writing. The friar protested repeatedly that he had not read a line, but
nevertheless he was found dead in bed two days later. This incident was
told so often to my informant by his father and by the chaplain of the
fort of that time that he regarded it as incontestably true. The
following fact also appears to me to be equally well established by the
testimony of many witnesses. I collected all the evidence I could on the
spot, and also in the Lerins monastery, where the tradition is preserved.

"A female attendant being wanted for the prisoner, a woman of the village
of Mongin offered herself for the place, being under the impression that
she would thus be able to make her children's fortune; but on being told
that she would not only never be allowed to see her children again, but
would be cut off from the rest of the world as well, she refused to be
shut up with a prisoner whom it cost so much to serve. I may mention
here that at the two outer angles of the wall of the fort which faced the
sea two sentries were placed, with orders to fire on any boat which
approached within a certain distance.

"The prisoner's personal attendant died in the Iles Sainte-Marguerite.
The brother of the officer whom I mentioned above was partly in the
confidence of M. de Saint-Mars, and he often told how he was summoned to
the prison once at midnight and ordered to remove a corpse, and that he
carried it on his shoulders to the burial-place, feeling certain it was
the prisoner who was dead; but it was only his servant, and it was then
that an effort was made to supply his place by a female attendant."

Abbe Papon gives some curious details, hitherto unknown to the public,
but as he mentions no names his narrative cannot be considered as
evidence. Voltaire never replied to Lagrange-Chancel, who died the same
year in which his letter was published. Freron desiring to revenge