It has seldom happened that a captive has been reluctant to quit his prison. Such an uncommon anomaly did, however, actually occur with respect to an individual who was implicated in the Cellamare plot. Five years had elapsed since the discomfiture of that plot, and the government believed that all who were connected with it had been released, when it was by mere chance discovered that one of them, the Marquis de Bon Repos, had been left in the Bastile by mistake. Bon Repos, an aged officer, who, notwithstanding his title, was miserably poor, was anything but grateful for his proffered release. He had become habituated to confinement, and was rejoiced to be safe from want, and he manifested a strong dislike to “a crust of bread and liberty.” It was not without much murmuring that he consented to change his quarters in the Bastile for others in the Hôtel des Invalides. It might have been supposed that the tremendous explosion of the Mississippi scheme, which spread ruin over France, would have filled the prisons with real or imagined offenders. But this was not the case. Law himself, more unfortunate and imprudent perhaps than criminal, received a passport from the regent, and reached Brussels in safety. The only persons who appear to have at all suffered, were his brother, William Law, and two of the directors, who were sent for a short time to the Bastile. The next remarkable inmate of the Bastile, the Count de Horn, a Flemish noble, was no less infamous by crime than he was illustrious by birth. He was allied to several princely houses, and could even claim relationship with the regent Duke of Orleans. So thoroughly had he disgraced himself, by his fraudulent and debauched conduct, that at the very time when he was meditating the atrocity which drew on him the vengeance of the law, his family had despatched a gentleman to pay his debts, to request his expulsion from Paris, and to bring him back, by force if necessary, to his own country. Their agent arrived too late. Some of the count’s freaks, disgraceful as they were, might have been charitably ascribed to the licentious manners of the age, and the turbulent passions of a youth of twenty-two, had he not been guilty of a crime which proved that his heart was still more faulty than his head. The two indiscretions—if so mild a name may be given to them—for which the Count de Horn was sent to the Bastile, were not too harshly punished by his imprisonment; as they manifested a degree of brutality which was ominous of worse deeds. In company with some of his libertine companions, he was passing the cloisters of St. Germain, where a corpse was waiting for interment. “What are you doing here? Get up!” he exclaimed to the body, which was lying uncovered. He seconded his speech by striking the corpse several blows with his sword, and overturning it among the sacred vessels, which were placed in readiness for the funeral service.