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Where did Paul Verlaine serve his prison sentence?
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Paul Verlaine
Paul Verlaine, detail from Un Coin de table, oil painting by Henri Fantin-Latour, 1872; in the Louvre, Paris.
Paul Verlaine served his two-year prison sentence at Mons (located in present-day Belgium).1
He was incarcerated there after wounding the poet Arthur Rimbaud with a revolver during an emotional dispute in Brussels on July 10, 1873. During his time in prison, Verlaine experienced a period of contrition and returned to Roman Catholicism, later documenting his experiences in his work titled Mes Prisons.1