he house is guarded,
and no one is permitted to stop and look up at the windows, under pain of
becoming a resident. 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. M. Dubois replied, that when
it was officially incumbent on him to explain himself, he would do so,
but that he did not think the club a place for such discussions, or
something to this purpose. _"Tu prevariques donc!--Je t'arrete sur le
champ:"_ ["What, you prevaricate!--I arrest you instantly."] the Bishop
was accordingly arrested at the instant, and conducted to the Bicetre,
without even being suffered to go home and furnish himself with
necessaries; and the seals being immediately put on his effects, he has
never been able to obtain a change of linen and clothes, or any thing
else--this too at a time when the pensions of the clergy are ill paid,
and every article of clothing so dear as to be almost unpurchaseable by
moderate fortunes, and when those who might otherwise be disposed to aid
or accommodate their friends, abandon them through fear of being
implicated in their