place? when you have my great forbearance alone to thank that you yet remain free and unpunished at my court. Did I not charge you to preserve in your own breast the secret of your contemplated promotion, until I myself should think proper to make it public? You did not consider it worth your while to obey my commands, and may thank your own indiscreet vanity that you have lost the appointment; may it teach you to take better heed another time." Lauzun was beside himself with anger when he heard what he considered only a lame apology for a plain breach of promise, for he felt himself innocent of the charge of tattling; his fatal communication to the chamberlain was long since forgotten. With flashing eyes and a glowing face, he retreated a few steps, turned himself partially aside from the king, drew his sword from its sheath, broke it across his knee, and threw the pieces before the king's feet, with the emphatic declaration that he desired no longer to serve a prince who did not regard his plighted word. During this scene the king stood leaning against a window, playing with a costly Spanish watch which he held in his hand. Pale and trembling with rage, he convulsively grasped it with a threatening gesture; but in a moment he turned towards the window and threw the watch across the court. After seeming for a moment to struggle for breath, he again turned towards the count. "I should never forgive myself should I be so far carried away, even by the most righteous anger, as to treat a nobleman like a serf," said he ; and passing coldly and sternly by him, the king left the room. The natural consequences of this occurrence, which the count quietly awaited with manly firmness, soon followed. A lettre-de-cachet sent him on the same evening to the bastille, where the dark cell which received his form effectually separated him from the breathing world without. How great the contrast between the joyous and brilliant court he had just left and these dark and gloomy walls, within which the light of day was dimly admitted through a hardly visible grated window. Colorless as the walls by which he was surrounded, lay the future before him, without the least prospect of a change in his situation, of a legal trial, of a hearing or of a defence. These dreadful lettres-de-cachet, the horrible invention of infuriated despotism, in those days delivered over their victims in secrecy and silence to the most hopeless misery. The king issued them according to his own arbitrary will, and not unfrequently granted them as a boon to his favorites, who often solicited them for the use of such of their friends as feared the actual commission of murder, and yet had powerful reasons for striking some unfortunate being from the list of the living. The effect of long custom, which permitted the king, almost without the idea of injustice, to use this terrible power, fortunately blinded both court and city to a danger always impending over each and all; otherwise no man in Paris could have taken the least pleasure in life. For none were safe from being transferred at any moment from the most brilliant and pleasurable existence to the gloomy night of a damp and loathsome dungeon. Neither rank, age nor sex, nor even a spotless life, were any safeguard; it was a matter of daily occurrence, and for that very reason did it scarcely ever occur to any one, that what was his neighbor's fate to-day might be his own to-morrow. matter was then regarded by them as death now is by us; those who disappeared were soon forgotten, and those who remained lived on as before. The But a better fate was reserved for. Count Lauzun; a still, small voice was ever whispering in the king's heart for one who had been so dear to him, and whom, although he would not acknowledge so much even to himself, he was unwilling to miss from his side. There were, besides, those who retained a kindly feeling for the poor prisoner, and who lost no opportunity of softening the king's anger. His indefensible violence was for the most part attributed to his hot and excitable Gascon blood. It was suggested to the king that the momentary self-forgetfulness of the unfortunate man was in some measure palliated by the overwhelming grief consequent upon the disappointment of the inordinate expectations which the king's plighted word had authorized him to entertain; and at length these representations were so successful that Lauzun, after a residence of some weeks in his gloomy prison, at an unexpected moment heard the unusual sound of hastily-approaching steps. Keys rattled, bolts were withdrawn, the heavy door creaked upon its hinges, and before him stood his devoted friend, De Guitry. Tears filled the eyes of the good knight, when he glanced around the room, and witnessed the change which circumstances had made in the appearance of his friend. 