Bicêtre—more anciently Bissestre—is a corrupt form of Vincestre, or Winchester, after John, Bishop of Winchester, who is thought to have built the original château, and who certainly held it in the first years of the thirteenth century. It was famous amongst the pleasure-houses of the Duc de Berri, who embellished it with windows of glass, which at that epoch were only beginning to be an ornament of architecture—"objects of luxury," says Villaret, "reserved exclusively for the mansions of the wealthiest seigneurs." In one of the rather frequent "popular demonstrations" in the Paris of the early fifteenth century, these "objects of luxury" were smashed, and little of the château remained except the bare walls. It was rebuilt by the Duc de Berri, a noted amateur of books, and was by him presented to an order of monks in 1416. A colony of Carthusians under St. Louis; John of Winchester under Philippe-Auguste; Amédée le Rouge, Count of Savoy, under Charles VI.; the Bourguignons and the Armagnacs in the fifteenth century; the canons of Notre-Dame de Paris under Louis XI.; the robbers and _bohèmiens_ in the sixteenth century; the Invalides under Cardinal Richelieu, and the foundlings of St. Vincent de Paul,—all these preceded at Bicêtre the vagabonds, the _bons-pauvres_, the epileptics and other diseased, the lunatics, and "all prisoners and captives." In becoming an asylum and hospital, in a word, Bicêtre became also one of the most horrible of the countless prisons of Paris; it grew into dreadful fame as "the Bastille of the canaille and the bourgeoisie." The enormous numbers of the poor, the hordes of sturdy mendicants who "demanded alms sword in hand," and the soldiers who took the road when they could get no pay, became one of the chief scourges of Paris. Early in the seventeenth century it was sought to confine them in the various hospitals or houses of detention in the Faubourg Saint-Victor, but under the disorders and weaknesses of the Government these establishments soon collapsed. Parliament issued decree after decree; all strollers and beggars were to be locked up in a prison or asylum specially appropriated to them; the buildings were commenced and large sums of money were spent on them, but they were never carried to completion. In course of time the magistrates took the matter in hand, dived into old records, but drew no counsel thence, for the evil, albeit not new, was of extraordinary proportions; went to the King for a special edict, and procured one "which ordered the setting up of a general hospital and prescribed the rules for its governance." The château of Bicêtre and the Maison de la Salpêtrière were ceded for the purpose. Children and women went to the Salpêtrière; at Bicêtre were placed men with no visible means of subsistence, "widowers," beggars, feeble or sturdy, and "young men worn out by debauchery." Before taking these last in hand, the doctors "were accustomed to order them a whipping."