when the talented Mademoiselle de Lannoy, better known as Madame de Staël, was taken to the Bastille after the discovery of the Cellamare conspiracy, she could not overcome her repugnance to these animals, and, therefore, invoked the protection of cats, whom she was fond of. "I did not feel in prison," she says in her Memoirs, "that ennui which is generally apprehended. . I guaranteed myself against it when I grew calmer, by the occupations which I prescribed to myself, and by all the amusements that offered, and which I took good care to benefit by. It is not the importance of things which renders them precious, but the need we have of them. I was astonished at the interest I derived from a cat, for which I had asked merely for the sake of delivering me from the mice by which I was persecuted. This cat gave birth to several kittens, and these again to others. I had the time to watch several generations. This charming family gambolled and danced before me, with which I was greatly diverted, although I had never before loved any sort of animal." Misfortune produces kindness in even the driest hearts: Mademoiselle de Lannoy, who could not keep a friend at court, remained faithful to her cats in prison.

But, generally, the period of captivity was not sufficiently prolonged for the prisoner to have recourse to this species of distraction: the usual effect of a lettre de cachet did not exceed a few months, during which the prisoner lived too much out of the prison by reminiscences and hope to try to take root by custom and affection. Reading occupied nearly the entire time of the prisoners, who only too often became pensioners of the Bastille for the books they had written or published. The Abbé Lenglet Dufresnoy, who paid seven or eight visits to the state prisons, ingenuously declared that he had ever found such opportunity for work elsewhere, and whenever he saw the royal exempt come in to arrest him, he only asked permission to get ready his linen, books, and MSS.; then he wrote to his publisher, "I shall soon finish my work: I am being taken, by order of his majesty, to my study." In the Bastille, Freret reread with profit all the old authors, and prepared a Chinese Grammar; Voltaire planned several tragedies, and meditated on his literary future; Marmontel wrote his Contes Moraux. At Vincennes, Fréron, who could not imagine that he was reading Ovid in the story of the "Miracles of Saint Ovidius," which had been brought him by a jesuitic equivoque, spent the day in digesting the wine that he drank in the morning; "to be in a condition," as he said, "to endure that terrible preacher, the donjon of Vincennes." Diderot stole slates, infused them in wine, and, by means of a toothpick, wrote on the pages of his Plato his Philosophic Essay on the reigns of Claudius and Nero. The Abbé Prieur, who was forced for sheer amusement to comment on and refute Vailly's French Grammar, on the bed where he was dying, could not obtain from the lieutenant of police a New Testament in Greek and Latin to "sanctify his sufferings."

But these were all men of letters and philosophers, who were treated with some degree of indulgence, because they would always quit the prison with a pen in their hands. But those prisoners who were not

cared for, or who had the powerful vengeance of some great lord to contend against, fell back again into the horrors of the old Bastille, where the moral torture surpassed the physical. How many miserable wretches were slowly assassinated by indolence and brutality in those gloomy cachots where Latude languished for thirty-two years! What a home was that, in those stony cells which the light never visited, and the poisoned atmosphere slowly killed the wretched prisoners! Latude, that active and persevering genius, which could only be displayed in his prodigious escapes, did not lose the hope of renewing them by still more incredible efforts; but, while waiting for the opportunity of favourable circumstances, he was forced to exercise that brilliant intelligence which would have gained him a magnificent position, and secured him a fortune, had he not cut off twenty years of his life by exposing himself to the inexplicable vengeance of Madame de Pompadour. He had to employ all the resources of his imagination to procure means for writing. "As a substitute for paper, which was denied me," he writes, in his Memoirs," I saved for a long time the crumb of the bread allowanced me: I moulded it in my hands, and softened it with my saliva : then, flattening it out, I formed tablets of about six square inches and two lines thickness. In default of a pen, I took the triangular spine found under the stomach of the carp; they are very large and strong, and, by splitting them, they might be easily used in lieu of pens. drew threads from my shirt, and, fastening them tightly round the first joint of my thumb, I then pierced the end with the tongue of my shoebuckle. But each prick only supplied me with a few drops of blood, and I had to repeat them continuously. My fingers were already all swollen, which caused a violent irritation and pain, of which I feared the consequences. With each letter I wrote, too, my blood congealed, and I was obliged to dip 'my pen afresh. To remedy these inconveniences, I let some drops of blood fall into a little water at the bottom of my cup. I mixed it thoroughly, and it produced me a running ink, which enabled me to write very currently, and thus draw up a memorial." And what did he write with his blood on these tablets of bread?-projects of political economy, plans of civil and military administration, reflections on public morals, intended to reform the errors and abuses of government! These curious tablets, which the prisoner himself gave to the learned Jesuit Père Griffet, Almoner of the Bastille, were not even preserved in the archives of that fortress, like the ropeladder and the various instruments which had aided Latude's escape. He also wrote by other processes equally ingenious: his sheets and pocket-handkerchiefs served instead of paper, and his passion for writing was not discouraged even in an obscure cachot, where, during the short intervals of his meals, he profited, by the light which was allowed him, to trace on his linen the sorrowful account of his sufferings. was not always alone and left to himself during this frightful captivity of thirty-four years. After having been separated from his friend, D'AIligre, who had shared the wondrous toils and fortunate issue of his first escape, he sought among abject animals for another sort of friendship, which would, at least, enable him to endure the burden of solitude. His new friends were rats that he had tamed: "To them," he writes, "I owed the only fortunate distraction I found during my long wretchedness."

