Gazette Of The United States

EXTRACT,

From Mr. Wraxall's History of Mount St. Michael, near Granville in France.

We passed on through several leer rooms into a large passage on one side of which, the Swiss (Mr. Wraxall's guide) opened a door, and through a narrow entrance, perfectly dark, he led me by a second door into an apartment or dungeon—for it rather merited the latter than the former appellation—in the middle of which stood a cage—It was composed of prodigious wooden bars; and the wicket which admitted into it was ten or twelve inches in thickness. I went into the inside; the space it comprised was about twelve feet square, or fourteen; and it might be nearly twenty in height. This was the abode of many eminent victims in former ages, whose names and miseries are now obliterated and forgotten.

"There was, said my conductor, towards the latter end of the last century, a certain news-writer in Holland, who had presumed to print some very severe and sarcastic reflections on Madame de Maintenon, and Lewis the Fourteenth. Some months after, he was induced, by a person sent expressly for that purpose, to make a tour into French Flanders. The instant he had quitted the Dutch territories, he was put under arrest, and immediately, by his Majesty's express command, conducted to this place. They shut him up in this cage. Here he lived upwards of twenty-three years; and here he at length expired.—During the long nights of winter, no fire or candle was allowed him. He was not permitted to have any book. He saw no human face but the gaoler, who came once every day to present him, through a hole in the wicket, his little portion of bread and wine. No instrument was given him with which he could destroy himself; but he found means, at length, to draw out a nail from the wood, with which he cut out or engraved on the bars of his cage, certain fleurs de lis, and armorial bearings, which formed his only employment and recreation.

"It is now fifteen years, said the Swiss, since a gentleman terminated his days in that cage; it was before I came to reside here; but there is one instance within my own memory: Monf. de F—, a person of rank, was conducted here by command of the late King; he remained three years shut up in this cage. I fed him myself every day; but he was allowed books and candle to divert his misery; at length the Abbot, touched with his deplorable calamities, requested and obtained the royal pardon. He was set free, and is now alive in France.

The subterranean chambers, added he, in this mountain, are so numerous, that we know them not ourselves. There are certain dungeons called Oubliettes, into which they were accustomed anciently to let down malefactors guilty of very heinous crimes; they provided them with a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine: and then they were totally forgotten, and left to perish by hunger in the dark vaults of the rock. This punishment however has not been inflicted by any King in the last or present century."