coated with plaster of Paris; and to ceilings overlaid with mortar, and washed with lime or plaster, of delectable whiteness.' Country houses were generally covered with shingles; but in towns, the danger of fires obliged the inhabitants to adopt the use of tile or slate. These latter buildings were very solid, and consisted of many stories projecting over each other, so that the windows on opposite sides of the street nearly met.— The walls of our houses on the inner sides,' says Harrison, be either hanged with tapestry, arraswork, or painted cloths, wherein 6 either divers histories, or herbs, beasts, knots, and such like, are 'stained; or else they are seeled with oak of our own, or wainscot brought out of the east countries.' This relates, of course, to the houses of the wealthy, which he also represents as abounding in plate and pewter. In earlier times, wooden platters, bowls, and drinking vessels, were universally used, excepting in the houses of the nobles. In France, if we may believe M. de Paumy (Vie privée des François), slices of bread, called 'pains tranchoirs,' were used as a substitute for plates, till the reign of Louis XII.” SUMMARY NARRATIVE of the CIRCUMSTANCES which attended the DETENTION of LATOUR MAUBOURG, BUREAU DE PUZY, LA FAYETTE, and his Family *. [From SEGUR'S REIGN of WILLIAM II. KING of PRUSSIA.] "LA A Fayette, Maubourg, and Bureau de Puzy, having in vain endeavoured to support the constitution of 1791, which they had sworn to maintain, and finding themselves compelled to emigrate, with some officers, in order to avoid the execution of decrees passed against them, meant to proceed to Holland; but, some leagues from the frontier, they were, notwithstanding their protestations, arrested by an Austrian post, and conducted to Luxemburg, Hav ing sent to ask passports from the duke de Saxe-Teschen, they were refused, and those who significd this refusal, barbarously informed them, that they were reserved for the scaffold. "As soon as the orders had been received from the court of Vienna, which determined the fate of the prisoners, and delivered them over to the king of Prussia, they were all three carried and confined at Wesel, where they were guarded by non-commissioned officers, whose orders were to observe them constantly, and not to answer their questions. "La Fayette had fallen dangerously sick, His fellow-sufferers were refused permission at Maubourg to see their friend ready to expire. A salutary crisis having rescued him from the jaws of death, the king of Prussia thought he might profit by his dejected state, and had a proposal made to him, that his situation should be alleviated, if he would furnish him with plans against France; but he proved, by an energetic reply, his "Communicated by one of the prisoners." contempt contempt of such a proposition. The rigour towards him was then redoubled, and soon after they were thrown into a cart and carried to Magdeburg, and were constantly refused any information of the existence of their families, respecting whom the proscriptions in France gave them the most anxious inquietude. "In travelling thus, their keepers thought to aggravate their distress and excite the public indignation against them. These wishes, however, were not fulfilled; they every where received marks of the interest excited by the injustice of their detention, and the constancy of their courage. "They remained a year at Magdeburg, in a damp and dark vault surrounded by high palisadoes, shut by four successive gates, and fastened with bars of iron and padlocks. However, their situation seemed milder, that they were sometimes allowed to see each other, and were walked out an hour each day on a bastion. observe the same respect towards the court of Vienna, which was irritated against him for having. quitted the coalition. The prisoners were transferred to Neifs; and, although the dungeon which they there inhabited was still more dismal and unwholesome than any of the others, this change appeared happy to them, as all the three prisoners together were allowed to enjoy the presence of madame de Maisonneuve, who came courageously to share the chains of her brother, Maubourg. "The king of Prussia, who did not wish, on making peace with France, to be obliged from justice to release his victims, determined to send them into Austria, and they were carried to Olmutz. On their arrival at this place, they were robbed of whatever the Prussians had left them, which reduced them to their watches and buckles; some of their books even were scized in which was found the word liberty, particularly Hetvetius de l'Espirit and Paine's ComMOR Sense; on which La Fayette asked if these were contraband articles. "The king of Prussia suddenly sent an order to remove La Fayette to Silesia; Maubourg solicited and obtained leave to be confined there with him they were conducted to Glatz, whither Bureau de Puzyonly their four walls; that they was soon after sent. "Each of them was told, on being shut up separately in his cell, That they should