Protestantism in France From Death of Henry IV to the Revolution - James Aitken Wylie

Another prisoner, M. de Marolles, a
distinguished scientist, tells us that the solitude and
perpetual darkness of his prison engendered, at last,
the most frightful and terrifying ideas in his mind.
Believing himself on the brink of insanity, he had
recourse to prayer, and was delivered. A perfect
calm filled his mind, and those phantoms took
flight that had so troubled his soul. "He makes the
days of my affliction pass speedily away," said he
in the last letter he was ever to write. "With the
bread and water of affliction, He affords me
continually most delicious repasts."[4]
In the letters of M. le Febvre, cited above,
mention is made of a shepherd who was removed
from Fort St. Nicholas to a dungeon in the Chateau
d'Ife.[5] The descent into this dungeon was by a
ladder, and it was lighted only by a lamp, for which
the gaoler made the prisoners pay. The shepherd,
when first consigned to it, had to lie on its miry
bottom, almost without clothing. A monk, who
went down into it to visit its wretched inmates,
could not help declaring that its horrors made him
shudder, that he had not nerve enough to go again.
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