the king, one hand extended towards the ruined tower with the gesture of a deliverer. It is to be regretted, if not for the beauty, at least, for the picturesqueness of Paris, that this scheme was never put into execution. Davy de Chavigné, king's counsellor and auditor to the treasury, was allowed to present to the Royal Academy of Architecture, at its sitting on June 8, 1789, "a plan for a monument on the site of the Bastille, to be decreed by the States General to Louis XVI. as the restorer of the public liberty." On this subject the famous sculptor Houdon wrote to Chavigné: "I am very anxious for the plan to be adopted. The idea of erecting a monument to liberty on the very spot where slavery has reigned up to the present, appears to me particularly well conceived, and well calculated to inspire genius. I shall think myself only too fortunate to be among the artists who will celebrate the epoch of the regeneration of France." We have seen prints, long anterior to 1789--one of them the frontispiece of the edition of Linguet's _Memoirs_ that appeared in 1783--representing Louis XVI. extending his hand towards the lofty towers, which workmen are in the act of demolishing. Among the archives of the Bastille are preserved two reports drawn up in 1788 by the king's lieutenant, Puget, the most important personage in the fortress after the governor. He proposes the suppression of the state prison, the demolition of the old château, and the sale of the ground for the benefit of the crown. It may be said of these schemes, as of the plan of the architect Corbet, that they would not have been propounded if they had not been approved in high places. Further, in the year 1784, an ardent supporter of the old state of things cried: "Oh! if our young monarch ever committed a fault so great, if he so far belied the most ancient usages of this government, if it were possible that one day he could be tempted to destroy you" (the author is apostrophizing the Bastille) "to raise on your ruins a monument to the liberator-king...." The demolition of the Bastille was decided on; and it would have been accomplished as a government undertaking but for the outbreak of the Revolution. From January 1 to July 14, 1789, that is to say for more than six months, only one solitary prisoner entered the Bastille; and what a prisoner!--Réveillon, the paper manufacturer of the Suburb Saint-Antoine, who was shut up on May 1 at his own request, in order to escape the fury of the mob. The same year, the lieutenant of police, de Crosne, made an inspection of the Bastille, accompanied by a judge of the Parlement; their object was to arrange officially about the destruction of the state prison. Thus, on the eve of the Revolution, the Bastille no longer existed, though its towers were still standing.