About a mile distant from one of the southern barriers of Paris, a palace was built during _our_ Henry the Sixth's brief and precarious possession of French royalty, by the Bishop of Winchester. It was known by the name of Winchester, of which, however, the French kept continually clipping and changing the consonants, until the Anglo-Saxon Winchester dwindled into the French appellation of Bicêtre. The Bishop's old palace was treated as unceremoniously as his name, being burnt in some of the civil wars. But there is this advantage in a sumptuous edifice, that its very ruins suggest the thought and supply the means of rebuilding it. Bicêtre, accordingly, reared its head, and is now a straggling mass of building, containing a mad-house, a poor-house, an hospital, and a prison. To see it is a matter of trifling difficulty, except on one particular day--that devoted to the rivetting of the _chaine_. A surgeon, however, belonging to the establishment, promised to procure me admission, and on receiving his summons, I started one forenoon for Bicêtre. Mortifying news awaited my arrival. The convicts had plotted a general insurrection and escape, which was to have taken place on the preceding night. It had been discovered in time, however, and such precautions taken, as completely prevented even the attempt. The chief of these precautions appeared in half a regiment of troops, that had bivouacked all night in the square adjoining the prison, and were still some lying, some loitering about. Strict orders had been issued, that no strangers should be admitted to witness the ceremony of rivetting; and the turnkeys and gaolers, in appearance not yet recovered from the alarm of the preceding evening, refused to listen to either bribe, menace, or solicitation. It was confoundedly vexatious. Whilst expostulating with the turnkey, I caught a glimpse through a barred window of the interior court, athwart which the chains lay extended, whilst in one railed off even from this the convicts were crowded, marching round and round--precaution forbade their remaining still--and uttering from time to time such yells and imprecations as might deafen and appal a Mohawk. "I have caught a glimpse at least," thought I, as we were unceremoniously turned out. My friend, the surgeon, bade us, however, not despair. When the man of influence arrived he hoped to prevail; and in the mean time he led us to view the other curiosities of Bicêtre. There was the well, the kitchen, the anatomical theatre. The courts were crowded with aged paupers, who each well knew that his carcass would undergo what laceration the scalpel of my friend and his comrades chose to inflict upon it. But the thought seemed not to affect them so much as it did us. Methought the business of dissecting dead subjects might have been carried on more remote from the living candidates; but I was wrong, for mystery and secrecy always beget fear.