Prisoners of a devout character must have been shocked by the studiously cynical mode of worship in the Bastille. The chapel was a dingy den on the ground floor of the prison, which Howard describes as containing "five niches or closets; three are hollowed out of the wall, the others are only in the wainscot. In these, prisoners are put one by one to hear mass. They can neither see nor be seen. The doors of these niches are secured on the outside by a lock and two bolts; within, they are iron-grated, and have glass windows towards the chapel, with curtains, which are drawn at the _Sanctus_, and closed again at the concluding prayer." As not more than five prisoners were present at each mass, only ten could hear it each day. "If there is a greater number in the castle, either they do not go to mass at all (which is generally the case with the ecclesiastics, prisoners for life, and those who do not desire to go) or they attend alternately: because there are almost always some who have permission to go constantly." If a prisoner, sick and at the point of death, asked that masses might be said for his soul, he was told that it was not customary for masses to be said in the Bastille, either for the living or for the dead. "No prayers are offered up in the Castle," ran the word, "except for the King and the Royal Family." If it were promised him that he should be prayed for in a church outside the prison, he was sent out of captivity with a lie in his ear; for information of his death was withheld from his family. He was buried by night and in secrecy in the graveyard of St. Paul's, and the record of his name and rank in the parish register "were fictitious, that all trace of him might be obliterated." The register of the Bastille, in which his real name and station were recorded, was a volume closed to the world. That false book of the dead, which a turnkey edits by his lantern's glimmer in the sacristy of St. Paul's, adds a mountain's weight to the sins of the keepers of the Bastille. There is no reason why its memory should not increase in detestation. [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] CHAPTER XI. THE PRISONS OF ASPASIA. It is not easy, in telling the story of the prisons of old Paris, to avoid mention of the subject with which this chapter is concerned. That subject is not, however, an attractive one, and readers whom it repels are invited to let the chapter go.