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He managed to have a small chamber filled with some combustible in the side of the pit, which was to be set on fire, and, on the return of the platform to its place, suffocate his detenu with smoke. Whether he had performed any previous atrocities in this way, or whether the present instance was the commencement of his profession of homicide, is not told.
I imagine we are subject to nearly the same rules as the common prisons: no one is permitted to enter or speak to a "detenu" but at the gate, and in presence of the guard; and all letters, parcels, baskets, &c. are examined previous to their being either conveyed from hence or received.
Here am I, a détenu, and have been these two years and a half wasting away existence at Verdun, while my property is going to the devil from sheer neglect. My West India estates, who can say how I shall find them? my Calcutta property, the same; then there's that fee-simple thing in Norfolk. But I can't even think of it.
I imagine we are subject to nearly the same rules as the common prisons: no one is permitted to enter or speak to a "detenu" but at the gate, and in presence of the guard; and all letters, parcels, baskets, &c. are examined previous to their being either conveyed from hence or received.
And so, in my opinion, it is hardly possible that an innocent man should ever find himself at the bar of an Assize Court in Paris I say nothing of other seats of justice. The detenu is the convict. French criminal law recognizes imprisonment of three degrees, corresponding in legal distinction to these three degrees of suspicion, inquiry, and conviction.
On one occasion we find the learned gentleman humanely visiting an unfortunate detenu no other person, in fact, than his friend M. Bertrand, who has fallen into some trouble, and is awaiting the sentence of the law. He begins "Mon cher Bertrand, donne moi cent ecus, je te fais acquitter d'emblee." "J'ai pas d'argent." "He bien, donne moi cent francs." "Pas le sou." "Tu n'as pas dix francs?"
It was in vain I endeavored to ascertain what circumstances led him to believe himself suspected by the Government; neither was I more fortunate in discovering how he first became a détenu. The mist of imaginary events, places, and people which he had conjured up around him, prevented his ever being able to see his way, or know clearly any one fact connected with his present position.
Commissioners were appointed on both sides: at first Lord Yarmouth, and then Lord Lauderdale, by England; General Clarke and M. Champagny, on the part of France. Lord Yarmouth, at that time a détenu at Verdun, was selected by Talleyrand to proceed to England, and learn the precise basis on which an amicable negotiation could be founded.
However, finding Jackson obstinately persistent in his refusal, he quietly observed, in conclusion, that the emperor, as a matter of rule and of right, 'impressed' into his army all such as entered his dominions without certificates of character. 'The order was so tyrannical, declares our détenu, 'that I could not contain myself.
No other county but Yorkshire could have produced such a man. His brother had been a detenu in France, and had afterwards voluntarily taken up his residence there. Mr. T. himself had been much abroad, both on business and to see the great continental galleries of paintings. He spoke French perfectly, I have been told, when need was; but delighted usually in talking the broadest Yorkshire.
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