]

Dulaure, a French writer, in speaking of the persons who were confined
here, observes, it would be difficult to enumerate the number of
individuals that have been shut up in this prison within these few
years. "We will merely notice," he says, "the celebrated Count
Mirabeau, who was confined from 1777 to 1780; here it was that he
translated his Tibulle, and Joannes Secundus, and wrote his 'Lettres
originales' to his mistress, Madame Lemonnier, which abound with
passages as affecting as the letters of Heloise".

This prison was thrown open during the reign of the unfortunate Louis
XVI. by the Baron de Breteuil, Minister of the Department of Paris
in 1784. In going over it, every one was penetrated with horror; and
feelings of the most melancholy interest were excited by reading the
various inscriptions on the walls, indicative of the hopeless misery
that had been experienced within them! Many were expressive of piety
and resignation at the approach of death!--others complaining of the
cruel oppression which had immured them! On one wall was written, "Il
faut mourir, mon frere; mon frere il faut mourir, quand il plaira a
Dieu". On the door of another prison were, "Beati qui persecutionem
patiuntur propter justitiam, quoniam ipsorum est regnum caelorum". On
the same spot were, "Carcer Socratis, templum honoris".

This Donjon remained unoccupied until 1791. At this period, the
prisons of the capital being filled with criminals, Government ordered
it to be prepared for the reception of that class of prisoners; but on
the massacres that followed, the mob either murdered or released them
all, after a bloody contest, and it remained again without prisoners
until the Imperial Government under Buonaparte. It was then garrisoned
by a detachment of the Imperial Guard, and multitudes of victims were
transferred there whose fate remains, and probably ever will remain,
unknown.

It was to this place that the Duke D'Enghien, who was arrested the
15th March, 1804, at Ettenheim, in the Electorate of Baden, was
conducted the 20th of the same month, at five in the evening, and
condemned to death the night following, by a military commission, at
which Murat presided. He was accordingly shot on the 21st, at half
past four in the evening, in the ditch of the castle which looks
towards the forest, on the north side, and his body thrown into a
grave, ready dug to receive it, where he fell. The details of this
cruel and wanton act of bar