But he

These rats disturbed him greatly, by coming to eat his straw, and even biting him in the face; he resolved, therefore, that as he was forced to live with them he would try to inspire them with some degree of affection. One day, a huge rat having made its appearance, he called it gently, and threw it some crumbs of bread, which it took after some hesitation and carried off to its hole. The next day the rat reappeared, and required less pressing to come and take the bread; on the third day the rat became more familiar and more voracious, because Latude deprived himself of a portion of his daily ration of meat to attract this hungry guest; on the ensuing days, the rat, whose confidence increased with each repast, came up at a full trot to take its meal from the prisoner's hand. This was not all: example is as contagious among rats as among men. The rat took new lodgings, and summoned its wife and six young ones; they took up their quarters around Latude, who gave them names, and taught them to walk on their hind legs to reach their food, which was hung up about two feet from the ground. This society of rats found themselves so comfortable that they showed their teeth at any intruder who tried to enter their ranks; they multiplied patriarchally up to the number of twenty-six, great and small, who lived, like Latude, on the king's bread. The spiders were, doubtlessly, of a more savage character than the rats, for Latude never succeeded in taming a single one. Although he offered them flies and insects, although he seduced them by whistling and playing the flageolet (which he had formed by taking a wheat-stalk out of his palliasse), the spiders would not yield to the soft impeachment, and hence he concluded that Pellisson's spider was only a myth.

One

Still, the Baron de Trenck, confined during the same period at Magdeburg, found his spiders much tamer; he had even promised to render a brilliant homage to the marvellous instinct of these insects, and he would have furnished some powerful arguments in favour of animals possessing a soul. He merely relates, however, in his Memoirs, the touching history of the mouse, which he tamed to such a degree that it came to eat out of his mouth. "I could not," he says, "trace all the reflections which the astonishing intelligence of this animal produced in me.' night the mouse, by leaping, scratching, and gnawing, caused such a disturbance that the major, summoned by the sentinels, commanded a round of the prison, and himself examined the locks and bolts, to assure himself that no attempt at escape was being made. The Baron de Trenck confessed that all the noise was produced by the mouse, which could not sleep, and demanded its master's liberty. The major seized the mouse and carried it off to the guard-room. On the next day the mouse, which had tried with great courage to gnaw its way through the door, waited for the dinner-hour, to return to its master at the heels of the gaoler. Trenck was greatly surprised to find it climbing up his legs, and giving him manifold caresses. The major seized the poor animal a second time, refusing to restore it to the prisoner; but he made it a present to his own wife, who put it in a cage, hoping to bring it round by kind treatment and good food. Two days later the mouse, which would take no food, was found dead. Grief had killed it. Baron Trenck, who composed German and French verses with as much taste as Frederick the Great, was in no difficulty about writing them, although the King of

Prussia had forbidden, under penalty of death, any paper or pens being supplied to the prisoner. "To make up for this," he writes, "I pricked my finger: I collected the blood, and when it began to congeal I warmed it in my hands, then I allowed the liquid portion to run, and threw away the rest. Thus I succeeded in producing a good running ink, with which I was enabled to write, and which served me at the same time as a colour when I wished to paint." The pen he had invented was sometimes a straw, a toothpick, or a capon's bone. In addition, by means of a nail drawn from the ceiling, he carved his cups with so much delicacy and skill, that these cups, covered with designs and devices, were sold at a high price. To one of these cups he owed his deliverance, for, as it by chance fell into the hands of the Empress Maria Theresa, she interposed with King Frederick, and obtained the release of a perfectly innocent

man.

