The mysterious conspiracy of the Camp de Grenelle furnished the Temple with a batch of one hundred and thirty-five prisoners; and the _coup d'État_ which swept them in proscribed also the editors of twenty-two French journals. During the next eight years the most distinguished of the "enemies of the Republic" whose names were entered on the Temple register were Lavalette; Caraccioli, the Ambassador of the King of Naples to the Court of Louis XVI.; Hottinguer, the banker of the Rue de Provence; Hyde de Neuville; the journalist Bertin; Toussaint-Louverture, the hero of Saint-Domingue, who had written to Buonaparte: "_Le premier homme des noirs au premier homme des blancs_"; the two Polignacs, the Duc de Rivière, George Cadoudal, Moreau, and Pichegru. General Pichegru, arrested on the 28th of February, 1804, "for having forgotten in the interests of the English and the Royalists what he owed to the French Republic," was found dead in his cell on the 6th of April following, having strangled himself with a black silk cravat. Moreau, liberated by the First Consul, took service in the ranks of the enemy, and was slain by a French bullet before Dresden, in 1813. Toussaint-Louverture's detention in the Temple is an episode which reflects little credit upon the military and political history of the Consulate. Certainly the expedition of Saint-Domingue, under the command of General Leclerc, Napoleon's brother-in-law, makes a poor page in the annals of that period. After having received Toussaint-Louverture's submission, Leclerc, afraid of the great negro's influence, made him a prisoner by the merest trick, and despatched him to France. Confined at first in the Temple, he was afterwards removed to the fort of Joux, where he died in April, 1803. Five years after this, in June, 1808, the prisoners of the Temple were transferred by Fouché's order to the Dungeon of Vincennes. Amongst them was General Malet, that bold conspirator who, in 1812, "_devait porter la main sur la couronne de l'Empereur_." The tower of the Temple was demolished in 1811, and, four years later, Louis XVIII. instituted, on the ruins of the ancient dwelling of the Templars and the prison of Louis XVI., a congregation of nuns, who had for their Superior a daughter of Prince de Condé. [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] CHAPTER VI. BICÊTRE. "Where there are monks," exclaimed brusquely the authors of _Les Prisons de Paris_, "there are prisoners." The folds of the priestly garb concealed a place of torment which monastic justice, with a grisly humour, named a _Vade in Pace_; the last bead of the rosary grazed the first rings of a chain which bore the bloody impress of the sworn tormentor. At Bicêtre, as at the Luxembourg, ages ago, big-bellied cenobites sang and tippled in the cosy cells piled above the dungeons of the church.