INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 179, 29 July 1903, Page 3 (Supplement)

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

: : ft the year ISSI, inaugurating the era ! j Ta3 t improvements in the streets and ' boulevards in the city of Paris, there re demolished in the Rue de la Tixejanderie seventy-live buildings, among rtem some of the most celebrated and 1 venerable in ancient Paris, including the 1 g ote j d'Anjou, inhabited in the fourteenth century by Louis 11., King of Nates Sicily and Aragon; also two hotels, L belonging to Jacques dv Bourbon, the tier occupied in the fourteenth century vy Blanche de Nevarre.

raffing the construction of one of the more insignificant of these gloomy old luiidings, yet one of great extent, evidences were discovered that this had been jie infamous private prison mentioned i gt, Blmon nnd other writers of the /ranch Regency, the ono kept under the I (jiere of Monsieur Marc Rene d'Argen- -. „ Lieutenant-General of the Police of I by his exempt officer, Pomereu, in which were incarcerated and punished, without process of justice, any unfortu- ! jate persons that onicial thought proper \ Jo seclude. An attempt by Parliament to correct jljis abuse by the arrest of Pomereu himself was inacantly d/efeated by a lettre ie cachet from the Regent, and the iouse of mysterious disappearances repained in its full dread mediaevaljrison significance, overawing personal liberty in Paris, very little known, very little talked about, one of the secret, plent, ghastly horrors of the world. To this day it is vague and almost fabulous. Those who knew of it at that time •poke of it only with bated breath; those 4o occupied its cells seldom left them. If they did, they dared not mention the lecrets of their prison house. During the demolition of this building, in one of the offices attached to its fioomy cells, were found a series of ropers buried or forgotten for two centuries. These documents were placed in my hands by the superintendent of the improvements in the Rue de la Tixerandene. They consist chiefly of extracts taken from the archives of the Exempt Oicer of Police, Pomereu himself. Many of them are simply police records of the tnrt cruelties visited upon the unfortunates and malefactors of that day, from I the debtor, adventuress and woman of intrigue or pleasure, to the thief, bandit jnd assassin. Others describe some of the very priTite intrigues, plots and cabals of that jnurellous epoch when Paris became the centre of the finances of the world, adding the extraordinary vivacity of speculations so grand and so bizarre that they lent romance to the sombre jet pompous itrocities of the ancient regime. A few of these almost mediaeval relords we venture to place in the cold light of modern type.—The Editor.