Dreary beyond expression must have been the daily round for all but the privileged few. "Every hour was struck on a bell which was heard all through the Faubourg St. Antoine." The sentries on the rampart challenged one another ceaselessly throughout the night. There were prisoners in solitary confinement to whom no other sounds than these ever penetrated, except the grating of the key in the lock which announced the daily visits of the gaoler. This was the life of such prisoners as the Iron Mask, and of Tavernier, who told his liberators that, during the thirty years of his captivity, he had passed nineteen consecutive ones without crossing the threshold of his cell. Exercise in the yard, for those who enjoyed this favour, was limited to an hour a day, and this period might be reduced to a few minutes if there were many prisoners to be exercised in turn,—for, in general, the utmost care was taken to prevent them from meeting one another. If a stranger were shewn into the yard, the prisoner who was taking his mouthful of air had to retreat to a cabinet in the wall. These walks were solitary, except for the presence of a dumb sentinel; and, unless the prisoner were now and then permitted or compelled to share his chamber with a fellow-captive, not less solitary was his whole existence. The most stringent rules were in force respecting the admission of friends or relatives. "Strangers cannot enter the Bastille," ran the official injunction, "without very precise orders from the governor"; and such rare interviews as were permitted took place in the council-chamber, in the presence of this officer or his deputy. The length of the interview was always fixed in the letter which the visitor bore from the lieutenant of police, and nothing might be said relative to the cause of the prisoner's detention. A certain Mme. de Montazau, visiting her husband in the Bastille, took with her a little dog, and, while pretending to caress it in her own Portuguese tongue, was trying to tell Montazau what efforts she was making for his release. "Madame," interrupted De Launay, his gaoler's instinct aroused, "if your dog does not understand French you cannot bring him here." Even such poor barren visits as these were of the rarest possible occurrence.