gences, pleasures, and even vices. James Henry Lawrence,[1] a Knight of Malta, who also escaped, and in the same year published anonymously a "Picture of Verdun," gave full particulars of Wirion's shameless extortions. Permission even to walk out of the town was tariffed, much more permission to live in a villa outside. Wirion would coolly ask himself to dinner with his wealthy prisoners. A Dr. Madan also made a handsome profit by certifying to the indisposition of sluggards who shirked answering the early morning roll-call. The captives were a motley band. Some had gone to France to retrench, some to educate their children, a few to study the artistic plunder at the Louvre, others to avoid their creditors or engage in smuggling, others again to establish manufactories. There was no little gambling, on which Wirion levied his commission, but as a set-off there were subscription schools for young sailors and children, and other forms of beneficence. Lawrence speaks of the brutality of his gaolers. A navy lieutenant, Leviscourt, after being on parole in the town for several years, was confined in the citadel. Thus relieved from his parole, he attempted to escape, but was recaptured, threatened with death, and by sentence of court-martial was dragged by gendarmes through
- ↑ He had published books in German at Weimar and Berlin in 1793 and 1801, one of them a women's rights or rather anti-marriage novel, the "Empire of the Nairs," reprinted in London 1811.
