--With these precautions, I can amuse myself by
putting on paper any little occurrences that I think worth preserving,
without much danger, and perhaps the details of a situation so new and so
strange may not be uninteresting to you.
We are now about three hundred in number of both sexes, and of all ages
and conditions--ci-devant noblesse, parents, wives, sisters, and other
relations of emigrants--priests who have not taken the oaths, merchants
and shopkeepers accused of monopoly, nuns, farmers that are said to have
concealed their corn, miserable women, with scarcely clothes to cover
them, for not going to the constitutional mass, and many only because
they happened to be at an inn, or on a visit from their own town, when a
general arrest took place of all who are what is called etrangers, that
is to say, not foreigners only, but not inhabitants of the town where
they are found.--There are, besides, various descriptions of people sent
here on secret informations, and who do not themselves know the precise
reason of their confinement. I imagine we are subject to nearly the same
rules as the common prisons: no one is permitted to enter or speak to a
"detenu" but at the gate, and in presence of the guard; and all letters,
parcels, baskets, &c. are examined previous to their being either
conveyed from hence or received. This, however, depends much on the
political principles of those who happen to be on guard: an aristocrate
or a constitutionalist will read a letter with his eyes half shut, and
inspect bedding and trunks in a very summary way; while a thorough-paced
republican spells every syllable of the longest epistle, and opens all
the roasted pigs or duck-pies before he allows their ingress.
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