Vincennes and the Bastille have been contrasted. They were worthy the one of the other; and at several points their histories touch. In both prisons the discipline (which was much an affair of the governor's whim) followed pretty nearly the same lines, and owed nothing in either place to any central, preconceived and ordered scheme of management. Prisoners might be transferred from Vincennes to the Bastille, and from the Bastille again to Vincennes. For the governor, Vincennes was generally the stepping-stone to the Bastille. At Vincennes he served his apprenticeship in the three branches of his calling—turnkey, torturer, and hangman. Like the callow barber-surgeon of the age, he bled at random, and used the knife at will; and his savage novitiate counted as so much zealous service to the State. But Vincennes wears a greater colour than the Bastille. It stood to the larger and more famous fortress as the _noblesse_ to the _bourgeoisie_. Vincennes was the great prison, and the prison of the great. Talent or genius might lodge itself in the Bastille, and often so did, very easily; nobility, with courage enough to face its sovereign on a grievance, or with power enough to be reckoned a thought too near the throne, tasted the honours of Vincennes. To be a wit, and polish an epigram against a minister or a madam of the Court; to be a rhymester, and turn a couplet against the Government; to be a philosopher, and hazard a new social theory, was to knock for admission at the wicket of the Bastille. But to be a stalwart noble, and look royalty in the eye, sword in hand; to be brother to the King, and chafe under the royal behest; to be a cardinal of the Church, and dare to jingle your breviary in the ranks of the Fronde; to be leader of a sect or party, or the head of some school of enterprise, this was to give with your own hand the signal to lower the drawbridge of Vincennes. At seasons prisoners of all degrees jostled one another in both prisons; but in general the unwritten rule obtained that philosophy and unguarded wit went to the Bastille; whilst for strength of will that might prove troublesome to the Crown ... _voilà le donjon de Vincennes!_ Yes, Vincennes was the _State_ prison, the prison for audacity in high places, for genius that could lead the general mind into paths of danger to the throne. The fetters fashioned there were for a Prince de Condé to wear, a Henri de Navarre, a Maréchal de Montmorency, a Bassompierre or a Cardinal de Retz, a Duc de Longueville or a Prince Charles Edward, a La Môle and a Coconas, a Rantzau or a Prince Casimir, a Fouquet or a Duc de Lauzun, a Louis-Joseph de Vendôme, a Diderot or a Mirabeau, a d'Enghien.