sleep, but I told him it was not a custom in Poland on visiting wine
cellars, or, so far as I knew, in any other country. He then asked
me to write to his friends, if I succeeded in getting out, and tell
them to send money enough to buy out the concern to take it home to
America. He would take cellar and all if he had to carry the whole
city of Warsaw and the Ex-King of Poland in his trunk. He had a friend
at New York who would just like this sort of thing. He would be
willing to sell all his interest in the United States if he could only
assemble his friends in that cellar, and get them as blind drunk as he
was. I saw that he was wandering mentally, although unable to wander
much physically, owing to the extreme suppleness of his legs. He began
to chide me for taking so much wine, and said I ought to have followed
his example, and drank nothing.
The situation became alarming. There was the staircase growing
narrower until it resembled a loophole in the wall of a fortress. I
was very much inclined to sit down with my friend, and wait until
the place grew larger. While thinking what to do, we were roused by
the appeal of our officer comrade to taste of another wine, a very
superior article from Hungary. We told him politely that we must
refuse, intimated that we should feel much better without it, and if
he could only plan some way by which we could get out of that cellar
and reach our hotel, we should be very much obliged.
He led the way up stairs. We observed that luckily they were large
enough for him to ascend without difficulty, and finally we reached
the space above. Once there we breathed more easily. We thanked our
host for the attention he had shown us; we thanked him by shaking his
hand, and keeping our mouths closed. To thank him in English would do
no good, as he did not understand our language, and we were a little
doubtful of our ability to pronounce our words correctly. I am sorry
that my friend made so free with this ancient wine, as it totally
incapacitated him from saying a word in Polish or any other language
with which he was not familiar.
When we reached the open air we found that our heads became level
again, and in a little while the effect of our wine-sampling excursion
had passed away. Assuming the dignity of a couple of emperors, we rode
to our hotel, took a lunch, and felt better.
All over the world it is a trick of the proprietors of wine cellars to
put their visitors through the system of sampling, so that, drink as
sparingly as they may,—a teaspoonful at a time only,—they will be very
much confused in body and mind before they emerge from the clutches of
their entertainers.
[Sidenote: A DANGEROUS BRIDGE.]
In one of the Western States I am acquainted with a wine dealer whose
cellar is entered by crossing a narrow bridge over a brook. The
bridge is ten or twelve feet long, about three feet wide, and has no
railing. I have heard him say that no visitor to his wine vaults ever
yet walked that plank on his return from the cellar without tumbling
into the brook. From what I have heard of his establishment, I think
he is not very far from the truth. Many a visitor to that cellar has
received an involuntary plunge bath as he came out into the open air.
XXIV.
THE BASTILLE.
ITS HISTORY AND CONSTRUCTION.—THREE AMERICANS SEARCHING FOR
IT.—A FRENCH JOKE AT THEIR EXPENSE.—HOW PRISONERS WERE RECEIVED
AND TREATED.—HORRIBLE DUNGEONS.—THE OUBLIETTES.—CRUELTIES
OF THE BASTILLE.—THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK.—HIS ROMANTIC
STORY.—DESTRUCTION OF THE BASTILLE.
One of the most famous dungeons or prisons in the world was the
Bastille of Paris.
It was a state prison and citadel of the city, was built in the year
1369, and destroyed by the mob in the beginning of the revolution of
1789, or more than four centuries after its construction.
It is a curious fact that no plan of the Bastille as originally
constructed is in existence, neither is there any plan extant of the
Bastille as it appeared at the time of its destruction. Somehow the
kings of France were averse to giving the public much information
about this famous prison of state. They appear to have been satisfied
with the knowledge that the place existed, and that those who
displeased them could be shut up there, and they never troubled
themselves to know the exact plan or model of the concern.
There has been a great deal of exaggeration concerning the Bastille,
and many stories have been told about it which had little or no
foundation. After all, there was really no need of exaggeration, for
the atrocities committed within the walls of the Bastille are quite
horrible enough for all practical purposes.
[Illustration: THE GRAND HOTEL, PARIS.]
