We have shown how the Bastille, originally a military citadel, had become a prison of state; then, little by little, had approximated to the ordinary prisons, until the day when it died a natural death ere it could be assassinated. The same transformation took place in the treatment of the prisoners. Midway in the seventeenth century, the Bastille had none of the characteristics of a prison, but was simply a château in which the king caused certain of his subjects to sojourn, for one cause or another. They lived there just as they thought proper, furnishing their rooms according to their fancy with their own furniture, indulging their tastes in regard to food at their own expense, and waited on by their own servants. When a prisoner was rich he could live at the Bastille in princely style; when he was poor, he lived there very wretchedly. When the prisoner had no property at all, the king did not for that reason give him furniture or food; but he gave him money which he might use as seemed good to him in providing himself with furniture and food: money of which he could retain a part--a number of prisoners did not fail to do so--these savings becoming his own property. This system, the character of which it is important to recognize, underwent gradual modification during the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, approximating, without ever becoming identical with, the system of our modern prisons. Thus the king, instead of granting pensions individually to the poorest of the prisoners, came to endow the Bastille with a certain fixed number of pensions for the less fortunate prisoners. The recipients of these pensions continued to enjoy them for long years, and if they did not wish the whole of the money to be expended on their support, the balance was handed over to them. So we see certain individuals getting little fortunes together by the mere fact of their having been prisoners in the Bastille--a circumstance which has so much surprised historians because they have not sought its cause. It even happened that prisoners, when their liberation was announced to them, asked to remain a little longer in order to swell their savings, a favour which was sometimes granted them. In the course of the eighteenth century the money destined to the maintenance of the prisoners at the Bastille could not be diverted from its purpose; the prisoners were no longer able to appropriate a part; the whole sum had to be expended. It was only in the second half of the seventeenth century that the king had some rooms at the Bastille furnished for such prisoners as were without means of procuring furniture themselves. And it is very interesting to note that it was only at the extreme end of the century, under the administration of Saint-Mars, that certain apartments of the Bastille were arranged in the prison style with bars and bolts. Until then they had been simply the rooms of a stronghold.[31]