nd in support of the latter etymology, the
following legend is told:--Helen, daughter of Hoel, King of Brittany,
was taken away, by fraud or violence, from her father's court, by a
certain Spaniard, who, having conducted her to this island, and
compelled her to submit to his desires, seems to have deserted her
there. The princess, overwhelmed with misfortune, pined away and died,
and was buried by her nurse, who had accompanied her from Brittany.

At the Mont St. Michel was preserved, until lately, the enormous wooden
cage in which state prisoners were sometimes confined under the old
regime.

The most unfortunate of the poor wretches who inhabited this cage was
Dubourg, a Dutch editor of a newspaper. This man having, in the exercise
of his duty, written something which offended the majesty of Louis XIV.,
or some one of his mistresses, was marked out by the magnanimous monarch
for vengeance; and the means which, according to tradition, he employed
to effect his purpose, was every way worthy of the royal miscreant. A
villain was sent from Avranches to Holland, a neutral state, with
instructions to worm himself into the friendship and confidence of
Dubourg, and, in an unguarded moment, to lead him into the French
territories, where a party of soldiers was kept perpetually in readiness
to kidnap him and carry him off. For two years this modern Judas is said
to have carried on the intrigue, at the end of which period he prevailed
upon Dubourg to accompany him on a visit into France, when the soldiers
seized upon their victim, and hurried him off to the Mont St. Michel.

Confinement and solitude do not always kill. The Dutchman, accustomed,
perhaps, to a life of indolence, existed twenty years in his cage, never
enjoying the satisfaction of beholding "the human face divine," or of
hearing the human voice, except when the individual entered who was
charged with the duty of bringing him his provisions and cleaning his
cell. Some faint rays of light, just such as enable cats and owls to
mouse, found their way into the dungeon; and, by their aid, Dubourg,
whom accident or the humanity of his keeper had put in possession of an
old nail, and who inherited the passion of his countrymen for flowers,
contrived to sculpture roses and other flowers upon the beams of his
cage. Continual inaction, however, though it could not destroy life,
brought on the gout, which rendered the poor wretch incapable of moving
himself about from one si