as formerly from communication, and, instead of being maintained at the public expence, they now, with great difficulty, are able to procure wherewithal to eat at their own.  Our present habitation is an immense building, about a quarter of a mile from the town, intended originally for the common gaol of the province.  The situation is damp and unwholesome, and the water so bad, that I should suppose a long continuance here of such a number of prisoners must be productive of endemical disorders.  Every avenue to the house is guarded, and no one is permitted to stop and look up at the windows, under pain of becoming a resident.  We are strictly prohibited from all external intercourse, except by writing; and every scrap of paper, though but an order for a dinner, passes the inquisition of three different people before it reaches its destination, and, of course, many letters and notes are mislaid, and never sent at all.—­There is no court or garden in which the prisoners are allowed to walk, and the only exercise they can take is in damp passages, or a small yard, (perhaps thirty feet square,) which often smells so detestably, that the atmosphere of the house itself is less mephitic.

Our fellow-captives are a motley collection of the victims of nature, of justice, and of tyranny—­of lunatics who are insensible of their situation, of thieves who deserve it, and of political criminals whose guilt is the accident of birth, the imputation of wealth, or the profession of a clergyman.  Among the latter is the Bishop of Amiens, whom I recollect to have mentioned in a former letter.  You will wonder why a constitutional Bishop, once popular with the democratic party, should be thus treated.  The real motive was, probably, to degrade in his person a minister of religion—­the ostensible one, a dispute with Dumont at the Jacobin club.  As the times grew alarming, the Bishop, perhaps, thought it politic to appear at the club, and the Representative meeting him there one evening, began to interrogate him very rudely with regard to his opinion of the marriage of priests.  M. Dubois replied, that when it was officially incumbent on him to explain himself, he would do so, but that he did not think the club a place for such discussions, or something to this purpose. "Tu prevariques donc!—­Je t’arrete sur le champ:" ["What, you prevaricate!—­I arrest you instantly.”] the Bishop was accordingly arrested at the instant, and conducted to the Bicetre, without even being suffered to go home and furnish himself with necessaries; and the seals being immediately put on his effects, he has never been able to obtain a change of linen and clothes, or any thing else—­this too at a time when the pensions of the clergy are ill paid, and every article of clothing so dear as to be almost unpurchaseable by moderate fortunes, and when those who might otherwise be disposed to aid or accommodate their friends, abandon them through fear of being implicated in their misfortunes.