were reinstated in public offices, but reached the highest positions. Until his examinations were quite completed, the prisoner was kept in close confinement. None but the officers of the château were allowed to communicate with him. And during this time he lived in solitude, unless he had brought a servant with him. The administration readily permitted the prisoners to avail themselves of the services of their valets, who were boarded at the king's expense. It even happened that the government sometimes gave their prisoners valets, paying not only for their board, but also their wages at the rate of 900 livres a year. One might cite prisoners of inferior rank who thus had servants to wait on them. Two or three prisoners were sometimes put together in one room. Prison life has no greater terror than solitude. In absolute solitude many of the prisoners became mad. In company, the hours of captivity seemed less tedious and oppressive. Father and son, mother and daughter, aunt and niece, lived together. Many might be named. On September 7, 1693, a lady named De la Fontaine was taken to the Bastille for the second time. The first time, she had been imprisoned quite alone; but this new detention evoked the compassion of the lieutenant of police, who, to please the poor lady, sent her husband to the Bastille, locked him up with her, and gave them a lackey to wait on them. The examinations being ended, the prisoners enjoyed a greater liberty. They could then enter into communication with the people of the town. They obtained permission to see their relatives and friends. These sometimes paid them visits in their rooms; but as a rule the interviews took place in the council-hall, in presence of one of the officers of the château. They were usually permitted to discuss only family affairs and business matters. All conversation on the Bastille and the reasons for their imprisonment was forbidden. The rules of the prison increased in severity as time went on. Towards the end of Louis XV.'s reign the lieutenant of police went so far as to prescribe the subjects of conversation which would alone be permitted in the course of the visits the prisoners received. "They may talk to the prisoner about the harvest his vineyards will yield this year, about cancelling a lease, about a match for his niece, about the health of his parents." But it is necessary to read the _Memoirs_ of Gourville, Fontaine, Bussy-Rabutin, Hennequin, Madame de Staal, the Duke de Richelieu, to form a general idea of life at the Bastille under Louis XIV. and under the Regent. Several prisoners were free to move about through the château wherever it seemed good to them; they entered the rooms of their fellow-prisoners at all hours of the day. The governor contented himself with locking them in their own rooms at night. The prisoners who had the "liberty of the court" organized games of bowls or _tonneau_, and hobnobbed with the officers of the garrison.