[Illustration: IN THE GRIP OF THE BASTILLE.]
The Dungeons of Old Paris
Being the Story and Romance
of the most Celebrated Prisons
of the Monarchy and
the Revolution
By
Tighe Hopkins
Author of "Lady Bonnie's Experiment," "Nell Haffenden," "The
Nugents of Carriconna," "The Incomplete Adventurer,"
"Kilmainham Memories," etc.
-------
Illustrated
-------
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1897
------------------------------------------------------------------------
COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
Entered at Stationers' Hall, London
By WARD & DOWNEY
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS.
---------
CHAPTER
I. INTRODUCTION
II. THE CONCIERGERIE
III. THE DUNGEON OF VINCENNES
IV. THE GREAT AND LITTLE CHÂTELET AND THE FORT-L'ÉVÊQUE
V. THE TEMPLE
VI. BICÊTRE
VII. SAINTE-PÉLAGIE
VIII. THE ABBAYE
IX. THE LUXEMBOURG IN '93
X. THE BASTILLE
XI. THE PRISONS OF ASPASIA
XII. LA ROQUETTE
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ILLUSTRATIONS.
IN THE GRIP OF THE BASTILLE
MADAME DUBARRY
CELL OF MARIE ANTOINETTE IN THE CONCIERGERIE
THE KEEP OR DUNGEON OF VINCENNES
MIRABEAU ON THE TERRACE OF VINCENNES
THE GREAT CHÂTELET
THE TEMPLE PRISON
A TURNKEY
A STREET SCENE DURING THE MASSACRES
THE GALLANT SWISS
THE BASTILLE
PLAN OF THE BASTILLE
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
THE DUNGEONS OF OLD PARIS.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
_Triste comme les portes d'une prison—Sad as the gates of Prison_, is an
old French proverb which must once have had an aching significance. To
the citizen of Paris it must have been familiar above most other popular
sayings, since he had the menace of a prison door at almost every turn!
For the "Dungeons of Old Paris" were well-nigh as thick as its churches
or its taverns. Up to the period, or very close upon the period, of the
Revolution of 1789, everyone who exercised what was called with quite
unconscious irony the "right of justice" (_droit de justice_), possessed
his prison. The King was the great gaoler-in-chief of the State, but
there were countless other gaolers. The terrible prisons of State—two of
the most renowned of which, the Dungeon of Vincennes and the Bastille,
have been partially restored in these pages—are almost hustled out of
sight by the towers and ramparts of the host of lesser prisons. To every
town in France there was its dungeon, to every puissant noble his
dungeon, to every lord of the manor his dungeon, to every bishop and
Abbé his dungeon. The dreaded cry of "_Laissez passer la justice du
Roi!_" "Way for the King's justice!" was not oftener heard, nor more
unwillingly, than "Way for the Duke's justice!" or "Way for the justice
of my lord Bishop!" For indeed the mouldy records of those hidden
dungeons and torture rooms of château and monastery, the _carceres duri_
and the _vade in pace_, into which the hooded victim was lowered by
torchlight, and out of which his bones were never raked, might shew us
scenes yet more forbidding than the darkest which these chapters unfold.
But they have crumbled and passed, and history itself no longer cares to
trouble their infected dust.
Scenes harsh enough, though not wholly unrelieved (for romance is of the
essence of their story), are at hand within the walls of certain prisons
whose names and memories have survived. I have undone the bolts of
nearly all the more celebrated prisons of historic Paris, few of which
are standing at this day. One or two have been passed by, or but very
briefly surveyed, for the reason that to include them would have been to
commit myself to a certain amount of not very necessary repetition. I
fear that even as the book stands I must have repeated myself more than
once, but this has been for the most part in the attempt to enforce
points which seemed not to have been brought out or emphasised with
sufficient clearness elsewhere. Dealing with prisons which were in
existence for centuries, and some of which were associated with almost
every great and stirring epoch of French history, selection of periods
and events was a paramount necessity. The endeavour has been to give
back to each of these cruel old dungeons, Prison d'État, Conciergerie,
or Maison de Justice, its special and distinctive character; to shew
just what each was like at the most interesting or important dates in
its career; and, as far as might be, to find the reason of that dreary
proverb, "Sad as the gates of Prison." Light chequers the shades in some
of these dim vaults, and the echoes of the dour days they witnessed are
not all tears and lamentations. Something is shewn, it is hoped, of
every kind of "justice" that was recognised in Paris until the days of
'89, when everything that had been, fell with the terrific fall of the
monarchy:—feudal justice, the justice of absolute kings and of ministers
who were but less absolute, provosts' and bishops' justice, and the
justice of prison governors and lieutenants of police. Often it is no
more than a glimpse that is afforded; but the picture as a whole is,
perhaps, not altogether lacking in completeness. Once inside a prison,
the prisoner is the first study; and there are no more moving or pitiful
objects in the annals of France than the victims of its criminal justice
in every age. Slit the curtain of cobweb that has formed over the narrow
_grille_ of the dungeon, put back on their shrill hinges the double and
triple doors of the cell, peer into the hole that ventilates the conical
_oubliette_, and one may see once more under what conditions life was
possible, and amid what surroundings death was a blessing, in the days
when Paris was studded with prisons, when every abbot was free to
wall-up his monks alive, and every seigneur to erect his gallows in his
own courtyard.
