The statement that "it was not so easy to enter into the Bastille" is from Ravaisson, the compiler of the _Archives de la Bastille_. He gives his reasons, which are sufficiently curious. Incarcerations, says Ravaisson, were accomplished with the utmost care, and the Government insisted upon the most stringent precautions, inasmuch as, "acting with absolute authority, it felt the danger of an uncontrolled responsibility." Sore indeed would be the task of proving by example that the absolute monarchy had many compunctions on this score, when tampering with the liberties of its subjects. "Extreme care was taken to avoid errors and abuses" in effecting incarcerations in the Bastille; and the great safeguard was that "each _lettre de cachet_ was signed by the King himself, and countersigned by one of his ministers!" One need go no further than this. M. Ravaisson spent from fifteen to twenty years in studying and arranging the archives of the Bastille, and his knowledge of his subject must have been immense. Was this the writer from whom one would have expected the suggestion that the King and his minister, in signing a _lettre de cachet_, took care to assure themselves that no injustice was being done, and made themselves immediately and personally responsible for the guilt of the victim whom it was to consign to captivity in the Bastille? Leave aside the cases in which the document was used to imprison a person in order that charges or suspicions might afterwards be inquired into,—though there are countless instances to show, (1) that no proper investigation was held, and (2), that the clearest proofs of innocence were not always sufficient to procure the prisoner's liberation. But what shall be said of the cases, infinitely more numerous than these, in which no charge was ever formulated, and in which none could have been formulated, save some fictitious one inspired by private greed, hatred, or vengeance? Where in these cases was that "greatest care" which "was taken to prevent errors and abuses"? Kings and their ministers sent to the Bastille and other prisons many thousands of prisoners who had no justice, and who never expected justice. But these same "closed letters," duly signed and sealed, were the instruments of imprisoning hundreds of thousands of other persons—to whom life was sweet and liberty was dear—in whose affairs neither King nor minister had the most shadowy interest, and whose very names most probably they had never heard of. During the reign of one King, Louis XV., one hundred and fifty thousand _lettres de cachet_ were issued. For how many of those was Louis himself responsible? They carried his signature, but is it necessary at this day to say that the King wrote his name upon the blank forms, which the minister distributed amongst his friends? The lieutenant-general of police also had his blank forms at hand, in which it was necessary only to insert the names of the victims. Wives obtained