The _lettres de cachet_ did not fall with as great profusion under Louis XV; but they were given and traded with in the most shameless manner. The minister La Vrillière, the lieutenants of police Sartines and Lenoir, placed them at the disposal of any great personage who had some personal resentment to satisfy, and they were often sold blank, at high prices, to be filled in by the purchaser with the name of a rival, or a relation, and Sartines would send blank orders as a New Year's gift to friends, or to nobles whose protection he solicited. Latude, of whom mention has already been made, was dragged for thirty-five years from prison to prison, to satisfy the resentment of a harlot. Leprevôt de Beaumont was in the Bastille now; he had been there already twenty-two years,--his crime, having undertaken to denounce before the parliament of Rouen that iniquitous speculation in grain, known popularly as the Compact of Famine, by which the corn-factors, men like Foulon, favoured by government, bought up all the corn in the land, and retailed it at their own price, so as to keep up the high rate. Louis XV, interested to the amount of ten millions in the success of this cruel scheme, shared the profit with the monopolists; Louis XVI, too honest to participate in this, but too feeble to prevent its continuance, did not repair the iniquities of his predecessors. The Compact of Famine still continued; by that means, Foulon had accumulated an enormous fortune. The Bastille still received prisoners without trial. The annual emoluments of the governor amounted to sixty thousand livres. He had, however, but limited authority. Without an order signed by a magistrate, he could not permit a prisoner to shave himself, to hear Mass, to receive visits, to write letters, even to change his linen. Those incarcerated were usually entered under other names. Their relations were never informed of their captivity, nor of their death. If they died, they were buried at midnight, two turnkeys assisting as witnesses. The dying could not receive spiritual consolations, nor be attended by a physician, without a superior order.