hereafter see would have neither news, neces Alexander Lameth, being dan- saries, nor visitors; that it was gerously ill, could not be trans- forbidden to mention their names ported with his companions. His even among the jailers, or in the mother, who enjoyed a respect government dispatches, in which merited by her virtues, obtained they were distinguished by numof Frederic William, after ardent bers; that they would never be solicitation, that he should remain 'informed of the fate of their fain prison in his dominions; and milies, nor of each other's exissome time after, peace being con- tence; and that, as this situation cluded between that monarch and might naturally lead them to selfthe French, she succeeded in pro-destruction, they were forbidden curing his liberty. The king of Prussia granted it, because he did not think himself longer obliged to 6 knife, fork, and every means whatever of suicide.' "After three certificates of phy sicians sicians of the indispensable necessity of air for La Fayette, after three replies that he was not yet sufficiently ill, he was at length permitted to walk out unconditionally; for it is false that La Fayette enjoyed this liberty, as has been alleged, on his engagement of honour that he should not attempt to make his escape. "The public know the enterprise of Dr. Boleman and the young Huger, the son of the man at whose house La Fayette first landed in America. "Boleman, after several months' unsuccessful attempts, succeeded in procuring a note to be secretly delivered to him, and executed a very bold plan. He repaired to Vienna, sent for the young Huger thither, and posted himself with him at the place where La Fayette was to be conducted to take the air; and these two attempted to rescue him at the moment when, having misled some of his keepers, they endeavoured to disarm the one that remained with him. In this struggle, La Fayette gave himself a violent strain in the loins, and the corporal-jailer, with whom he contended, and whom he had disarmed, tore with his teeth his hand to the bone. "His generous deliverers succeeded in getting him on horseback, with such negligence of their own safety, that they could scarcely find their horses to escape themselves. This loss of time, and the alarms of the keepers, having attracted people and troops, Huger was immediately secured. La Fayette, separated from Boleman, was seized eight leagues from Olmutz, and with the less difficulty, as he had no arms. Boleman reached the Prussian territories, but the king of Prussia had the barbarity to deliver him up to the Austrians. "From this time the captivity of La Fayette was more rigorous, and his illness became more serious; he was left without relief, with an unremitting fever, during a remarkably severe winter, deprived of light, and not even allowed the linen which his situation rendered necessary. "To increase his suffering, he was constantly made to believe that his companions had perished on the scaffold. "The care that had been taken to keep La Fayette from the knowledge of every thing that might serve to inform him of the fate of his family is remarkable in the following anecdote. "Latour Maubourg, having at length obtained permission to dispatch letters to his relations, learnt that madame de la Fayette was alive; he requested the commandant to allow his friend to be told that his wife yet lived: the commandant, after answering that his orders in this respect were too express,' from that time suppressed all the letters in which madame de la Fayette was mentioned, and did not deliver them to him till near a year afterwards, when he quitted Olmutz. "Whilst La Fayette, reserved for the scaffold, was tortured in the prisons of Olmutz, his wife, uncertain of his existence, and condemned to perpetual grief in the prisons of Paris, daily expected to be led to execution, as had happened to the greater part of her family. The fall of the tyrant saved her life; but she did not, till long after his death, regain her liberty and strength sufficient to exe cute cute her designs. Having landed at Altona the 9th of September 1795, she set out for Vienna under the name of Mottier, with an Amnerican passport; and arrived at Vienna before the court could be informed of her purpose, or prepared against her application. "The prince de Rosenberg, affected with her virtues, obtained for her and her daughters an audience of the enrperor, some detail of which it may be proper to give. "Madame de la Fayette claiming the liberty of her husband, in the name of justice and humanity, that prince answered her, 'This affair is complicated; my hands are tied respecting it; but I grant with pleasure all that is in my power, by permitting you to join M. de la Fayette: I should act as you do, were I in your place. M. de la Fayette is well treated, but the presence of his wife and daughters will be an additional ' indulgence,' < "Madame de la Fayette spoke of other prisoners, and particularly of La Fayette's servants, who she knew had suffered much, and