Latude now passed ten continuous years in prison. He had long been utterly forgotten when the minister Malesherbes, making a scrupulous inspection of the state prisons, saw him, heard the tale of his woes, and promised to do him justice. Circumvented, however, by the Lieutenant of Police, who represented Latude as a dangerous lunatic, he, with the best intentions, ordered the poor wretch to be removed to Charenton. This was still further to aggravate the captive’s condition, for Charenton was by several degrees worse than Vincennes. Madmen were then treated in the cruellest fashion, confined in narrow cells, and fed on a disgusting diet. Allowed a little more freedom than the other inmates, he was shocked to find, in a fetid little dungeon, loaded with chains and mercilessly beaten by the warders, his old companion D’Aligre, whose reason had not been able to survive his misfortunes, who scarcely recognised his friend, and who died shortly afterwards. The adventures of Latude, however, had now attracted the attention of the outside world. He had been able so far to elude the vigilance of the warders as to get a few letters delivered to influential personages. An order for his liberation, almost immediately revoked, was signed in 1777. The victim had hardly started out for Montagnac, his native place, when he was re-arrested--though here again he probably had his own folly to thank, for he might have got clean away had he not obstinately determined to make a stay at Paris, and delayed his departure with that object. This time he was shut up at Bicêtre with malefactors of the worst class. The history of Latude is singularly touching when one reflects that it was for a mere piece of boyish stupidity that he suffered a weight of frightful misery, which grew not lighter but heavier as years dragged on. “Each year,” says Michelet, “his sad position was aggravated. At length the crevices of his windows were stopped up and additional bars fitted to his cell. In Latude,” continues this historian, “the imbecile old tyranny had incarcerated the very man who could best denounce it--an ardent and terrible man whom nothing could tame, whose voice shook the walls, and whose wit and audacity were invincible.... His body was made of indestructible iron; for he could live in the Bastille, at Vincennes, at Charenton, and even at the horrible Bicêtre, where anyone else would have perished. [Illustration: THE LUNATICS’ QUARTER, SALPÊTRIÈRE.] “I am unfortunately obliged to say that in this effeminate and decayed society there were not wanting philanthropists, ministers, magistrates, and grand-seigneurs to weep over the affair; but none of them did anything. Malesherbes wept, and Lamoignon and Rohan: everyone wept hot tears. “He was on his muck-heap at Bicêtre, literally eaten up with vermin, lodged underground, and often howling with hunger. He had again addressed a memoir to some philanthropist, entrusting it to a turnkey: a woman picked it up.