Among its illustrious inhabitants have been the Rohans, the D'Alégres, Corneille, Condé, St. Vincent de Paul, Molière, Turenne, Madame de Longueville, Cinq-Mars, and Richelieu. By _un arrêté_ of the 17th Ventose, year VII., it was declared that the name of the department which should pay the largest part of its contributions by the 20th Germinal would be given to that of the principal place or square of Paris. The Department of the Vosges was the first to pay up, and the Place Royale became the Place des Vosges. A great deal of the action of the D'Artagnan romances took place in the Place Royale, and in the neighbouring _quartiers_ of St. Antoine and La Bastille, the place being the scene of the notable reunion of the four gallants in "Vingt Ans Après." La Roquette, the prison, has disappeared, like the Bastille itself, but they are both perpetuated to-day, the former in the Rue Roquette, and the latter in the Place de la Bastille. Dumas does not project their horrors unduly, though the Bastille crops up in many of the chapters of the Valois romances, and one entire volume is devoted to "The Taking of the Bastille." D'Artagnan himself was doomed, by an order of arrest issued by Richelieu, to be incarcerated therein; but the gallant _mousquetaire_, by a subtle scheme, got hold of the warrant and made a present of it to the intriguing cardinal himself. The sombre and sinister guillotine, since become so famous, is made by Dumas subject of a weirdly fascinating chapter in "La Comtesse de Charny." Dumas' description is as follows: "When Guilbert got out of the carriage he saw that he was in the court of a prison, and at once recognized it as the Bicêtre. A fine misty rain fell diagonally and stained the gray walls. In the middle of the court five or six carpenters, under the direction of a master workman, and a little man clad in black, who seemed to direct everybody, put a machine of a hitherto strange and unknown form. Guilbert shuddered; he recognized Doctor Guillotin, and the machine itself was the one of which he had seen a model in the cellar of the editor of '_l'ami du peuple_.'... The very workmen were as yet ignorant of the secret of this novel machine. 'There,' said Doctor Guillotin, ... 'it is now only necessary to put the knife in the groove.'... This was the form of the machine: a platform fifteen feet square, reached by a simple staircase, on each side of this platform two grooved uprights, ten or twelve feet high. In the grooves slid a kind of crescent-shaped knife. A little opening was made between two beams, through which a man's head could be passed.... 'Gentlemen,' said Guillotin, 'all being here, we will begin.'" Then follows the same vivid record of executing and blood-spurting that has attracted many other writers perhaps as gifted as Dumas, but none have told it more graphically, simply, or truthfully. * * * * *