CHAPTER XV

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THE BASTILLE

The worshipper at the shrines made famous by Dumas--no less than history--will look in vain for the prison of La Roquette, the Bastille, the hotel of the Duc de Guise, at No. 12 Rue du Chaume, that of Coligny in the Rue de Bethusy, or of the Montmorencies, "near the Louvre."

They existed, of course, in reality, as they did in the Valois romances, but to-day they have disappeared, and not even the "_Commission des Monuments Historiques_" has preserved a pictorial representation of the three latter.

One of Dumas' most absorbing romances deals with the fateful events which culminated at the Bastille on the 14th Thermidor, 1789. "This monument, this seal of feudality, imprinted on the forehead of Paris," said Dumas, "was the Bastille," and those who know French history know that he wrote truly.

The action of "The Taking of the Bastille," so far as it deals with the actual assault upon it, is brief. So was the event itself. Dumas romances but little in this instance; he went direct to fact for his details. He says:

"When once a man became acquainted with the Bastille, by order of the king, that man was forgotten, sequestrated, interred, annihilated....

"Moreover, in France there was not only one Bastille; there were twenty other Bastilles, which were called Fort l'Eveque, St. Lazare, the Chatelet, the Conciergerie, Vincennes, the Castle of La Roche, the Castle of If, the Isles of St. Marguerite, Pignerolles, etc.

"Only the fortress at the Gate St. Antoine was called _the Bastille_, as _Rome_ was called _the_ city....

"During nearly a whole century the governorship of the Bastille had continued in one and the same family.

"The grandfather of this elect race was M. de Chateauneuf; his son Lavrilliere succeeded him, who, in turn, was succeeded by his grandson, St. Florentin. The dynasty became extinct in 1777....

"Among the prisoners, it will be recollected, the following were of the greatest note:

"The Iron Mask, Lauzun, Latude.

"The Jesuits were connoisseurs; for greater security they confessed the prisoners.

"For greater security still, the prisoners were buried under supposititious names.

"The Iron Mask, it will be remembered, was buried under the name of Marchiali. He had remained forty-five years in prison.

"Lauzun remained there fourteen years.

"Latude, thirty years....

"But, at all events, the Iron Mask and Lauzun had committed heinous crimes.

"The Iron Mask, whether brother or not of Louis XIV., it is asserted, resembled King Louis XIV. so strongly, that it was almost impossible to distinguish the one from the other.

"It is exceedingly imprudent to dare to resemble a king.

"Lauzun had been very near marrying, or did actually marry, the Grande Mademoiselle.

"It is exceedingly imprudent to dare to marry the niece of King Louis XIII., the granddaughter of Henri IV.

"But Latude, poor devil, what had he done?

"He had dared to fall in love with Mlle. Poisson, Dame de Pompadour, the king's mistress.

"He had written a note to her.

"This note, which a respectable woman would have sent back to the man who wrote it, was handed by Madame de Pompadour to M. de Sartines, the lieutenant-general of police."

"To the Bastille!" was the cry upon which Dumas built up his story.

"'To the Bastille!'

"Only that it was a senseless idea, as the soldiers had remarked, that the Bastille could be taken.

"The Bastille had provisions, a garrison, artillery.

"The Bastille had walls, which were fifteen feet thick at their summit, and forty at their base.

"The Bastille had a governor, whose name was De Launay, who had stored thirty thousand pounds of gunpowder in his cellars, and who had sworn, in case of being surprised by a _coup de main_, to blow up the Bastille, and with it half the Faubourg St. Antoine."

Dumas was never more chary of tiresome description than in the opening chapters of this book.