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I took the lace off my dress, and sold my hat, and thus got rid of a gay appearance unsuitable to my position, as it made me too much an object of notice. The next day I went to Pergina and lay there, and was visited by a young Count d'Alberg, who had discovered, in some way or another, that we had escaped from the state-prisons of Venice.
As to the young gentlemen, if there were any dress-coats on the island, they took pains not to display them, but delighted in appearing in the evening promenade, and even in the ballroom, in the nondescript suits that made them so conspicuous in the morning, the favorite being a dress of stripes, with striped jockey cap to match, that did not suggest the penitentiary uniform, because in state-prisons the stripes run round.
As to the young gentlemen, if there were any dress-coats on the island, they took pains not to display them, but delighted in appearing in the evening promenade, and even in the ballroom, in the nondescript suits that made them so conspicuous in the morning, the favorite being a dress of stripes, with striped jockey cap to match, that did not suggest the penitentiary uniform, because in state-prisons the stripes run round.
The good-natured countenance of the king darkened more and more, and during Figaro's monologue, in which the different institutions of the state are ridiculed, especially when, with words full of poison and scorn, the author alludes to state-prisons, the king rose angrily from his seat. "It is a contemptible thing," cried he, vehemently.
I took the lace off my dress, and sold my hat, and thus got rid of a gay appearance unsuitable to my position, as it made me too much an object of notice. The next day I went to Pergina and lay there, and was visited by a young Count d'Alberg, who had discovered, in some way or another, that we had escaped from the state-prisons of Venice.
He procured lettres de cachet from the King, and shut up his disobedient and debauched son in various state-prisons. But the Count generally contrived to escape, only to get into fresh difficulties; so that he became a wanderer and an exile, compelled to support himself by his pen. Mirabeau was in Berlin, in a sort of semi-diplomatic position, when the Assembly of Notables was convened.
At last, just as he was wondering which way to turn next, somebody touched his shoulder, and a rough voice said, "Hullo, my little man! What you doin' in this ward? Come; don't you pull away from me: I'm a city officer. Got lost, hey?" Horace shook with fright. O dear, was it a crime, then, to get lost? He remembered all the stories he had ever heard of lock-ups, and state-prisons, and handcuffs.
It was about this time that, in addition to the castle of Vincennes, nine new state-prisons were established in France; and the number of persons confined in these receptacles, on warrants signed by the Emperor and his slavish privy council, far exceeded those condemned to similar usage in any recent period of the Bourbon monarchy, under the lettres de cachet of the sovereign.
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