also with their religious opinions, and if he were dissatisfied with these, if he detected a Jansenist heresy or an attack upon the Jesuits, or if he fancied a coolness towards himself or his favourites, inflicted punishment as one might punish a troublesome child. Here are two summary orders of Louis the Fifteenth and Louis the Sixteenth; a third concerns the carrying of coals. Lettre de cachet. Personelle Mons. Duval de Beauvais, je vous fais cette lettre pour vous dire que mon intention est que vous sortiez de la ville de Paris dans le jour sans voir ni parler à personne, vous défendant d'approcher de ladite ville plus près que de deux lieues, à peine de désobéissance. Sur ce, je prie Dieu qu'il vous ait, Mons. Duval de Beauvais, en sa sainte garde. Ecrit à Versailles le 24 may 1771. Phélypeaux. Lettre de cachet du 14 Août 1787 LOUIS. Mons. N― je vous fais assavoir que vous aiez à rester chez vous, à quitter Paris dans vingt quatre heures, et à vous rendre dans quatre jours à Troyes, où je vous ferai connaître mes intentions. Sur ce, je prie Dieu, Mons. Nvous ait en sa sainte et digne garde. À Versailles ce 14 Août 1787. Le Baron de Breteuil. qu'il. LOUIS. The paternal tone of the letters is apparent, and also the elegant French in which they are couched. The punishment inflicted does not seem to have been severe; in the case of M. Duval de Beauvais, his exile from Paris was of short duration, for he was soon reinstated in his old posts at the Châtelet. He does not appear to have appreciated the interest shown in him, for a few years later there is an official entry against his name, 'S'est pendu.' The accusations made against persons sent to the Bastille, as given in the registers, were diverse, and appear to modern ideas strange indeed. Pour la Religion' accounts apparently for more than half the prisoners. Such a phrase easily covers a variety of religious misdemeanours. Thus we find as causes of detention such charges as 'Mauvais Catholique' (this charge occurs on every page), 'De la Religion prétendue reformée' is also frequent. Then we have Accusé d'etre quiétiste,' 'Accusé d'être Janseniste,' 'Pour Libelles contre les Jésuites.' An Irish Jacobin priest is imprisoned as 'Fou furieux.' L'Abbé Primi, an Italian who had been persuaded into writing the life of Louis the Fourteenth, but whose history did not gain the royal approval, was sent to the Bastille, his book suppressed, his papers seized. Fréret, who ventured to publish a study on the origin of the Franks in 1714, in which he challenged the views then current, was also sent to the Bastille. Paulet, a distinguished man of science, one of the first members of L'Académie de Médecine, narrowly escaped a like fate, for having taught that small-pox was contagious! The Abbés who took part in the Encyclopædia were not only censured by the Sorbonne, but one of them had to leave the country, another expiated his fault in the Bastille. Year after year the charges against prisoners are found to be 'Pour la religion, Janséniste'; 'Convulsionnaire,' or 'Prétendu Convulsionnaire,' or 'Jansénistes convulsionnaires,' in the case of a man and his wife. We know that Voltaire had a taste of the Bastille, and in his story of L'Ingénu he describes at some length the life as it might be of two prisoners L'Ingénu himself and an elderly Jansenist. What then was that life? We have enough evidence before us in these days to be sure of the truth. It must first be admitted that the Bastille was a Paradise' in comparison with the prisons of Bicêtre or of the Châtelet, which were under the jurisdiction of the Parliament of Paris. There was, however, one highly important distinction, that whereas the prisoners of the city had to be tried and convicted, with many formalities of arrest and accusation, the mere signature of an individual consigned to the Bastille. The Bastille as a prison was apparently better kept and cleaner than either Bicêtre or the Châtelet, and imprisonment within its walls did not, it would seem, dishonour the prisoner or his family. A great many prisoners were charged as mad; and under this elastic term the violent maniac, the ambitious madman, the young spendthrift, the megalomaniac, the searcher for the philosopher's stone or the secret of perpetual motion-all these tiresome persons-might be and were included. How then did these prisoners live? In the underground cells or dungeons, as in the cells in the towers, the prisoners were on bread and water as a rule; in the other rooms in the main building, three meals were served a day with drinkable wine-vin potable.' In certain cases, according to the quality and distinction of the prisoner, he might supplement the meagre furniture of his prison and get a provision of books. Very favoured persons were allowed their own servant, if he would consent voluntarily to undergo confinement. Voltaire began to write the Henriade, as prisoner in the Bastille ; l'Abbé Morellet of the Encyclopædia speaks of the great fortress as the cradle of his fame; but we must remember that it was perhaps not advisable to say much about the Bastille when you were still living within its walls, and that as M. Mouin has reminded us, the old Spartans offered sacrifices to Fear.' Prisoners, moreover, had to sign on their release an elaborate declaration by which they swore never to divulge, directly or indirectly, anything they might have learnt as prisoners concerning the Bastille. M. Linguet, however, who had been a prisoner under Louis the Sixteenth, and had signed his declaration like the others, published a Memorial of the Bastille, from London. In this he only voiced the demand of the people for the demolition of the fortress. Suggestions had been long made as to the buildings and streets which should be made upon the site when the old castle came down, and some five weeks only before the actual demolition the Academy of Architecture received a design for a grand monument to be erected, where the Bastille once stood, with the inscription 'to Louis the Sixteenth, who gave his people liberty.' The terror of the great prison was the arbitrary nature of the imprisonment for acts or beliefs which were not properly offences against the law, for the dark secrecy that prevailed, for the impenetrable mystery that enveloped the unhappy prisoners, who were in the absolute power of the Governor, upon whose character for clemency and justice