whose affair could not be complicated. The emperor very graciously permitted her to write respecting those from Olmutz, and to address her applications directly to his imperial majesty; and madame de la Fayette, re-assured by the reception she had met with, then wrote on the road from Vienna to Olmutz, that she was astonished to find herself yet susceptible of all the happiness she was beginning to enjoy. But it was not long before sad experience convinced her that the emperor was deceived, and was ignorant of the cruel and tyrannical abuse his bar barous agents made of his name and authority. "Mesdames de Maubourg and de Puzy, inspired by the same sentiments, wished also to partake the chains of their husbands; but they were never permitted to enter the Austrian dominions. "It is easy to imagine the impresion La Fayette must have experienced at the sudden appearance of his wife and his children, whose existence had long been to him an object of fear and uncertainty, and that which his affectionate daughters and their mother must have felt at the sight of his emaciated figure and pale countenance; but they did not expect that their embraces would be interrupted, by the jailers' robbing the travellers of all they had brought with them. They took their purse, very ill supplied, and eagerly seized three forks, considered as instruments of suicide; for they well knew the temptation to it they had inspired. On this unexpected treatment, madame de la Fayette desired to speak to the commandant; they answered, that he was forbidden to see her, but that she might write to him. She desired to write to the emperor, conformably to the permission he had granted her; this they refused, telling her that her applications to the commandant would be forwarded to Vienna. They consisted in attending mass on Sunday, having a soldier's wife to wait on her daughters, and being, as well as La Fayette, waited on by one of his domestics. She received no answer to all these demands, nor to an application she some time afterwards addressed to the minister of war, to see La tour health, and the inconveniences of this abode for my daughters, we will gratefully avail ourselves of his imperial majesty's generosity, in permitting us to partake this (Signed) NOAILLES LA FAYETTE.' "From this moment no complaint was expressed, and this illfated pair respired in their cham bers, or, more properly speaking, dungeons, an air so fetid from the exhalations of a sewer, and of the privies of the garrison placed near Fayette's window, that the soldiers who brought their food held their nose on opening the door. "At length the health of this unfortunate lady, impaired by six-captivity in all its circumstances. teen months' imprisonment, and dreadful vexation, in France, di. splaying symptoms which denoted a tendency of the fluids to putrescence, she thought it her duty to attempt some means for her preservation, and wrote to the emperor to solicit permission from him to pass a week at Vienna, there to respire salubrious air, and consult a physician. After two months of a silence, which supposes the necessity of medical advice as of no consequence, the commandant, till then unknown to the prisoners, entered their apartment, ordered, without giving any reason, the young ladies to retire to a separate room, signified to madame de la Fayette the emperor's refusal for her ever to enter Vienna, and gave her permission to go out, on condition of never returning he desired her to write, and sign her option; she wrote: "I considered it a duty to my family and friends to desire the 'assistance necessary for my health; but they well know that it cannot, at the price attached to it, be accepted by me. I cannot forget, that whilst we were on the point of perishing, myself by the tyranny of Robespierre, and my husband by the physical and moral sufferings of captivity, I was not permitted to obtain any intelligence of him, nor to acquaint him that his children and myself were yet alive; and I shall not expose myself to the horrors of another separation. Whatever then may be the state of my "The constant answer of the persons of power or interest, who heard their barbarities exclaimed against, was, 'Madame de la Fay'ette has chosen to share the lot ' of her husband; she has no right to complain.' They might as well have said: Every thing is allowable against La Fayette; the life of his wife and children is not worth arresting our venge'ance for a moment.' "The three prisoners, Maubourg, La Fayette, and Puzy, had been confined for three years and five months in the same corridor, without seeing each other, or their keepers' giving them the least intelligence of each other's existence. When general Bonaparte and the French government testified an intention, conformably to the national wish, of restoring them to liberty, they experienced the strongest opposition. At last, an aid-de-camp of the conqueror of Italy succeeded, after several months' tergiversation, in obtaining from the court of Vienna this deliverance." |