In ordinary life the French are a quiet, harmless people, and they
are the last in the world whom you would suspect of atrocities;
but every revolution in France has been full of horror, whether in
past times or in the present. It has been said that you may take the
mildest Frenchman in the world, give him a place of authority where
his acts will not be called into question, and the chances are great
that he will conduct himself in a very savage manner. I do not assert
this of my own knowledge, but leave the reader to judge whether the
history of the French prisons and French tyranny does not, in some
degree at least, corroborate the statement.
The day after my arrival in Paris, a friend proposed that we should
visit the Bastille. We were talking upon some topic, and I had
actually stepped inside the carriage with him and given the order to
the driver before it occurred to me that the Bastille did not exist,
and had not existed for several scores of years. When I remembered
this, and told my companion, he said,—
“I came very near selling you. I want to get even on selling myself.”
[Sidenote: SEARCHING FOR THE BASTILLE.]
Then he told me a story of his experience in searching for the
Bastille. Bear in mind that he was an editor, familiar with history
(editors of course know everything), and if he had given the subject
a moment’s thought it would have occurred to him that there was no
Bastille in Paris worth mentioning. Let me tell his story as he told
it.
“There were three of us who came over in the steamer, landed at
Brest, and came to Paris. We arrived here in the evening. We put up
at the Grand Hotel, and the next morning started out to ‘do’ the
city. The first thing we saw as we stepped out of the hotel door to
the Boulevard was an omnibus, on which was the sign ‘_Place de la
Bastille_.’ We mounted to the top of this omnibus, and away we rode
down the Boulevard.
[Sidenote: VERDANT AMERICANS.]
“By and by we stopped near a large, open square, with a monument in
the centre. The conductor motioned us to get off, and said something
which we did not understand, but took to mean that this was the end
of his route. Moreover, the omnibus turned round, and we understood
pretty well that we must get ashore. I was the only one who could
speak French, and I couldn’t speak much of it. As we left the omnibus,
I said to the conductor, ‘_Monsieur, où est la Bastille?_’
“The conductor stared at us, smiled, and turned away. Then we stepped
on the sidewalk and looked around. Close by us was a ‘_Restaurant de
la Bastille_,’ and on the corner we could see the sign of ‘_Place de
la Bastille_.’ There was a cake shop close by, and that had a sign
which indicated that it was the cake shop ‘_de la Bastille_.’
“Then we stopped a well-dressed Frenchman, and said to him,
‘_Monsieur, où est la Bastille?_’ The fellow was too polite to laugh
in our faces, as the conductor did, but he said not a word, and walked
off. I saw, though, when his back was turned towards us, that he was
shaking his sides, and evidently grinning.
“Then we stepped into the restaurant, and I said to a waiter,
‘_Garçon, où est la Bastille?_’ and that infernal waiter laughed in
my face. I said to the other boys, ‘These confounded Frenchmen round
the Bastille are all fools. I thought Frenchmen were polite, but these
fellows have no politeness at all.’ We climbed out of that restaurant,
and went out on the square on a Bastille hunt.
“There was no more sign of a prison than there is inside your boot. We
walked round that square about ten minutes, when it got into one of
our heads,—not into mine though,—that the Bastille had been destroyed
in 1789. I had nothing more to say, except that we were the three
biggest fools in all Paris. Here we had been hunting round, boring
everybody, and asking them to show us a prison which was destroyed
eighty years before, as we perfectly well knew, only we did not happen
to recollect it. We went back to the Grand Hotel, and the next time we
went out sight-seeing we made sure that the thing we inquired for was
in existence.”
[Sidenote: DESCRIPTION OF THE BASTILLE.]
The Bastille was an irregular building in shape, as the original
construction, in the time of Charles V. had been added to by each
successive monarch. It had as its principal feature eight round
towers, connected by curtains of masonry, and was encircled by a ditch
a hundred and twenty-five feet wide. This ditch was generally dry, and
was surrounded on its outside by a wall sixty feet high, to which was
attached a wooden gallery running round the whole inner circumference
of the ditch opposite the castle. This gallery was called the
“Rounds.” Sentinels were stationed on these Rounds, and it was their
duty to be perpetually in motion, in order to discover any movement of
the prisoners for escaping. The Bastille had a governor and a staff
of assistants, and it had a garrison of one hundred men, with their
proper officers.
