The name of Louis XI., which is writ large in the histories of the Bastille and the Dungeon of Vincennes, attaches to one curious episode in the history of the Châtelet. In 1477, on the day of the festival of Saint Denis, Louis "took the singular fancy of giving their liberty" to the prisoners of the Great and Little Châtelet. A chronicler of this fact, evidently puzzled, "hastens to add" that at that epoch the two Châtelets "held merely robbers, assassins, and vagabonds. Not even to honour the memory of Saint Denis could Louis bring himself to liberate his political prisoners in Vincennes and the Bastille." It was in Louis XI.'s reign that one Chariot Tonnelier, a hosier turned brigand, lying in the Châtelet on a score of charges, and dreading lest the Question should weaken him into betrayal of his companions, snatched a knife from a guard at the door of the torture chamber, and deliberately cut his tongue out. ------- The Fort-l'Évêque and the Little Châtelet were suppressed in 1780, in virtue of an _ordonnance_ of Louis XVI., countersigned by Necker; and the prisoners were transferred to La Force. The buildings, which were even then in a state of ruin, were thrown down two years later. The Great Châtelet existed as a prison for another decade, and the fortress itself was not demolished until 1802-4. A triumphal column replaced the ancient dungeon of the Provosts of Paris. [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] CHAPTER V. THE TEMPLE. When they came to Paris in the twelfth century, the Templars obtained leave to settle in the Marshes, whose baleful exhalations cost the town a plague or two every year. In no long time they had completely transformed that dismal and pestilential swamp. Herculean labours witnessed as their outcome oaks, elms, and beeches growing where the rotten ooze had bred but reeds and osiers. Vast buildings, too, arose as if by magic, with towers and turrets protecting them, drawbridges, battlemented walls, and trenches. The principal tower of the pile enclosed the treasure and arsenal of the Order, and four smaller towers or turrets served as a prison for those who had transgressed the stark monastic rules. On the broad terrace of the Temple three hundred men had space for exercise at cross-bow and halberd.