Orleans independent standard. [volume] (Irasburgh, Vt.) 1856-1871, 1870-01-11
A Prison.

small islands in the harbor to visit the
Castle DIFF. This ancient fortress has
melancholy history. 1t has been
used as prison for political offenders
for two or three hundred years, and
its dungeon walls are SCARED with the
rudely carved names of many and
many captive who fretted his life
away here, and left no record of him.
self but these sad epitaphs wrought
with his own hands. How thick the
names were! And their long departed
owners seemed to throng the gloomy
cells and corridors with their phantom
shapes. We loitered through dun
geon after dungeon, away down into
the living rock below the level of the
sea, it seemed. Names every where!
some plebeian, some noble, some
even princely. Plebeian, prince and
noble, had one solicitude in common
they would not be forgotten! They
could suffer solitude, inactivity, and
the horrors of a silence that no sound
ever disturbed; but they could not
bear the thought Of being utterly for
gotten by the world. Hence the carved
names. In one cell, where a light
penetrated, man had lived twenty
seven years without seeing the face of
human being-lived in filth and
wretchedness. with no companionship
but his own thoughts, and they were
sorrowful enough. and hopeless
enough,no doubt. Whatever his iallers
considered that he needed was con-
veyed to his cell by night, through a
wicket. This man carved the walls
of his prison house from floor to roof
with all manner of figures of men
and animals, grouped in intricate de-
signs. He had toiled there year al
ter year, at his self-appointed task,
while infants grew to boyhood-to
vigorous youth-idled through school
and college-acquired profession
claimed mans mature estate-mar-
ried and looked back to infancy as to
a thing of some vague, ancient time,
almost. But who shall tell how many
ages it seemed to this prisoner?
With the one, time flew sometimes:
with the other, never-it crawIed al
ways. To the one, nights spent in
dancing had seemed made of minutes
instead Of hours; to the other, those
self-same nights had seemed like ali
other nights Of dungeon life, and
seemed made of slow, dragging weeks,
instead Of hours and minutes. One
prisoner of fifteen years had scratched
verses upon mis- walls, and brief prose
sentenceS-brief but full of pathos.
These spoke not OF himself and his
hard estate; but only of the shrine
where his spirit fled the prison to wor-
ship-Of home and the idols that were
tempted there. He never lived to
see them. The walls of these dun
geons are as thick as some bed
chambers at home are wide-ffteen
feet. We saw the damp, dismal cells
in which two of Dumas heroes pass
ed their confinemcnt-heroes of
" Monte Christie" 1t was here that
the brave able wrote a book with
his own blood with a pen made of
piece of iron hoop, and by the light of
a lamp made out of shreds of cloth
soaked in grease obtained from his
food and then dug through the thick
wall with some trifing instrument
which he wrought himself out of a
straT piece of iron or table cutlery,
and freed Dantes from his chains.
1t was pity that so many weeks of
dreary labor should have come to
naught at last They showed US the
noisome cell where the celebrated
" Iron Mask"-that ill-starred broth
er of a hard hearted king of France
was confined for a season, before
he was sent to hide the strange mys-
tery Of his life from the curious in the
dungeons of St. Marguerite. The
place had far greater interest for us
than it could have had if we had
known beyond all question who the
Iron Mask was, and what his history
had been. and why this most unusual
punishment had been meted out to
him. Mystery! That was the charm.
That speechless tongue, those prisoned
features, that heart so freighted with
unspoken troubles, and that breast so
oppressed with its piteOus secret, had
been here. These dank walls had
known the man whose dolorous story
is sealed book forever! There was
fascination in the spot Marx TRAINS
Ian0cents abroad.