Whenever a prisoner was brought to the Bastille, his trunks and
clothing were carefully examined, in order to discover whether he had
any concealed papers or weapons. The advocate Linguet, who had been
detained there for three years, says,—
“The new comer is as much surprised as alarmed to find himself
subjected to a personal examination by four men, whose appearance
seems to belie their functions; men clad in uniforms, which leads
one to look for a regard to decencies, and wearing decorations which
presuppose a service which endures no stain. This man takes from him
his money, that he may have no means of corrupting any one of their
number, his jewelry on the same consideration, his papers for fear he
should find any resource against the tedium to which he is henceforth
devoted, and his knives and scissors are taken from him for fear he
should commit suicide or assassinate his jailers.”
After this examination he was led to the cell intended for him to
occupy. These cells were situated in all the towers. The walls were at
least twelve feet in thickness at the top, and at the base they were
thirty or forty feet. Each cell had a small window defended by three
iron gratings, one within, the second without, and the third in the
middle thickness of the masonry.
The bars of this grating were an inch thick. No fire was allowed, and
there was no glass in the windows, so that in winter these cells were
like ice-houses, and in summer they were hot and damp.
[Sidenote: CHARACTER OF THE DUNGEONS.]
The dungeons were nineteen feet below the level of the court-yard,
and five below that of the ditch. They had no openings but a narrow
loophole communicating with the ditch. The inhabitant of these
dungeons was deprived of air and daylight, and lived in a damp and
infected atmosphere. Oftentimes the floor of his cell was covered with
mud, and he found himself surrounded by reptiles, rats, and other
disagreeable creeping or walking things.
The written history of the Bastille shows that these horrible cells
were frequently used for the confinement of prisoners in order to make
their existence as terrible as possible. There is a tradition that
iron cages were used for the confinement of prisoners, but writers who
have given their attention to this subject say that nothing of the
sort was discovered at the time the Bastille was destroyed. There is
also a tradition in regard to the _Oubliettes_, which are described as
holes into which condemned prisoners were lowered, where they should
languish and die forgotten. There is also a tradition in regard to a
Question Chamber, in which suspected prisoners were tortured to make
them confess their guilt, or to reveal the names of their accomplices.
[Illustration: PLACE DE LA BASTILLE, PARIS.]
[Illustration: THE BASTILLE.—ERECTED IN 1369.]
The Bastille could contain fifty state prisoners in solitary cells,
and by putting two persons in one cell the number could be raised
to a hundred. Sometimes as many as three hundred persons were in
the Bastille at once, and in that case they were densely crowded.
According to history the prisoners were wretchedly fed, but it should
be said, in justice to the government, that this state of affairs
was probably due to the frauds of the subordinates rather than to
any intended cruelty on the part of the government, as the latter
generally made liberal allowances for the support of the prisoners
of state. One writer asserts that in his time the governor of the
Bastille had a great number of prisoners, many of whom were paid
for at twenty-five francs a day, and that their subsistence did
not cost as many sous. There was a regular tariff for expenses for
the table, lights, and washing of all prisoners, according to their
rank. A prince was allowed fifty francs a day, a marshal of France
thirty-six francs, a lieutenant general thirty-four francs, and so on
down to the inferior prisoners, who were allowed two francs and a half.
[Sidenote: TREATMENT OF PRISONERS.]
A prisoner might be examined at the moment of his arrest, or not
until weeks, months, or years afterwards. He had no mode of offering
any defence, or of telling his friends where he was, or why he was
detained; and sometimes he did not himself know these facts. He was
allowed no books or papers; he could not communicate with anybody
except by special permission. He could not be visited except on an
order from the lieutenant of police, and at such visits all the
conversation must be in the presence of an officer of the prison,
and no allusion could be made to the cause of detention, the term of
imprisonment, or any topic of that sort.
The treatment of prisoners varied greatly. Some, whom it was desired
to kill by slow torture, without trial, or even without a hearing,
were shut up in the horrible dungeons already described, where they
were fed on the worst possible food until death relieved them from
their suffering. Others, whom it was not designed to punish or
destroy, but simply to detain, enjoyed every comfort, and a great
deal of luxury. They had large rooms, fine furniture, excellent and
abundant food, plenty of wine, books, and papers, could have their
own servants, could be visited by their friends or families; in fact,
could do pretty nearly as they pleased, except to go out of the
Bastille.