The state prisons were not more harsh in Germany than in France, where lettres de cachet were distributed and even sold by thousands. At the close of the reign of Louis XV., the minister made a mock of the liberty of the most respected citizens. The Bastille was never better filled than during the ministries of the Duc le la Vrillière and the Comte de Saint-Florentin. The latter had the deplorable courage to arrest Le Chatolais, procureur of the parliament of Brittany, who was accused of having insulted the king in anonymous letters, and, in reality, was only culpable of having opposed the royal invasions of authority in Brittany. Le Chatolais, led to Saint-Malo and confined in the citadel, was deprived of means of defence, while his trial went on with calculated slowness; but as soon as he had recovered from a dangerous illness, he collected his strength to write three justifying memoirs, which left his prison like a voice from Heaven. He had written these with a toothpick, and ink made out of soot, sugar, water, and vinegar, upon paper which had been employed to wrap up sugar and chocolate. "I have received the memoir of the unfortunate Le Chatolais," says Voltaire, in one of his letters. "I feel aggrieved for any feeling soul which does not undergo a sensation of fever on reading it. His toothpick engraves for immortality."

When Louis XVI. ascended the throne, the prisons suddenly changed their terrible aspect, and soon after the virtuous Malesherbes caused the rays of justice to penetrate to the lowest oubliettes of the Bastille. During his ministry, Mirabeau, who had endured his apprenticeship as prisoner in the citadel of the Isle de Rhé, the Château d'If, the Fort de Joux, was sent to Vincennes for a detention of forty-two months. Mirabeau gave up this period of his life to his mistress, Madame de Monier, who was also confined in a convent. He corresponded freely with Sophia by means of Lenoir, lieutenant of police, who had consented to exchange the letters of the two lovers on condition that they returned to his cabinet. This piquant exchange of letters did not suffice for Mirabeau's impetuous temperament. He also blackened immense quantities of paper, which was allowed him à discrétion, as well as books; he translated Tibullus and the "Basia" of Johannes Secundus; he wrote romances and erotic poetry; he improvised his eloquent appeal against lettres de cachet and state prisons. These literary occupations only served to deaden the immoderate appetite of a fiery temperament. In the midst of his reading and commentaries of the Bible, it was always

Sophia who occupied his mind. The tress of her hair which he possessed he covered with kisses, and his last night's thought was ever directed towards her.

But the horrible prison of Constantin de Renneville and of Latude no longer existed. When it fell beneath the blows of popular hatred, piled up during four centuries, no one had leisure to hear the doleful revelations which emanated from those ruins, and the public, which had given a species of oration to Latude, would scarcely listen to the Prévôt de Beaumont, who wished to tell them of thirty-nine years of captivity. The revolution was preparing prisons less terrible and more tyrannical, captivity shorter and more atrocious. Louis XVI., prisoner in the Temple, quitted it to proceed to the guillotine; Madame Elizabeth knitted while listening to her death-warrant; and the young (dauphin, already bearing the secret of death in his bosom, was loosening the tiles from the wall of his room to make quoits.

The revolutionary prisons had a very peculiar character: the prisoners were almost free, except that they had no chance of escape but the scaffold. This meeting of personages distinguished by their birth, education, and social rank, maintained all the traditions of the old society which was to disappear with them. The ladies attended to their toilette, the gentlemen became lovers and rivals. There were poets to rhyme, painters to paint, musicians to sing, soldiers to arrange the plans of campaign. Oh! what a happy life it would have been had not the tribunal of blood claimed each day its victims. Rouches, author of the poem "Des Mois," although incarcerated in Sainte-Pélagie, continued the education of his children by correspondence, translated Virgil in verse, and classified a herbal of the plants his daughter selected for him at the Musée. These flowers and leaves brought a breath of liberty, as it were, into his cell. But his touching verses to his daughter were interrupted by the car which took him to the scaffold with André Chénier and Baron Trenck.

During the first Empire the prisons became nearly the same as they had been under Louis XIV., mysterious, impenetrable, and terrible. M. Saintine has painted them in "Picciola," and we will not attempt to add a pencil-stroke to that graphic and startling picture. We may say, however, that the state prison has entirely disappeared in France, but in Austria and Naples the same bad system prevails, and unless they alter their system betimes, they will surely find their prisons enduring the same fate as the Bastille. The history of Sylvio Pellico caused the pulse of many a nation to throb, and the terrible revelations which have reached us from Naples show that there is no chance of state prisons being abolished in despotic states except by the will of the people.