then so interesting! There he sat in a
small, wretched room, dirty and felonious, with two little windows, one
looking into a court where a parcel of ragged prisoners were playing at
fives, the other into a sort of garden where others were loitering away
their listless vacuity of time.

I will not tell you what he said, for it would but inflame a wound which
I cannot heal, and because part of his conversation was secret, _i.e._,
of a very interesting and curious nature which I cannot write and must
not speak of. "Oh! dear Uncle, why won't you tell? a secret from Michael
Bruce in the prison of La Force!"

No, Louisa, I dare not speak of it to the winds. Captain Hutchinson was
his companion, Sir Robert Wilson is in another room. The Captain has
nothing very interesting in his manner or appearance. He is very plain,
very positive, and very angry. Well he may be. So would you if, like
him, you had been immured in a room about eight feet by twelve, in which
you were forced to eat, sleep, and reside for three months. Their
penance closes on the 24th, when Michael Bruce returns to London. I
hope you are not going there this year.

From such a subject as Michael Bruce it will not do to descend to any of
the trifling fopperies of Paris.

Let me, then, give you a short account of our visit to Fountain
Elephant, which if ever finished, with its concomitant streets, &c.,
will be an 8th wonder of the world. Its History is this: On the Site of
the Bastille (of which not a vestige remains) Buonaparte thought he
would erect a fountain, and looking at the Plans of Paris, he conceived
the splendid idea of knocking down all the houses between the
Thuilleries and this Fountain and forming one wide, straight street, so
that from the Palace of the Thuilleries he might see whatever object he
might be pleased to place at the extremity. This street is actually
begun; when executed, which it never will be, there will be an avenue,
partly houses, partly trees, from Barriere d'Etoile to the Fountain, at
least six miles. Having got this Fountain in his head, he sent for De
Non,[122] who superintended all his works, and said, "De Non, I must
have a fountain, and the fountain shall be a beast." So De Non set his
wits to work, and talked of Lions and Tigers, &c., when Buonaparte
fixed upon an Elephant, with a Castle upon his back, and an Elephant
there is. At present they have merely a model of plaister upon which the
bronze coating is to be wroug