True, not only men were locked up in the Bastille, but also books when they appeared dangerous. The royal warrant under which they were incarcerated was even drawn up on the model of the _lettres de cachet_. M. Bournon has published a specimen of these. The books were shut up in a closet between the towers of the Treasure and the County, over an old passage communicating with the bastion. In 1733 the lieutenant of police instructed the governor of the Bastille to receive at the château "all the apparatus of a clandestine printing-press which had been seized in a chamber of the Saint-Victor abbey: the which you will be good enough to have placed in the store room of the Bastille." When the books ceased to appear dangerous, they were set at liberty. In this way the _Encyclopædia_[28] was liberated after a detention of some years. We have just seen that during the reign of Louis XVI. the Bastille did not receive more than sixteen prisoners a year, on an average. Several of these were only detained for a few days. From 1783 to 1789 the Bastille remained almost empty, and would have been absolutely empty if it had not been decided to place there prisoners who should properly have been elsewhere. As early as February, 1784, the fortress of Vincennes, which served as a sort of overflow pipe to the Bastille, had been shut for lack of prisoners. The system of _lettres de cachet_ was slipping away into the past. On the other hand, the Bastille was a source of great expense to the King. The governor alone received 60,000 livres annually. When you add the salaries and board of the officers of the garrison, the turnkeys, the physicians, the surgeon, the apothecary, the chaplains; when you add the food--this alone in 1774 came to 67,000 livres--and the clothing of the prisoners, and the upkeep of the buildings, the total will appear outrageous, for the figures given above must be tripled to represent the value of the present day. So Necker, seeing that the Bastille was of no further utility, thought of suppressing it "for economy's sake,"[29] and he was not the only one in high places to speak of this suppression. The Carnavalet[30] museum possesses a scheme drawn up in 1784 by Corbet, the superintending architect to the city of Paris, whence the project has an official character: it is a scheme for a "Place Louis XVI." to be opened up on the site of the old fortress. We learn from Millin that other artists "were occupied with a scheme for erecting a monument on the site of the Bastille." One of these schemes deserves special mention. Seven of the eight towers were to be destroyed, the eighth to remain standing, but in a significant state of dilapidation: on the site of the demolished towers a monument was to be erected to the glory of Louis XVI. This monument was to consist of a pedestal formed by piling up chains and bolts taken from the state prison, above which would rise a statue of