Sometimes the Bastille was under governors who had a good deal of the
milk of human kindness in their composition, and sometimes it was
under the control of men who had as little feeling and sympathy as a
stone. Prisoners were well or badly treated according as the governor
was good or bad in character, and also according to the instructions
which had been received concerning their treatment. The most horrible
feature about the Bastille was the mode of sending persons to it. No
man could be safe from imprisonment there, and he was subject to the
whims and caprices of the minister of state, whom no appeals could
reach, and by whom no call for justice would be heard or heeded. If
any man incurred the displeasure of the minister, or of any one who
had sufficient influence to secure an order for his arrest under the
royal seal, he might be taken to the Bastille at any moment. If his
accuser desired that he should never more go out into the world, and
never hold communication with any one, the accuser’s will became law.
Hundreds of men were sent to the Bastille without knowing the cause of
their arrest or the names of their accusers, and without being allowed
to communicate with family or friend. It was this uncertainty, this
ever-present fear of injustice and cruelty, that made the name of the
Bastille appalling, and led every Frenchman to regard it as a place
full of horrors.
[Sidenote: HORRORS OF THE BASTILLE.]
It is said that some of the most barbarous cruelties ever inflicted
within the walls of the Bastille were during the reign of Louis
XI. Louis himself was the author and inventor of some of the worst
barbarities. It is recorded in history, that he caused dungeons to
be made in the Bastille surrounded with smooth and polished masonry,
where the prisoners, who were lowered into them, were obliged to
remain in an unnatural position, which they could not change.
According to history, the princes of the house of Armagnac were shut
up in these horrible pits, and were drawn out twice a week to be
scourged in the presence of the governor, and once in every three
months to have two of their teeth torn from their jaws. Sometimes
split sticks of dry wood were placed on their fingers, and then the
sticks would be set on fire and allowed to consume. Richelieu sent
many of his enemies to the Bastille, some of whom were treated with
extreme consideration, while others endured great severity. One of
these men, the notorious Bassompierre, was immured there twelve years
by the order of Richelieu.
[Sidenote: MAN IN THE IRON MASK.]
One of the greatest mysteries attending the Bastille is that of the
Man in the Iron Mask. A great deal has been said and written about
him, some of it being fact, and some of it fiction. Who he was is not
positively known. It is very certain that he was a personage of great
importance, whom it was desirable to keep out of the way, and at the
same time very desirable not to kill. He was always treated with the
utmost consideration. Every one of his attendants uncovered his head
when in presence of the mysterious personage. His clothing was of the
finest character, his food was of the best quality, and served on the
choicest table-ware. He was rarely left alone, and then only in a
place whence he could not escape; his face was always covered with a
mask of black velvet, fastened behind his head with steel bands. His
private governor was De Saint Mars, and it is supposed that he was
answerable with his own life for the safety of the Man in the Iron
Mask, and for the preservation of his incognito. When first heard of
he was confined in the Marguerite Islands, in the Mediterranean. One
day a fisherman, passing near the place of his confinement, saw a hand
wave towards him from a window, and a moment after, a silver plate was
thrown out. The fisherman picked up the plate and looked at it; saw
that some words were engraved upon it, and immediately took it to the
governor of the prison. The governor looked at it carelessly, and then
asked the fisherman if he had shown it to any one, or had read it. The
fisherman answered, “No, your excellency, I have shown it to no one,
and as for myself I cannot read.”
“That is fortunate,” said the governor; and giving the fisherman a
gold piece, he dismissed him.
The gold piece, however, did the fisherman very little good, as he was
assassinated that night by some unknown person.
Every piece of linen, every scrap of paper, everything which in any
way would convey information, was scrupulously examined. One day the
mysterious man made some writing on one of his shirts which was going
out to the wash. By some means this escaped the notice of the jailers,
and was found by the washerwoman. She could not read, and when she
returned the linen, she called the attention of the governor to the
writing. She was rewarded for her fidelity with a gold piece, and
she, like the fisherman, was assassinated on the night after she had
obtained her reward. After this, the Man in the Iron Mask was always
furnished with new linen every day, and that which he had worn was
immediately destroyed.