everything depended. While the horror of being forgotten and left to perish darkened hope. As to the fate of the unfortunates imprisoned in the underground dungeons, Dr. Rigby, a well-known physician of Norwich, can enlighten us. He, with three travelling companions, entered Paris on the evening of the 7th of July 1789. He was in Paris at the fall of the Bastille, though he did not actually witness the surrender, and was present at the historic scene of the deliverance of the prisoners. History tells us that in consequence of the hot public feeling about the Bastille, prisoners had been sent away to other prisons, so that at the time of the fall seven only remained in the fortress. Dr. Rigby, writing home to his wife and daughters, gives a graphic description of how in the Rue St. Honoré they first perceived a large crowd advancing towards the Palais Royal bearing aloft some huge keys, a flag, and a paper on which was written, 'La Bastille est prise, et les portes sont ouvertes.' A sudden burst of the most frantic joy instantaneously took place,' he says. The crowd shouted, wept, laughed; the Englishmen were recognised and seized and embraced; the people shouting' Now we are free as you.' The crowd swept by, and was quickly followed by another even larger. Its approach was heralded by loud and triumphant acclamations with an undertone of angry and defiant murmurs. The Englishmen were soon horrified to see two gory heads borne aloft on pikes. Many of the onlookers fled in alarm, and the night that followed was an anxious one. Guns were continually fired from different parts of the city, and the tocsin sounded unceasingly. The Englishmen retired to their lodgings, and found next day that the Parisians had spent the night in felling trees and throwing them across the principal thoroughfares, while the stone pavements had been removed and carried as ammunition to the tops of the houses. On the morning of the 15th of July, Dr. Rigby and his friends were again in the streets, and again were led by the sound of an approaching crowd to the end of the Rue St. Honoré. There (he says) I witnessed a most affecting spectacle. Two wretched victims of the detestable tyranny of the old Government have just been discovered, and taken from some of the most obscure dungeons of this horrid castle, and were being conducted by the crowd to the Palais Royal. One of these was a little feeble old man. He exhibited an appearance of childishness and fatuity; he tottered as he walked, and his countenance exhibited little more than the smile of an idiot. The other was a tall and rather robust old man; his countenance and figure interesting in the highest degree. He walked upright with a firm and steady gait; his hands were folded and turned outwards; his face was directed towards the sky, but his eyes were but little open. Had he really been, as I was told, two and forty years shut up in one of those cells where the light of heaven is denied an entrance, it is easy to explain why his eyes were so little open. He had a remarkably high forehead, which with the crown of his head was completely bald; but he had a very long beard, and on the back of his head the hair was unusually abundant, exhibiting a singularity which had the appearance of a disease not unknown to the human species, called the Plica Polonica.' It had grown behind to an incredible length, and, not having been combed, it had become matted together, and divided into two long tails very much resembling the tail of a monkey. These tails, I should suppose would have nearly reached the ground, but as he walked he supported thein on one of his arms. His dress was an old, greasy, reddish tunic; the colour and the form of the garb were probably some indication of what his profession or rank had been; for we afterwards learned that he was a Count d'Auche, that he had been a major of cavalry, and a young man of some talent, and that the offence for which he had sustained this long imprisonment had been his having written a pamphlet against the Jesuits. . Perhaps to some persons I should be ashamed to acknowledge it, but you will not think the worse of me; I was no longer able to bear the sight, I turned from the crowd, I burst into tears. The names of the two prisoners thus conducted through the streets have never been absolutely ascertained, though it is fairly certain that one of them was the Count d'Auche. According to the Moniteur of the 24th of July, seven prisoners in all were released. The account given by Dr. Rigby of what he and his friends saw is enough to convince us that men were thrown into the Bastille on the flimsiest pretences without trial, that they lay there for long years without hope of justice as without legal sentence; that they were forgotten, or that it was deemed impolitic to release them. We may be quite sure that the Count d'Auche was not invited by the Governor to dine, or allowed to play bowls on the famous bowling green! Voltaire was himself, as we know, a prisoner in the Bastille, and in his defence of General Lally complains bitterly that the General was confined there without trial for fifteen months. If he began his Henriade in the solitude of the fortress, he has left us his true opinion of it in the well-known lines quoted in L'Ingénu : De cet affreux château, palais de la vengeance, It would be an easy and a pleasant pastime to make a selection of distinguished English men and women who would be eligible for the Tower, if that delightful haunt of American tourists and children served as a Bastille, and it would help us to understand why the ancien régime found it so useful. All the new theologians would have to go-agnostic or otherwise. Mr. Wells would certainly have a suite reserved for him, as would Mr. Bernard Shaw, with his 'Dilemma,' and one or two fashionable doctors to keep him company. Court poets and painters would certainly be spending week-ends to revise verses and paintings. Mr. Stead and Mr. Chesterton might be let off with a threatening—but Father Vaughan would have a few months there for his attack on Society, and surely there would be delegates from the principal suffrage societies- Suffragettes Convulsionnaires.' It would turn London into a really dull city. Surely our fathers were right when they danced round the Tree of Liberty, and we do wrong to-day to scoff at their enthusiasms and at the freedom they won for us. E. B. HARRISON. |