The interior of the Bastille had nothing worse to show than has been discovered in the chapters on Vincennes, the Châtelet, and Bicêtre. There were, perhaps, uglier corners in the two last-named prisons than in either of the two more famous ones. The Bastille, however, has stood as the type, and the almost plutonic fame which it owes to romance seems likely to endure. Romance has not been guilty of much exaggeration, but this saving clause may be put in, that what has been written of the Bastille might have been written with equal truth of most other contemporary prisons. Its eight dark towers, its walls of a hundred feet, its drawbridges, its outer and its four great inner gates, its ditches, its high wooden gallery for the watch, and its ramparts bristling with cannon,—these external features have been of infinite service to romance, and romantic history. But within the walls of the Bastille there was nothing extraordinary. Lodging was provided for about fifty prisoners, and it was possible to accommodate twice that number. The fifth and last gate opened into the Great Court, some hundred feet in length and seventy in breadth, with three towers on either side. The Well Court, about eighty feet by five and forty, lay beyond, with a tower in the right and a tower in the left angle. Each tower had its name; those in the Great Court were _de la Comté_, _du Trésor_, _de la Chapelle_, _de la Bazanière_, _de la Bertaudière_, and _de la Liberté_; those in the Well Court were the _du Coin_ and the _du Puits_. The comely garden on the suburban side of the château was closed to all prisoners by order of De Launay, the last governor of the Bastille, who also forbade them the use of the fine airy platforms on the summit of the towers. The main court was then the only exercise ground, a dreary enclosure which Linguet describes as insufferably cold in winter ("the north-east wind rushes through it") and a veritable oven in summer.