The king turned white as the man who addressed him with such passion and power, that the picture of the Bastille seemed to loom up, and cast its gaunt shadows over them both. “Have they told you of this cruel man, Latude, crawling back and forth, like some wild animal, on those ponderous rope ladders, by which he descends the grim towers, and swings himself to the earth? Do the dainty commissioners, who go once each year to examine this place of horrors, tell the king of these things, and can he still say that this monster pile is an appendage of the throne?” The king made a gesture with his hands, and turned away, as if this description revolted him. But the locksmith had plunged into the subject with all the fierce energy of a man so completely in earnest, that he lost all sense of the rank and power of his auditor. “And if these enormities exist now under a monarch that all men know to be good and merciful, what must it have been when men less gracious held sway over the palaces and prisons of France? How many generations of Frenchmen have moaned, and suffered, and perished, under those black towers? How many innocent hearts have broken in despair? What oceans of rageful tears have been spent in vain! How many heads have been dashed against those pitiless stones? It stands there yet! Ay, king, it stands there yet! Innocent men are even now buried within its walls, sent there in the wantonness or cruelty of your grandfather—not many, not many. They do not live so long in the Bastille; but that old man——” “Silence, I command you!” broke forth the king, pale with agitation, trembling with anger. The locksmith dropped his uplifted arm, the word upon his lip broke in an angry sob. “Sire, forgive me! I was standing in that awful prison. I heard the moans of agonized men coming up from under my feet; I heard the clank of chains, and saw such sights. Sire, forgive, or punish me; I, who have no self-command, and should claim little mercy.” The king sat down and wiped away the beaded drops from his forehead; his breath came unevenly, his white hands shook. “Tell me, in one word—is what you have said the truth?” The locksmith fell upon his knees, and again held up his clasped hands. “As heaven sees me, sire, every word I have uttered is a terrible truth.”