CONCERNING THE BASTILLE.
All France gave one cry of joy when the news arrived that the
Bastille was taken.
All the world knew the Bastille—that prison which has given its name
to others.
From one end of France to the other, all shook hands, congratulating
each other on the event.
And, strange to say, the Bastille was taken by those who had never
entered it—in fact, it was a place of imprisonment for nobles only.
One would have thought, from the fact of their attacking it, that it
was a place which they themselves had to dread.
Ah! it was a horrible den. You were not dead there; but what was
worse, you were forgotten.
Your father, wife, or brother dared not speak of you, for fear they
should be sent there likewise.
Once there, you no longer had a name, but a number. You died, and
they buried you under a false name.
No; the King did not deprive you of your head; he was too good for
that; he only forgot you.
Instead of dying in a moment, you suffered unutterable tortures for
perhaps thirty years.
In the reign of Louis XVI all the rigors of prisons were softened,
with the exception of the Bastille, the discipline of which was
harsher than ever. In former reigns they had barred the windows; but
now they also stopped the promenades in the gardens.
It is true that Louis XVI did not actually do this himself but he
suffered it to be done, which is all the same.
Louis XVI did not himself shut up the garden. No; it was De Launay,
who was as unpopular as he well could be.
At the Bastille all bought the places that they occupied, from the
Governor down to the gaolers. Every situation was worth having,
except that of the prisoners.
The Governor had sixty thousand livres salary. He made a hundred and
twenty thousand by his plunders.
We have already spoken of the garden of the Bastille open to the
prisoners. It was but a little plot of ground, planted, as it were,
upon a bastion.
A gardener offered a hundred francs a year for it; and this
scoundrel, who was wringing from the pitiful allowances of the
prisoners the sum of a hundred and twenty thousand francs per annum,
actually, for the sake of this paltry sum, deprived the poor wretches
under his rule of the breath of air that made life supportable, of
the sole gleam of life that intervened ’twixt them and the tomb.
He well knew that he would never survive the capture of the
Bastille—this man of iron, who had a Bastille in place of a heart.
The Governor’s hundred and thirty-five barrels of powder were placed
in a vault, situated in the centre of the fortress. The Bastille
blown into the air would astound Paris in its ascent, and utterly
destroy it in its stupendous fall. This he knew. When the prison was
entered by the people, he clapped a torch to the touch-string. An
Invalide seized his arms; two sous-officers crossed bayonets across
his breast. He snatched a knife from his belt; they took it out of
his hands.
Then he demanded to be allowed to march out with the honors of war.
This demand met with a positive refusal.
At last, he would be satisfied were he allowed to depart with life
alone.
Two of the conquerors of the Bastille—Hullin and Elie—promised this
in the name of all.
He begged them to conduct him to the Hotel de Ville, where he had
some shadow of authority.
In the meantime, whilst the people were dashing themselves against
the granite and the oak, and demolishing the two stone slaves that
supported the clock, and breaking open the dungeons, with the
intention of liberating the prisoners confined therein, Hullin and
Elie took away De Launay, hiding him as much as possible by placing
themselves in front of him.
But when he arrived at the gates, the Governor was recognised. He had
no hat; Hullin, fearless of consequences, gave him his own.
Turning into the Rue St. Antoine, one who had taken part in the
combat, recognised the prisoner.
Farther on, came some who had not yet been engaged in the siege,
and who, as a matter of course, were more bloodthirsty now that the
danger was over. They wished to massacre the prisoners. De Launay
remained alive through the protection of Hullin and Elie.
Elie, less powerful than Hullin, was carried away by the crowd,
amongst whom he was lost sight of.
At the Arcade St. Jean, Hullin himself lost sight of De Launay, but
by a superhuman effort he separated the crowd, and regained him. He
dragged him to some adjacent steps, but in the effort fell. Twice did
he again raise himself, only to fall again. At the third time, De
Launay had disappeared. He looked for him on all sides, and at last
recognised his head fixed on the extremity of a pike, and borne above
the crowd.
That head Hullin would have saved, had it been possible, at the risk
of his own.
During this time, the mob had released the prisoners in the Bastille.
There were nine.
Two or three, on seeing the door open, cried out that the people had
come to slay them, and prepared to defend themselves with chairs, but
the intruders cried out in a loud voice, “Free! Free!”
One could not understand it, and fell suffocating, pressing his heart
with his two hands.
Another stood speechless, with his eyes fixed on space; a venerable
man was he, with a white beard descending to his breast. They took
him for a spectre.
The conquerors told him that he was free.
He understood them not.
“How is Louis the Fifteenth?” asked he.
“He has been dead fifteen years.”
“How long had he been in the Bastille?” they asked him.
“I know nothing about it,” he replied.
“Who are you?”
“I am the Elder-born of Space.”
He was mad.
Under the staircase, in a sort of tomb, they found two skeletons. Who
were they? No one knew. The workmen took them away, and buried them
in the Cemetery of St. Paul.
All the world wished to see the Bastille. They showed Latude’s
ladder, that immense work of patience and of genius.
For a month the old place was not emptied.
They heard sighs. A report ran about that there were hidden dungeons
known only to the Government, in which the unhappy prisoners were
suffered to die of hunger.
The architect of the city, Citizen Palloy, was ordered to pull down
the old fortress. Of the best stones, he made eighty-six models of
the Bastille, which he sent to eighty-six different departments.
With the others, he built the Pont de la Revolution, on which the
head of Louis XVI was exposed after execution.