I was visiting the Château d'If before the new buildings were erected. The show-woman of the place, another worthy dame, pointed out to us the ruined cells of the Abbé Faria and Edmond Dantès.[20] And the spectators were musing on the story as they contemplated the ruins. "It seems to me," I said, "that these cells are rather near one another, but surely Alexandre Dumas put them a little farther apart!" "Oh, well!" replied the good creature, withering me with a glance of contempt, "if, when I'm relating gospel truth, the gentleman begins quoting a novelist--!" To come nearer home. Follow, one of these days, a batch of Cook's tourists at Versailles, shown round by an English cicerone. You will see him point out the window from which Louis XVI. issued, on a flying bridge, to reach his scaffold, erected in the marble court! The guide is no fool. He knows well enough that the Place de la Concorde would not appeal to the imagination of his countrymen; while it is quite natural to them to draw a parallel in their minds between the scaffold of Louis XVI. at Versailles and that of Charles I. at Whitehall. And the conclusion of the whole matter is this: that whatever may be said or written, nothing will prevail against the popular beliefs that the Bastille was "the hell of living men," and that it was taken by storm. Legends are the history of the people, especially those which flatter their instincts, prejudices, and passions. You will never convince them of their falsity. M. Funck-Brentano must also expect to be treated as a "reactionary," for such is, to many people, any one who does not unreservedly decry the _ancien régime_. It had, assuredly, its vices and abuses, which the Revolution swept away--to replace them by others, much more tolerable, to be sure; but that is no reason for slandering the past and painting it blacker than it really was. The fanatical supporters of the Revolution have founded in its honour a sort of cult whose intolerance is often irritating. To hear them you would fancy that before its birth there was nothing but darkness, ignorance, iniquity, and wretchedness! And so we are to give it wholehearted admiration, and palliate its errors and its crimes; even gilding, as Chateaubriand said, the iron of its guillotine. These idolaters of the Revolution are very injudicious. By endeavouring to compel admiration for all that it effected, good and ill without distinction, they provoke the very unreasonable inclination to regard its whole achievement with abhorrence. It could well dispense with such a surplusage of zeal, for it is strong enough to bear the truth; and its work, after all, is great enough to need no justification or glorification by means of legends. VICTORIEN SARDOU. LEGENDS OF THE BASTILLE CHAPTER I. THE ARCHIVES.