[Footnote 13: Monstrelet relates a curious anecdote, during the
residence at the Castle of Vincennes of Isabeau de Baviere, strongly
illustrative of the barbarous manners of those times. "Lewis de
Bourbon, who was handsome and well made, and had signalized himself
upon various occasions, and amongst others at the battle of Agincourt,
going one night, as was customary, to visit the Queen, Isabeau de
Baviere, at the Castle of Vincennes, met the King (Charles VI.); he
saluted him, without either stopping or alighting from his horse,
but continued galloping on. The King having recollected him, ordered
Tangui du Chatel, prevost of Paris, to pursue, and to confine him in
prison. At night the _question_ was applied, and he was afterwards
tied up in a sack and cast into the Seine, with this inscription upon
the sack, 'Let the King's justice take place.'"]
Dulaure, a French writer, in speaking of the persons who were confined
here, observes, it would be difficult to enumerate the number of
individuals that have been shut up in this prison within these few
years. "We will merely notice," he says, "the celebrated Count
Mirabeau, who was confined from 1777 to 1780; here it was that he
translated his Tibulle, and Joannes Secundus, and wrote his 'Lettres
originales' to his mistress, Madame Lemonnier, which abound with
passages as affecting as the letters of Heloise".
This prison was thrown open during the reign of the unfortunate Louis
XVI. by the Baron de Breteuil, Minister of the Department of Paris
in 1784.
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