For during all these days, dragging slowly into ages, justice has seldom
more than one face to shew us: a face of cruelty and vengeance. The
thing which we call the "theory of punishment" had really no existence.
Punishment was not to chasten and reform; it was scarcely even to deter;
it was mainly and almost solely to revenge. What the notion of prison
was, I have tried briefly to explain in the chapters on "The
Conciergerie," "The Dungeon of Vincennes," and, I think, elsewhere. We
are strictly to remember, however, that the vindictive idea of
punishment, and the idea of prison as a place in which (1) to hold and
(2) to torment anyone who might be unfortunate enough to get in there,
were not at all peculiar to France. The history of punishment in our own
country leaves no room for boasting; and France has not more to reproach
herself with in the memory of the Bastille, than we have in the actual
and visible existence of Newgate. France has _Archives de la Bastille_;
we have Howard's _State of Prisons_ and Griffiths's _Chronicles of
Newgate_. We are not to forget that, in the "age of chivalry" in
England, it was unsafe for visitors in London to stroll a hundred yards
from their inn after sunset; and that, in the reign of Elizabeth,
Shakespeare might have penned his lines on "the quality of mercy" within
earshot of the rabble on their way to gloat over the disembowelling of a
"traitor," or flocking to surround the stake at which a woman was to die
by fire. In a word, the sense of vengeance, and the thirst for
vengeance, which underlay the old criminal law of France, and of all
Europe, were not less the basis of our own criminal law until well on
into the second quarter of this century. But the French, it would seem,
have paid the cost of their quick dramatic sense. They have handed down
to us, in history, drama, and romance, the picture of Louis XI. arm in
arm with his torturer and hangman, Tristan; the spectacle of the noble
whose sword was convertible into a headsman's axe; and of the abbot
whose girdle was ever ready for use as a halter. Histories akin to these
(and, at the root, there is more of history than of legend in all of
them) are to be delved out of our own records; but the French have been
more candid in the matter, and a good deal more skilled with the pen in
chronicles of the sort.
On the other hand, England never had quite such bitter memories of her
prisons as France had of hers. The struggle for freedom in England was
never a struggle against the prisons; and it was not consciously a
struggle against the prisons in France. But the destruction of a prison
was the beginning of the French Revolution; and when the Revolution was
over, its first historians took the prisons of France as the type and
example of the immemorial tyranny of their kings. In one important
respect, therefore, the dungeons of old Paris stand apart from the
prisons of the rest of Europe.
I had proposed to myself, in beginning this introductory chapter, to
attempt a comparison, more or less detailed, between these ruined and
obliterated prisons of historic Paris and the French or English prisons
of to-day. But a final glance at the chapters as they were going to
press counselled me to abstain. There is no point to start from. The old
and the new prisons have a space between them wider than divides the
poles. The key that turned a lock of the Châtelet, Bicêtre, or the
Bastille will open no cell of any modern prison, French or English.
Punishment is systematised, and has its basis in two ideas,—the safety
of peoples living in communities, and the cure of certain moral
obliquities; or, it is quite without system, and means only the
vengeance of the strong upon the weak. Between the prison which was
intended either as a living tomb, or as a starting-place for the
pillory, the whipping-post, or the scaffold; and the prison which
proposes to punish, to deter, or to reform the bad, the diseased, the
weak, or the luckless members of society, there is not a point at which
comparison is possible.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]