We are strictly prohibited from all external
intercourse, except by writing; and every scrap of paper, though but an
order for a dinner, passes the inquisition of three different people
before it reaches its destination, and, of course, many letters and notes
are mislaid, and never sent at all.--There is no court or garden in which
the prisoners are allowed to walk, and the only exercise they can take is
in damp passages, or a small yard, (perhaps thirty feet square,) which
often smells so detestably, that the atmosphere of the house itself is
less mephitic.
Our fellow-captives are a motley collection of the victims of nature,
of justice, and of tyranny--of lunatics who are insensible of their
situation, of thieves who deserve it, and of political criminals whose
guilt is the accident of birth, the imputation of wealth, or the
profession of a clergyman. Among the latter is the Bishop of Amiens,
whom I recollect to have mentioned in a former letter. You will wonder
why a constitutional Bishop, once popular with the democratic party,
should be thus treated. The real motive was, probably, to degrade in his
person a minister of religion--the ostensible one, a dispute with Dumont
at the Jacobin club. As the times grew alarming, the Bishop, perhaps,
thought it politic to appear at the club, and the Representative meeting
him there one evening, began to interrogate him very rudely with regard
to his opinion of the marriage of priests.
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