But let us seek now to put the Bastille in its proper and exact place amongst the historic gaols of France. In recent years, one or two French writers of distinction, and others of no distinction whatever, have come forward as the apologists of this too famous keep, who would persuade us that it was not only a very tolerable sort of prison, but even, in cases, a rather desirable place of retirement, for meditation, and philosophical pursuits. M. Viollet-le-Duc has assured us, quite gravely, that the famed _oubliettes_ (the bottoms of which were shaped like sugar loaves, so that prisoners might have no resting-place for their feet) were merely ice-houses! It is not denied that these cells existed, and those who care to believe that a Mediæval architect built them under the towers of the Bastille as store-chambers for ice to cool the governor's or the prisoners' wine, are entirely welcome to do so. These were amongst the places of torment in which Louis XI. kept the Armagnac princes, who were taken out twice a week to be scourged in the presence of Governor l'Huillier, and "every three months to have a tooth pulled out." The author of _The Bastille Unveiled_ has attempted to explain away the iron cage in which the same King confined Cardinal Balue for eleven years, and which, I believe, is still in existence. An English apologist (whose work extends to two bulky volumes) says that "prisoners were less harshly treated in the Bastille than in other French and English prisons"; that "the accusations of prisoners having been tortured in the Bastille have no serious foundation"; that the majority of the chambers "were comfortable enough"; that one of the courtyards "resembled a college playground, in which prisoners received their friends, and indulged in all kinds of games." We hear of tables which were so sumptuously furnished (three bottles of wine a day, amongst other comforts) that the prisoners complained to the governor that he was feeding them too well. We are presented with printed rules to show how carefully the sick were to be attended to, and what were to be their ghostly ministrations in their final hours. We are told, without a smile, that it was really not so easy for people to get into the Bastille as the world in general has supposed; and that, once there, their situation was not too helpless, inasmuch as the governor must present to the minister every day a written report upon the conditions of the prison. Under the pen of this or the other indulgent writer, the horrors of the Bastille have vanished as by process of magic. Unfortunately, the horrors are, with quite unimportant exceptions, facts of history.