to visit the room in which the unfortunate man was
imprisoned, on the 2nd of February 1778. It is lighted by one window to
the north, overlooking the sea, about fifteen feet above the terrace
where the sentries paced to and fro. This window was pierced through a
very thick wall and the embrasure barricaded by three iron bars, thus
separating the prisoner from the sentries by a distance of over two
fathoms. I found an officer of the Free Company in the fortress who was
nigh on fourscore years old; he told me that his father, who had belonged
to the same Company, had often related to him how a friar had seen
something white floating on the water under the prisoner's window. On
being fished out and carried to M. de Saint-Mars, it proved to be a shirt
of very fine material, loosely folded together, and covered with writing
from end to end. M. de Saint-Mars spread it out and read a few words,
then turning to the friar who had brought it he asked him in an
embarrassed manner if he had been led by curiosity to read any of the,
writing. The friar protested repeatedly that he had not read a line, but
nevertheless he was found dead in bed two days later. This incident was
told so often to my informant by his father and by the chaplain of the
fort of that time that he regarded it as incontestably true. The
following fact also appears to me to be equally well established by the
testimony of many witnesses. I collected all the evidence I could on the
spot, and also in the Lerins monastery, where the tradition is preserved.

"A female attendant being wanted for the prisoner, a woman of the village
of Mongin offered herself for the place, being under the impression that
she would thus be able to make her children's fortune; but on being told
that she would not only never be allowed to see her children again, but
would be cut off from the rest of the world as well, she refused to be
shut up with a prisoner whom it cost so much to serve. I may mention
here that at the two outer angles of the wall of the fort which faced the
sea two sentries were placed, with orders to fire on any boat which
approached within a certain distance.

"The prisoner's personal attendant died in the Iles Sainte-Marguerite.
The brother of the officer whom I mentioned above was partly in the
confidence of M. de Saint-Mars, and he often told how he was summoned to
the prison once at midnight and ordered to remove a corpse, and that he
carried it on his s