The imprisonment of Mirabeau lasted only ten days. The _lettre de cachet_ had been obtained by the clique of financiers, who took fright at the audacious conceptions of the _Theory of Taxation_. "I fancy I deserved my punishment," wrote the Marquis, "like the ass in the fable, for a clumsy and misplaced zeal." In regard to the arrest, Madame d'Epinay sent word to Voltaire: "Never before was a man arrested as this one was. The officer said to him, 'Sir, my orders do not state I am to hurry you: to-morrow will do, if you haven't time to-day.' 'No, sir, one cannot be too prompt in obeying the king's orders, I am quite ready.' And off he went with a bag crammed with books and papers." At Vincennes the Marquis had a servant with him. His wife came to see him. The king spent for his support fifteen livres a day, more than twenty-five shillings of our money. He was liberated on December 24, 1760. His brother, Bailie Mirabeau, speaking of this detention, wrote to him of "a week's imprisonment in which you were shown every possible consideration." * * * * * We have exhausted M. Bournon's list of the writers who were victims of arbitrary authority. Such are the "martyrs" for whom that excellent historian, and Michelet and others, have shown the most affecting compassion. The foregoing facts do not call for comment. Men of letters were the spoilt children of the eighteenth century much more than of our own, and never has an absolute government shown a toleration equal to that of the monarchy under the _ancien régime_ towards writers whose doctrines, as events have proved, tended directly to its destruction. CHAPTER VI. LATUDE. Few historical figures have taken a higher place in the popular imagination than Masers de Latude. That celebrated prisoner seems to have accumulated in his life of suffering all the wrongs that spring from an arbitrary government. The novelists and playwrights of the nineteenth century have made him a hero; the poets have draped his woes in fine mourning robes, our greatest historians have burnt for him the midnight oil; numerous editions of his _Memoirs_ have appeared in quick succession down to our own days. Even by his contemporaries he was regarded as a martyr, and posterity has not plucked the shining crown of martyrdom from his head, hoary with the snows of long captivity. His legend is the creature of his own unaided brain. When in 1790 he dictated the story of his life, he made greater calls on his glowing southern imagination than on his memory; but the documents relating to his case in the archives of the Bastille have been preserved. At the present time they are to be found dispersed among various libraries, at the Arsenal, at Carnavalet, at St. Petersburg. Thanks to them it is easy to establish the truth.