[Sidenote: AN ILLUSTRIOUS PRISONER.]
From the Marguerite Islands, he was moved to the Bastille, where he
died on the 19th of November, 1703. He was buried the next day in the
cemetery of St. Paul, under the name of Marchiatti.
In the Bastille he was waited upon at the table and at his toilet
by the governor, and no one else. He was allowed to go to mass,
and a file of soldiers always accompanied him. Their muskets were
loaded, and their matches were lighted; they were ordered to kill him
instantly in case he spoke to any one, or attempted to tear off his
mask. Who he was, and what he was, will probably never be known. No
person of sufficient note to justify such precautions as were taken
in his case was absent from the stage of history at that time. The
general impression is, that he was an elder brother of Louis XIV.,
the fruit of an adulterous intrigue between Anne of Austria and the
Duke of Buckingham, or some other of those lovers for which Anne was
famous. As he was born in wedlock, he could not have been dispossessed
of his claim to the throne, if his existence had been admitted. Louis
XIV. may have had some absurd prejudice against murdering his brother,
though it was not the fashion of those days to be so very fastidious.
A story was written by Dumas under the title of the Man in the Iron
Mask, and it has been dramatized and given on the stage in Europe and
America. The mystery which envelops the wearer of the mask gives an
additional interest to all stories concerning him.
[Sidenote: DESTRUCTION OF THE BASTILLE.]
In talking about this historic individual, we have almost forgotten
the Bastille. After the time of Louis XIV. the Bastille became a
place of imprisonment, not alone of persons of honorable birth,
but of common malefactors, and of persons of very low repute. The
imprisonment of Beuzot, the king’s librarian, for obeying the king’s
own directions, by the minister De Breteuil, brought to light the
whole system of iniquity in which the prison was managed. On the 14th
of July, 1789, the people arose in their fury, captured the Bastille,
and ransacked and destroyed it. At the time of its capture only seven
persons were found in its cells and dungeons, one of them having been
there since his eleventh year. There was another who had been ten
years in the Marguerite Islands, and thirty years in the Bastille; he
appeared, on his liberation, bewildered and half idiotic, like a man
waking from a sleep of forty years, and looking out upon a new world.
The records of the prison reveal many cases as bad as this, and any
lover of liberty, even to the smallest degree, cannot regret that the
Bastille has passed away forever.
[Illustration: DESTRUCTION OF THE BASTILLE, JULY 14, 1789.—ITS KEY
PRESENTED BY LA FAYETTE TO GEORGE WASHINGTON, AND NOW AMONG THE RELICS
AT MOUNT VERNON.]
XXV.
DIAMONDS AND DIAMOND MINES.
HOW DIAMONDS ARE OBTAINED.—THE COUNTRIES THAT PRODUCE THEM.—MODES
OF SEEKING THEM IN BRAZIL.—CURIOUS PRECAUTIONS AGAINST THEFT.—HOW
A SLAVE IN BORNEO ROBBED HIS EMPLOYER.—FAMOUS DIAMONDS AND THEIR
HISTORY.—THE REGENT, THE ORLOFF, AND THE KOHINOOR.—FIDELITY OF
A SERVANT.—THE STAR OF THE SOUTH.—A SHARP TRICK OF AN AMATEUR
GAMBLER.
The hardest known mineral in the world, and at the same time the most
valuable, is the diamond. It cannot be cut or scratched by any other
substance. In cutting the diamond, another diamond, or the dust of
one, must be used. The process of polishing these stones by rubbing
two of them together was probably known in Asia a great many years
ago; but it was not introduced into Europe until the middle of the
fifteenth century. The diamond-cutters of Asia preserved the secret
of their work very carefully long after these valuable stones were
brought to Europe. About the middle of the fifteenth century, Louis
Berquen, of Bruges, accidentally discovered that by rubbing two
diamonds together, their surfaces might be cut. The powder obtained in
this way is used for polishing the stone.