There is, however, a force in circumstances strong enough to overcome the habits and instincts of a life-time. I had not been a month in the Luxembourg before the idea of death by violence, once so terrible and appalling, began to assume a very different aspect in my mind. Our society consisted of above a hundred in number, and the major part of them, incarcerated for political offenses, were but in the position of losers in a game in which they had played the stake of life for the chance of power. They paid the penalty as readily and as recklessly as they had played the game; and the spectacle which their fate presented to my view, though it never reconciled me to their repulsive indifference to the importance of life, yet gradually undermined my own estimate of its value. Every means of amusement that could be thought of was resorted to for diversion. Plays were acted night after night, the female characters being personated by the youngest of the party in robes borrowed from the wardrobe of the jailer's wife. Concerts were got up, and the songs of all nations were sung with much taste to the accompaniment of the lute in the hands of an old professor, who, it afterward came out, had been imprisoned by mistake, because he bore the name of an offender. Card-parties sat down to play every evening; and men would continue the game, and deal the cards with a steady hand, though they heard their names called over in the list of those who were to grace the guillotine on the morrow. It was rare that executions followed on two successive days; there was often, indeed, a respite for a fortnight together; but I noticed with a shudder that, whenever the cells were all occupied, an execution, and usually of a large number, speedily followed. Months passed away. I was unhappy beyond expression, from the want of sympathy and of occupation. I had been allowed to receive a box of clothes and linen from my residence; and my servant had put a few English books into the box, with a design to relieve the tedium of confinement. Among the books was Baxter's "Call to the Unconverted." It came into my head that I might find occupation in translating this work into French, and that by circulating it very cheaply among the populace I might perhaps do something to stem the course of bloodshed and profanity in which all seemed hurrying headlong forward. I procured writing-materials, and shutting myself up several hours a day in my cell, commenced the translation. I did not make very rapid progress; my attention was too much distracted by what was going on around me to permit me to do much during the day. At eleven at night we were locked in our cells, and then I generally wrote for a quiet hour before going to bed.