66 Guitry" exclaimed the latter, in pleased astonishment, his cheek for a moment recovering the rosy tint of better days-"do you come to make me a visit, trusty friend? or,"-with sudden and serious earnestness he added, "have you also been sent to languish here? has your brilliant path led also but to destruction?" "I am sent by the king as a messenger of mercy, of peace," answered the knight, joyfully clasping the prisoner in his arms. "Hoid, hold!" answered Lauzun, with bitterness; "you see I am too badly provided here to be able to receive so high an embassy with becoming dignity; you have only a choice between this miserable bed and that wooden stool for a seat, on which to repose yourself, whilst I, with all due humility, listen to the grace which my monarch permits to be announced to me through his ambassador." 46 "Not this tone!" begged Guitry, forget not how very much you have angered the king." And has he angered me less?" interposed the deeply wounded Lauzun; "or is it, perhaps, the duty of a subject to submit with humility to his lord's breach of promise, and reverence faithlessness as a royal peculiarity? Is it our fault that we are exasperated beyond bearing, and driven from our propriety by the insensate conduct of others?" Louis is not less kind than just," answered the friendly knight; "he feels that he is not so entirely free from blame as to leave you without some excuse for your disrespectful conduct, and therefore desires to make reparation for his oversight,-yes, even more -he has sent me- 19 66 To announce to me my nomination to the office of General Field-Marshal!" cried Lauzun, suddenly interrupting him. "O thou true Gascon, what are you thinking of!" exclaimed the knight, laughing; "to demand what is impossible is childishness, my friend! That place is already filled; but the king offers you the post of captain in his body-guard. You yourself know that the first men in the realm deem themselves honored by such an appointment, considering it the highest mark of the king's confidence." 66 Lay me at the monarch's feet as low and humble as you please," answered the count, with a bitter smile ;-" but at the same time give him distinctly to understand, that the poor prisoner Lauzun will not permit himself to be negotiated with-that he prefers to remain in his dungeon, living or dead, as a memento of the truth and justice of princes." After long and fruitless efforts, Guitry finally saw himself compelled to communicate the substance of his friend's answer, though in much milder terms, to the king, who did not, indeed, at the time seem to attach much importance to the affair. But the old inclination towards his refractory favorite could not, even by all the arts of Madame Montespan, be prevented from reviving the wish to have him again about his person, was perhaps only strengthened by the difficulties in the way of its accomplishment; and consequently, after a few days, to the astonishment of all the world, Guitry was again dispatched to the prison of his friend, to try a second time his powers of persuasion. He found him if possible more obstinate than at first. "Well, have your own way, then!" exclaimed the knight, with mingled sorrow and anger, after having for some hours vainly endeavoured to convince the count of his folly. "Have your own way, and may the stubbornness that makes you now so firm, never bend, but give you courage to bear your self-elected fate. How will all who love you lament your hallucination! your sisters, your uncle Grammont, the noble Guise! And what will the princess"Anne de Montpensier!" interposed Lauzun, deceive me not! thinks she of me? Has she noticed my absence?" "You deserve neither the love of your friends nor the remembrance of the princess," answered Guitry, "for you are not true towards us; how else can the suddenly subdued tone with which you ask this question, be recon ciled with the unbending pride of your general bearing?" "Has she really remembered me? has she spoken my name?" asked Lauzun, with great excitement. "I answer thee nothing more," said the knight, turning towards the door; but Lauzun seized and held him fast. For several moments they stood in silence, face to face, and eye to eye, until at length Lauzun's laboring breast was relieved by a deep-drawn sigh. "Guitry," said he, "more than your prayers and arguments have the few words you have just spoken brought home to me-the remembrance how fair is life in the glorious sunlight, how great the sacrifice I am compelled to make! You have raised a storm in this bosom which-tell me by your honor I conjure you, can I step back? will no stain attach to me? Is it true, that there is no obstruction but my own will, and that hundreds have left this tomb before me, who' "Finish not," exclaimed the overjoyed knight, hastening out; "seek not an excuse for having come to your senses; leave your cause in my hands." (To be Continued.) PAPERS OF AN OLD DARTMOOR PRISONER. EDITED BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. CHAPTER X. ECCLESIASTICAL AND LITERARY. SOME persons outside the walls, mindful of the spiritual wants of their fellow-beings confined within, undertook to furnish each prisoner with a Bible. The work was commenced; but it was soon found that the seed of life was sown upon stony ground, and was likely to yield no good crop of the peaceable fruits of righteousness. Those to whom the Bible came were, many of them, in the habit of selling them to