It was the monks, as tradition wills it, who hollowed out the cruel cells of the Abbaye de Saint-Germain-des-Près. The architect Gomard, insisting that cells were not included in the bond, withdrew when he had put his last touches to the cloisters. But in 1630, or thereabouts, no monastery was complete without its _oubliettes_, and the prior commanded his brethren to finish the work of the too-scrupulous Gomard. Thus was the Abbaye equipped as an abbaye should be. What power indeed, spiritual or temporal, had not the privilege in those days of setting up its pillory, its gallows, its pile of faggots built around a stake! In Paris alone at this date some twenty separate jurisdictions possessed the right to fatten victims for the scaffold, and it might almost be said that the municipal divisions of the capital had gibbets for their boundaries. In 1674, however, the situation changed somewhat. The authority of the Châtelet was enlarged by royal edict, which gathered to it the rights and privileges of all the lesser corporations, and confiscated the halters and the faggots of private justice. This was a general blow, which none took more to heart than the prior of the Abbaye of Saint-Germain-of-the-Meadows. He had enjoyed the rights of "high," "middle," and "low" justice; he had imprisoned, tortured, and despatched at his holy pleasure. Forthwith, he composed and addressed to Louis XIV. _un mémoire éloquent_, which touched that pious heart. The Royal will consented to restore to the prior a considerable portion of his ancient jurisdiction. Within the extensive bounds of the monastery and its appanages, the holy father might still consider himself gaoler, tormentor, and executioner.