In May, of the year of grace, one thousand six hundred and forty, waiting with the same intent, yet standing apart from the crowd, was observable a maiden attended by an aged female domestic. At the hour of eight in the morning, knelled by the old palace-clock, the portal was opened to the admission, under heavy and inconvenient restrictions, of the friends and legal advisers of prisoners. The group of visiters entered the narrow threshold one by one, the maiden last, after exchanging an affectionate adieu with her attendant. Such had been her wonted custom the past week. Little curiosity existed among those who, like herself, were seeking admission within the dreaded walls, else they might have distinguished, what the mantle drawn close round the throat could not wholly conceal—a fair face subdued by recent sorrow. Last was she ever of the throng, for she shrank from the observation and contact of those as unhappy as herself. Let us pass the threshold with the maiden. The narrow passage opened into a large, sombre vestibule, the walls of rough masonry, and on which were affixed lamps affording a dim, feeble light. At the entrance the damsel each day submitted a written order to a pair of ruffianly jailers, whose unwashed faces and long matted hair bespoke utter aversion to cleanliness. Holding the document to a lamp above his head, the light fell on the seamed face, begrimed with dirt, of the principal jailer. Hands of the same texture, and in the same state, had in the course of a week so soiled the pass that it appeared no longer the same document. The maiden who, whilst waiting in the outer-bureau of the minister of state, had witnessed the carefulness of the delicate hand, peeping from the lace-ruffle, which traced the characters on fair royal paper, sealed it with green office-wax, and bore it with all care in an envelop to Monseigneur, shrouded in his closet, would not have dared to show the secretary his bespoiled handiwork, and almost loathed receiving it from the grimed hand of the cerberus—but it was impolitic to exhibit the disgust she felt, and so, depositing the paper in its cleaner envelop, she walked through a long gallery, lighted, like the vestibule, by lamps, the whole day long. The gallery terminated in the prison-parlor, an apartment where the inmates held interviews with relatives and friends. And a strange parlor it appeared even to the maiden, though seen for the seventh time. Of the same confined width as the gallery, there were interposed on each side and at the extremity, strong iron rails; and between the bars of what might be compared to a bird-cage on a gigantic scale, conversed the prisoners and their visiters. Beyond the inmates’ side of the railing, was seen another row of iron-bars, and between the interstices of the latter, a scanty green whose blades of grass, few and far between, might easily be counted. Flanking this lawn were open-staircases leading to