the shop-keepers for beer and rum, having a more vivid feeling of their spirituous propensities than of their spiritual natures. The shop-keepers would barter them away to the grocers and market-people outside; and the knowledge of these transactions soon came to the ears of the philanthropic individuals who had conceived the praiseworthy, but as it proved, chimerical project, and they abandoned it. And yet, if a suitable discrimination had been used, I do not know but some of the results, anticipated by the projectors of the scheme, might have been realized; for a majority of the prison ers were of a quiet and orderly charac-. ter; and as time hung heavy on the hands of many of them, they would have been glad to pass some portion of it in reading. But to give Bibles to drunkards and gamblers, whose days and nights were fully occupied in the indulgence of the lowest animal propensities, was like casting pearls before swine. A clergyman, (I believe of the Methodist sect,) from one of the neighboring towns, was in the habit of visiting the prisons very constantly on Thursdays. There was a place reserved in the cock-loft of No. 4 prison, which served equally well as a theatre and a lecture-room. Here the good man would hold forth in a quiet and rational manner: adapting himself to what he supposed to be the wants and condition of his hearers; and, although I pretty constantly attended his ministrations, as I respected the man and his motives, yet I am compelled to say, that I fear his advice, his warnings, his reproofs and encouragements, were wasted on ears that, hearing heard was withal too small for the priest, not, and on minds that could not under- who was an uncommonly large and stand, or would not follow out his pre- muscular man. He was obliged to cepts. Yet the good man was not de- shove his arms a great deal too far terred from continuing his labors, how- through the sleeves: and his bare lower ever he may have desponded of wit- arms, wrists, and broad hands, remindnessing any successful results there- ed me very forcibly of a pair of those from. He must have seen, as I have, kitchen implements denominated breadhis auditors, though decent and atten- peels. His arms being so straitly contive enough while he was exhorting fined, hung down by his sides, giving them, hardly waiting for his farewell him the appearance of that good old benediction, before they surrounded the New-England thanksgiving dainty, a gaming-tables and grog-stands that stuffed turkey, prepared for roasting, were all the while driving a brisk trade with its wings trussed back. in the neighborhood of his pulpit. But the Pontifex Maximus of the diocese of Dartmoor was an ugly, thick-lipped, ignorant black man, named Simon; and I believe, notwithstanding his professions of piety, that he was a consummate rascal. Simon, King Dick, and a civil and inoffensive black man, who, from the circumstance of his having been a servant to the Duke of Kent, was known by the name of The Duke, constituted the hierarchy. Simon preached, the Duke responded amen to any peculiarly pungent passage, while Dick stood by with his big club, like a Roman lictor, to keep order, when wo to the luckless dark skin who should chance to show any signs of indecorum. With the conduct of the whites, Dick never interfered; they brought their own customs and manners into his territory; and with a liberality worthy of the old Romans. Dick allowed them to bring their own religion or irreligion. Simon's pulpit was a small table, placed on top of a bench, on which he stood; it was at first bare, but he soon contrived to have it covered with a green cloth. At a table beneath sat the Duke, with psalm-book in hand, ready to lead off the tune, (for he acted as chorister, or, as the Scotch say, precentor, as well as deacon,) while all around were ranged multitudes of black faces, drinking in the words of inspiration as they fell from the lips of the priestly Simon; and here and there might be seen a white face grinning almost audibly at the fun. Simon's garb was at first not very clerical, being a bright green coat; but after a while, the contributions enabled him to raise the wind for a black one. It was, however, a second-hand one, and had been worn thin and rusty, and Thus ensconced in his clerical toggery, Simon appeared to be the happiest man in Dartmoor, for "he was supremely in love with himself, and was without a rival." Mounted on his bench, with his open Bible on the table before him, he poured forth, every Sunday, such streams of fervid eloquence, as I believe were never heard by mortal ears, before or since. He would work himself up into such a tremendous storm of fervor as to overflow, when such ranting, such roaring, such a torrent of broken gibberish running into blasphemy, as he then uttered, such grimaces and contortions as he then exhibited, it is impossible to describe,—and the attempt would be productive only of disgust. I have before me some notes, taken on the spot, of this fellow's mockery of preaching and praying; but they are too full of nonsense and blasphemy to lay before the reader. Simon one day met with a catastrophe; he