This then must have been the most terrible prison in Europe? Not at all. It was the most renowned; and, as a prison, no other name is ever likely to be greater than, or as great as, the Bastille; but at the time of its destruction it was no more than the shadow of its ancient self, and at no period of its existence was it a worse place than any other of the old State prisons of France. Vincennes was quite as cruel a hold as the Bastille had ever been; there were, I think, uglier dens in the Châtelet and in Bicêtre; and the torture chamber of the Conciergerie had perhaps witnessed more inhuman spectacles than any other prison in Paris. [Illustration: THE BASTILLE.] But when, in July, 1789, a prison was to be destroyed, as the chief symbol of the tyranny of kings, it was upon the Bastille that Paris marched, as by instinct. Why was this prison abhorred above all the rest? Mainly because what had once been a fact had survived as a tradition,—that the master of the Bastille was the master of France; and the master of the Bastille was, of course, the King. In its beginnings, the Bastille was merely a gate of Paris, as Newgate was originally nothing more than the New Gate of London. It came next to be a very common little fort, for the defence of the Seine against the English and other pirates. But it grew by-and-bye to be a stout castle and prison, over against the royal residence of Vincennes; and when, on the approach of an insurgent force, the King could signal from his window at Vincennes to his commandant in the Bastille, just opposite, and the guns of both places could be primed in time, the plain between them was secure. The Bastille came thus to hold a place quite distinct from that of any other prison in Paris, and one which threatened in a much higher degree the liberties of the citizens. It was considered impossible of capture; and while the King's standard shook over the great towers of the Bastille, Paris and France were secure to him; and, in the popular imagination, his principal stronghold was also his principal prison. In this point of view, and it was the popular point of view, the Bastille was a double menace to Paris. It was the King's best means of keeping importunate subjects at arm's length, and it was also the most redoubtable of the prisons he could shut them in. Both ideas were to some extent erroneous. The Bastille, considered as a fort, was never as formidable as its name; and, as a prison, the Kings of France seldom favoured it above the Dungeon of Vincennes.