Mercier at the same time points out that never since the days of Henri IV. had France been so mildly governed as under Louis XVI. One of the last acts of Louis XV. had been to cast into the Bastille all the volumes of the Encyclopædia. One of the first acts of Louis XVI. was to liberate from the Bastille all prisoners who had not been guilty of serious, recognisable offences. "At the accession of his present Majesty," writes Mercier, "his new ministers, actuated by humanity, signalised the beginning of their administration with an act of justice and mercy, ordering the registers of the Bastille to be laid before them, when a great number of prisoners were set at large." Among those liberated was a man of whom Mercier tells the same story that was afterwards to be told of one of the seven prisoners who were freed at the taking of the Bastille. "Their number included a venerable old man, who for forty-seven years had remained shut up between four walls. Hardened by adversity, which steels the heart when it does not break it, he had supported his long and tedious captivity with unexampled constancy and fortitude; and he thought no more of liberty. The day is come. The door of his tomb turns upon its rusty hinges, it opens not ajar, as usual, but wide, for liberty, and an unknown voice acquaints him that he may now depart. He thinks himself in a dream; he hesitates, and at last ventures out with trembling steps; wonders at everything; thinks to have travelled a great way before he reaches the outward gate. Here he stops a while; his feeble eyes, long deprived of the sun's cheering beams, can hardly support its first light. A coach waits for him in the streets; he gets into it, desires to be carried to a certain street, but unable to support the motion of the coach, he is set down, and by the assistance of two men at length he reaches the quarter where he formerly dwelt; but the spot is altered, and his house is no more. His wandering eye seems to interrogate every passenger, saying with heartrending accents of despondency: 'Where shall I find my wife? Where are my children?' All in vain; the oldest man hardly remembers to have heard his name. At last a poor old decrepit porter is brought to him. This man had served in his family, but knew him not. Questioned by the late prisoner, he replied, with all the indifference which accompanies the recollection of events long passed, that his wife had died above thirty years before in the utmost misery, and that his children were gone into foreign countries, nothing having been heard of them for many years. Struck with grief and astonishment, the old gentleman, his eyes riveted to the ground, remains for some time motionless; a few tears would have eased his deeply wounded heart, but he could not weep. At last, recovering from his trance, he hastens to the minister to whose humanity he was indebted for a liberty now grown burdensome. 'Sir,' he says to him, 'send me back to