Deschwanden led Gabrielle out of the street into the court before the entrance to the prison, occupied by the soldiers. She presented her order, which had been countersigned by a magistrate, and parted with the Swiss corporal at the second gate. She was told to cross a second court, on one side of which stood the governor's house, to the iron grating which closed the huge gate of the Bastille itself. At this entrance she was taken in charge by a turnkey, who conducted her through the long dark vault piercing the block of buildings to the great quadrangle in the centre of the fortress. This court was formerly much larger, but it had been cut in two by Sartines, lieutenant of police in the reign of Louis XV, and a range of offices and prisons, in a style destitute of architectural pretensions, was drawn across the court from the Tour de la Chapelle to the Tour de la Liberté. The front of this new building was decorated with a clock-face, fringed with sculptured chains, and supported by two figures chained together by the neck, the feet, and the waist. These two figures at the extremities of these ingenious garlands, after having moved round the dial, met in front of it, and formed a knot with their chains and limbs, and their parting, recommenced their automatonic movements. The artist, guided by the genius of the spot, had made one of these figures resemble a man in the bloom of his youth, and the other an aged, decrepit man, with blanched hair and bent back. Around this large court rose six towers, each five storeys high. In the well-court were two more, the tops of which appeared above the roof of the new buildings. Between the towers of Liberty and la Bertaudière was the new chapel, and between the latter and the Tour de la Basinière was the gallery of archives. The ancient gate into the town, now walled up, stood on the opposite side of the quadrangle, between the Tour de la Chapelle, where was the oratory, used by the prisoners till the new chapel was built, and the Tour du Trésor. The guard-house adjoined the Tour de la Comté. When the famous provost, Stephen Marcel, in 1377, fortified the old enclosure of Paris with new walls and double fosses, to protect it from the Free Companions, who were devastating France, he built a gate at the east side of the town, which was called the Bastillon Saint-Antoine. Under Charles VI, towers were added to this gate, and a fortress was erected on the spot, and called the Royal Castle of the Bastille. It played a great part in the intestine wars of the Bourguignons and Armagnacs, each party attaching equal importance to the possession of the fortress, as it was the key of the city.