t is long since mankind have been accustomed
to witness persons suffering.

At fifty leagues from the Swiss frontier, France is bristled with
citadels, houses of detention, and towns serving as prisons; and
every where you see nothing but individuals deprived of their liberty
by the will of one man, conscripts of misfortune, all chained at a
distance from the places where they would have wished to live. At
Dijon, some Spanish prisoners, who had refused to take the oath,
regularly came every day to the market place to feel the sun at
noon, as they then regarded him rather as their countryman; they
wrapt themselves up in a mantle, frequently in rags, but which they
knew how to wear with grace, and they gloried in their misery, as it
arose from their boldness; they hugged themselves in their sufferings,
as associating them with the misfortunes of their intrepid country.
They were sometimes seen going into a coffee house, solely to read the
newspaper, in order to penetrate the fate of their friends through
the lies of their enemies; their countenances were then immoveable,
but not without expression, exhibiting strength under the command of
their will. Farther on, at Auxonne, was the residence of the English
prisoners, who had the day before saved from fire, one of the houses
of the town where they were kept confined. At Besancon, there were
more Spaniards. Among the French exiles to be met with in every part
of France, an angelic creature inhabited the citadel of Besancon, in
order not to quit her father. For a long period, and amidst every
sort of danger, Mademoiselle de Saint Simon shared the fortunes of
him who had given her birth.

At the entrance of Switzerland, on the top of the mountains which
separate it from France, you see the castle of Joux, in which
prisoners of state are detained, whose names frequently never reach
the ear of their relations. In this prison Toussaint Louverture
actually perished of cold; he deserved his fate on account of his
cruelty, but the emperor had the least right to inflict it upon him,
as he had engaged to guarantee to him his life and liberty. I passed
a day at the foot of this castle, during very dreadful weather, and
I
could not help thinking of this negro transported all at once into
the Alps, and to whom this residence was the hell of ice; I thought
of the more noble beings, who had been shut up there, of those who
were still groaning in it, and I said to myself also that if I