Henry M. Baird · 187 of 379

CHAPTER IX · Du Bourg in the Bastile.

At length the last appeal was rejected, and Du Bourg, under sentence of death, was remanded to the Bastile, to await the pleasure of the king. Many months had elapsed since his arrest, but his courage had risen with the trials he was called to face. To prevent any attempt to rescue him he had at one time been shut up in an iron cage, and the very passers-by had been forbidden to tarry and look up at the grim walls of the prison. But the captive was less solicitous to escape than his captors were to detain him. He resolutely declined to avail himself of a bull obtained for him from Rome by friends, through liberal payment of money, and opening the way for an appeal from the Primate of France to the Pope himself. The prison walls, it is said, resounded with the joyful psalms and hymns which he sang, to the accompaniment of the lute.