Page:Memoirs of a Huguenot Family.djvu/87

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
REMOVAL TO TOWN HALL.
81

me to be his companion in such a place; and when I told him, he said, "Alas! sir, why will you not change your religion? This is a sad place for one like you."

Poor fellow! I doubt not he would have acted up to the advice he gave me; and the probability is, that if he had been brought up a Protestant, he might now have saved his life by recantation.

On the following day he was put to the torture, ordinary and extraordinary; he uttered not a syllable; but one of his companions made a full confession, and all three were broken on the wheel.

Owing to the unceasing importunity of Mademoiselle de la Burgerie, afterwards wife of Colonel de Boisron, I was taken out of the stinking dungeon at nine o'clock the same night. She was well acquainted with the President, and she represented to him in the strongest language, the infamy of his proceedings, and gave him no peace until he signed an order for my removal, and gave it to her.

My next prison was just the opposite; instead of being under ground, it was very high, in a small tower at the top of the Town Hall of Pons, open to the town-clock, circular in its form, ten or twelve feet in diameter, and with two rather large grated windows. I procured a small bedstead, a table, and three chairs, and made myself as comfortable as I could. I was altogether dependent upon the caprice of the President, who would sometimes forbid all access to my apartment, and at other times, he would grant admission to any, and every body, who would pay the door-keeper a trifle for the trouble of taking them up stairs. During the three months I was in confinement there, I was visited by many worthy, excellent persons, through whose instrumentality I was enabled to send prayers, copied by unknown hands, which I prepared to