BETWEEN THE CZAR AND THE SULTAN. 313 ported, there were some thousands of Frenchmen chap. • XIV who were made to undergo sufferings too horrible L_ to be here told. I speak of those who were enclosed in the casemates of the fortresses and huddled down between the decks of the Canada and the Duguesclin. These hapless beings were, for the most part, men attached to the cause of the Republic. It would seem that of the two thousand men whose sufferings are the most known, a great part were men whose lives had been engaged in literary pursuits ; for amongst them there were authors of some repute, editors of newspapers, and political writers of many grades, besides lawyers, physicians, and others whose labours in the field of politics had been mainly labours of the intellectual sort. The tor- ments inflicted upon these men lasted from two to three months. It was not till the second week in March that a great many of them came out in- to the light and the pure air of heaven. Because of what they had suffered they were hideous and terrible to look upon. The hospitals received many. It is right that the. works which testify of these things should be indicated as authorities on which the narrator founds his passing words.* But unless a man be under some special motive for learning the detailed truth, it would be well for him to close his eyes against those horrible pages ; for if once he looks and reads, the recol-
- ' Le Coup d'Etat,' par Xavier Durrieu, ancien Represent-
ant du Peuple. ' Ilistoire de la Terreur Iionapartiste/ p*r Hippolyte Mageu.