had had a vision, (as he said,) the night before, in which an angel predicted swift destruction on every obdurate negro who would not contribute liberally to a collection which he was to take up for some pretended religious object; he was expatiating with vehemence on the woes denounced, and was throwing his arms about him in wild confusion to enforce the terror of his words, when his old black coat suddenly gave way, with a rent all down alongside the back-seam. He then took advantage of this event to appeal to them more strongly for their further liberality, as, in addition to the proposed object, he must have another coat. He got up a contribution once to buy a large Bible for the pulpit; and the money was paid in, but the Bible did not appear. The negroes had been gulled so often, that Simon relied on their gullibility a little too far. Finding Sunday succeed to Sunday, but no Bible to take the place of the little one, the contributors became indignant, and laid their complaints at the foot of the throne. The monarch, notwithstanding his disposition to support the Pontifex, (for they played into each other's hands as well as kings and priests usually do,) felt obliged in policy to interfere. So he affected great indignation, and told Simon he was a great rascal and impostor, and that his piety and preaching were all a hoax; and forbade him to preach any more, on pain of his high displeasure. Simon, yielded to the storm, and for awhile desisted; but after a proper time he made his peace with royalty, expressed his contrition for having so far fallen away from grace, and shed hypocritical tears in confirmation of his penitence. He was restored to his priestly office, and resumed his clerical functions. After each performance a hat was carried round by the Duke, and each man cast his mite into the treasury. The musical performances at these meetings were in a wild, but not unpleasant style, carried on entirely by the blacks, who, here as everywhere, exhibited their native taste for music. It was the choir, and not the priest, which attracted each Sunday a considerable number of whites to the meeting. I never knew that Simon was very successful in making converts of the blacks; they lived with him, and knew him, and probably thought, as the wife of a certain ranting preacher did, who, when some one was praising to her the piety of her husband, exclaimed: "Ah! ye don't know Johnny so well as I do." Simon, however, made two white converts, and one day profaned the ceremony of baptism by immersing them in the bathing-pond. The means of a very decent education were available at a very cheap rate at Dartmoor. This was before the celebrated declaration of Lord Brougham, that "the school-master was abroad in England;" but the schoolmaster was at home in that obscure portion of it on which the depot of Dartmoor was situated. There were many men there who were qualified as school-masters, and they turned their qualifications to account in such a way as to be productive of some little emolument to themselves, and of an incalculable amount of good to many of the young men who were confined there. Amid much of evil in our condition there, there was this of good—that it afforded leisure to a great many to acquire useful knowledge, who, but for this, would have been too much mixed up with the business of this bustling world to devote the necessary time to that purpose. No. 1 was the principal place of education, - it was our Connecticut; though in every prison one or more schools were kept. It was common to see advertisements posted up, in which Mr. offered to teach reading, writing and arithmetic, at prices varying from sixpence a week to a shilling per month; and Mr. would propose to teach navigation and the use of the globes; or Mr. the French and Spanish languages, at the same cheap rate; and their schools were well attended, and, I believe, the schoolmasters generally competent. There was a man in No. 7 prison who had been discharged from a British man-of-war, and had considerable prizemoney paid to him. He turned his means into the purchase of several hundred volumes of well-selected books, and fitted up a library in the cock-loft of his prison, and kept his books for circulation, at a small sum per week, and I believe he found it to be a tolerably successful speculation. But, however the profit may have been to the projector, the library was productive of a very profitable and pleasant source of amusement and instruction to some of the prisoners. It was seriously contemplated, at one time, to establish a newspaper within the prisons; and I believe the project would have been carried into effect, and have proved a successful one, had not the news of the treaty led us to believe that we should soon be liberated. Bulletins were occasionally posted on the walls, containing the leading incidents of news, prison memorabilia, &c., which in some measure answered the purposes of a newspaper. Our prison-keeper was very unwisely sensitive about our getting any newspapers, except such as were devoted to the tory interest in England, or to the federal party in the United States; but |