isfortune gave him the privilege of inflicting.

Such, however, was the prevalent tone of thinking and speaking there.
The death of friends,--the ruin of those best loved and cared for; the
danger that each day came nearer to themselves,--were all casualties to
which habit, recklessness of life, and libertinism had accustomed them;
while about former modes of life,--the pleasures of the capital, its
delights and dissipation,--they conversed with the most eager interest.
It is thus, while in some natures misfortunes will call forth into
exercise the best and noblest traits that in happier circumstances had
never found the necessity that gave them birth; so, in others, adversity
depresses and demoralizes those weaker temperaments that seemed formed
to sail safely in the calm waters, but never destined to brave the
stormy seas of life.

With such associates I could have neither sympathy nor friendship; and
my life passed on in one unbroken and dreary monotony, day succeeding
day and night following night, till my thoughts, turned ever inward, had
worn as it were a track for themselves in which the world without and
its people had no share whatever. Not only was my application to
the minister unanswered, but I was never examined before any of the
tribunals; and sometimes the dreadful fate of those prisoners who in the
Reign of Terror passed their whole life in prison, their crimes, their
very existence forgotten, would cross my mind, and strike me with terror
unspeakable.

If in the sombre atmosphere of the Temple a sad and cheerless monotony
prevailed, events followed fast on each other in that world from which
its gloomy walls excluded us. Every hour was some new feature of the
dark conspiracy brought to light; the vigilance of Monsieur Real slept
not night or day; and all that bribery, terror, or torture could effect,
was put into requisition to obtain full and precise information as to
every one concerned in the plot.

It was a bright, fresh morning in April, the sixth of the month,--the
day is graven on my memory,--when, on walking forth into the garden, I
was surprised to see the prisoners standing in a circle round a tree on
which a placard was fastened, with glances eagerly turned towards the
paper or bent sadly to the ground. They stood around, sad and silent. To
my question of what had occurred, a significant look at the tree was the
only reply I received, while in the faces of all I perceived that some
dreadf