"And you will be tender of them, gossip. You are not to kill them on the way. When we have them here—we shall see. Start early to-morrow, Tristan. As for friend Oliver here, he shall be my governor of the dungeon of Vincennes, and devote himself to my prisoners. If a man of them escapes, my Oliver, Tristan will hang you; because you are not a nobleman, you know." "Sire," murmured the barber, "you overwhelm me." "Your Majesty owed that place to me, I think," said Tristan. "Are you not my matchless hangman, gossip? No, no! Besides, I'm keeping you to hang Oliver. Go to Montlhéry." Thus was Vincennes advanced to be a State prison, in 1473, when Louis XI. held the destinies of France. From that date to the beginning of the century we live in, those black jaws had neither sleep nor rest. As fast as they closed on one victim, they opened to receive another. At a certain stage of all despotic governments, the small few in power live mainly for two reasons—to amuse themselves and to revenge themselves. One amuses oneself at Court, and a State prison-controlled from the Court—is an ideal means of revenging oneself. The tedious machinery of the law is dispensed with. There is no trouble of prosecuting, beating up witnesses, or waiting in suspense for a verdict which may be given for the other side. The _lettre de cachet_, which a Court historian described as an ideal means of government, and which Mirabeau (in an essay penned in Vincennes itself) tore once for all into shreds, saved a world of tiresome procedure to the King, the King's favourites, and the King's ministers. For generations and for centuries, absolutism, persecution, party spirit, public and private hate used the _lettre de cachet_ to fill and keep full the cells and dungeons of the Bastille and Vincennes. It was, to be sure, a two-edged weapon, cutting either way. He who used it one day might find it turned against him on another day. But, by whomsoever employed, it was the great weapon of its time; the most effective weapon ever forged by irresponsible authority, and the most unscrupulously availed of. It was this instrument which, during hundreds of years, consigned to captivity without a limit, in the _oubliettes_ of all the State prisons of France, that "_immense et déplorable contingent de prisonniers célèbres, de misères illustres_."