have been the cause of his imprisonment. His decease took place in 1712. Of those who suffered in the Bastile very few indeed revealed to the world the secrets of the prison-house. The first who disclosed them was René Augustus Constantine de Renneville, a Norman gentleman, who was born at Caen, in 1650. De Renneville was the youngest of ten brothers, seven of whom fell in the service of their country. After having borne arms in, and retired from, the mousquetaires, he was patronised by Chamillart, one of the ministers, who employed him in various confidential affairs, and rewarded him by a respectable and lucrative office in Normandy. De Renneville passed several years in his native province, filling up by literary pursuits his intervals of leisure from his official duties. The persecution of the protestants, of whom he was one, drove him, in 1699, into Holland. Being, however, unable to find there a satisfactory establishment for his family, he yielded to the solicitations of Chamillart, and returned, in 1702, to France. The minister received him with open arms, gave him a pension, and promised him the first place that might become vacant in his own department. But the scene soon changed. Envy was excited by the reception which he had met with, and it quickly found or made the means of crushing him. Some years before, in a splenetic mood, he had written some _bouts rimés_, which were by no means complimentary to France. As, however, this would hardly authorize a heavy punishment, he was accused of being a spy, and of keeping up a correspondence with foreign powers. In consequence of this he was sent to the Bastile, in May 1702. He was placed in a wretched chamber, dirty, gloomy, and swarming with fleas, and his bed was overrun with vermin of a more disgusting kind. He was nevertheless tolerably well treated by his jailers till after the escape of Count de Bucquoy, in which he was supposed to have assisted. On this supposition he was thrown into one of the worst dungeons of the fortress, where he remained till life was nearly extinct. He tells us that his only sustenance was bread and water, and that his sleeping place was the bare ground, where, without straw, or even a stone to lay his head on, he lay stretched in the mire, and the slaver of the toads. His situation when he was taken out was pitiable. “My eyes,” says he, “were almost out of my head, my nose was as large as a middling-sized cucumber, more than half my teeth, which previously were very good, had fallen out by scurvy, my mouth was swelled, and entirely covered with an eruption, and my bones came through my skin in more than twenty places.” His captivity lasted for some years after his removal from the dungeon, and as though he was not again reduced to the same degree of misery, he was treated with much harshness. He bore his misfortune with courage, and solaced his lonely hours by reading and composition. His pen was a small bone, his ink was lampblack mixed with