The government of the Bastille was precisely similar to the government of the other State prisons of France. Edicts notwithstanding, these prisons were practically the _property_ of their successive governors. To this unwritten rule the Bastille was not an exception. The governor in possession at this or that epoch might or might not be the creature of the minister through whose interest he had bought his office at a sometimes exorbitant price; it was, at all events, understood that, whatever limits were set to his authority, he was fully entitled to get back his purchase money; and this, as had been shown, he could seldom do except by villainously ill-using his prisoners. There were governors who did not do this, and then indeed came a blessed period for the prisoners. Then food was good and plentiful, the faggots were not stinted in the fire-place, the beds were not rotten and lousy, the foul linen went to the wash, and the threadbare clothes were replaced, the cells were made proof against wind and rain, the governor was prompt in looking into grievances, and all went as well for the prisoner as it was possible that it should go in a gaol of old Paris. But when a new Pharaoh arose, who was avaricious, and a tyrant, and a bully, and who had bought his prison as a speculative investment, then the clouds gathered again, and the wind blew again from the east, and the old tribulations began afresh. Now, as the records of all the French prisons of history leave no doubt as to the fact the bad governors were many, and the good governors were few, and that within his prison walls the governor was only less than omnipotent, readers of these pages will not expect often to find prisoners of the Bastille regaling themselves with three bottles of wine a day, or asking to have their tables ordered more plainly, or receiving the free visits of their friends, or playing at "all kinds of games" in courtyards resembling college playgrounds. Sprigs of the nobility and young men of family, shut up for a time for making too free with their money, or for running away with a ballet-dancer, had perhaps not too much to complain of in the Bastille; there were certain prisoners of rank, too, who came off lightly; and now and again there were other prisoners who enjoyed what were called the "liberties of the Bastille," and who were allowed a restricted intercourse. But the general rules for the keeping and conduct of prisoners in the Bastille were of the severest description, and they were carried out for the most part with inflexible rigour. Privations and humiliations of all kinds were inflicted on them; and redress for injuries, or for insults, or for mean and illegal annoyances, the outcome of the governor's spleen, was not more easy to obtain in the Bastille than in the Dungeon of Vincennes.