rniture, decorations, and paintings. The colonel had become
very wealthy indeed through his commercial enterprises, and was now able
to spend a great deal of money upon his fine Dorchester mansion, which
he finished about the year 1796. A prominent figure of the house was
the circular dining-hall, thirty-two feet in diameter, crowned at the
height of perhaps twenty-five feet by a dome, and having three mirror
windows. As originally built, it contained no fireplaces or heating
conveniences of any kind.

[Illustration: SWAN HOUSE, DORCHESTER, MASS.]

Mrs. Swan accompanied her husband on several subsequent trips to Paris,
and it was on one of these occasions that the colonel came to great
grief. He had contracted, it is said, a debt claimed in France to be two
million francs. This indebtedness he denied, and in spite of the
persuasion of his friends he would make no concession in the matter. As
a matter of principle he would not pay a debt which, he insisted, he did
not owe. He seems to have believed the claim of his creditor to be a
plot, and he at once resolved to be a martyr. He was thereupon arrested,
and confined in St. Pelagie, a debtor's prison, from 1808 to 1830, a
period of twenty-two years!

He steadfastly denied the charge against him, and, although able to
settle the debt, preferred to remain a prisoner to securing his liberty
on an unjust plea.... He gave up his wife, children, friends, and the
comforts of his Parisian and New England homes for a principle, and made
preparations for a long stay in prison. Lafayette, Swan's sincere
friend, tried in vain to prevail upon him to take his liberty.[9]

Doctor Small, his biographer, tells us that he lived in a little cell in
the prison, and was treated with great respect by the other prisoners,
they putting aside their little furnaces with which they cooked, that he
might have more room for exercise. Not a day passed without some kind
act on his part, and he was known to have been the cause of the
liberation of many poor debtors. When the jailor introduced his
pretended creditor, he would politely salute him, and say to the former:
"My friend, return me to my chamber."

With funds sent by his wife, Swan hired apartments in the Rue de la
Clif, opposite St. Pelagie, which he caused to be fitted up at great
expense. Here were dining and drawing rooms, coaches, and stables, and
outhouses, and here he invited his guests and lodged his servants,
putting at the disposa