The prison, considering how many French inhabitants it contains, is
tolerably quiet--to say the truth, we are not very sociable, and still
less gay. Common interest establishes a sort of intimacy between those
of the same apartment; but the rest of the house pass each other, without
farther intercourse than silent though significant civility. Sometimes
you see a pair of unfortunate aristocrates talking politics at the end of
a passage, or on a landing-place; and here and there a bevy of females,
en deshabille, recounting altogether the subject of their arrest. One's
ear occasionally catches a few half-suppressed notes of a proscribed
aire, but the unhallowed sounds of the Carmagnole and Marseillois are
never heard, and would be thought more dissonant here than the war-whoop.
In fact, the only appearance of gaiety is among the ideots and lunatics.
--_"Je m'ennuye furieusement,"_ is the general exclamation.--An Englishman
confined at the Bicetre would express himself more forcibly, but, it is
certain, the want of knowing how to employ themselves does not form a
small part of the distresses of our fellow-prisoners; and when they tell
us they are _"ennuyes,"_ they say, perhaps, nearly as much as they feel--
for, as far as I can observe, the loss of liberty has not the same effect
on a Frenchman as an Englishman.
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