During the reign of Louis XV. one hundred and fifty thousand of these _lettres de cachet_ were issued, making an average of two thousand five hundred annually.[36] The king could not refuse a blank warrant to his mistress or to a courtier. All those who had influence at court could obtain them. They were distributed as freely as in this country members of Congress have distributed their postage franks. St. Florentin alone gave away fifty thousand. These writs were often sold at a great price. Any man who could obtain one had his enemy at his disposal. One can hardly conceive of a more awful despotism. Such were "_the good old times of the monarchy_," as some have insanely called them. Even during the mild reign of Louis XVI. fourteen thousand _lettres de cachet_ were issued. Let us enter the prison and contemplate the doom of the captive. A gentleman by the name of Dessault offended Richelieu by refusing to execute one of his atrocious orders. At midnight a band of soldiers entered his chamber, tore him from his bed, and dragged him through the dark streets to the Bastille, and there consigned him to a living burial in one of its cold damp tombs of iron and stone. Here in silence and solitude, deprived of all knowledge of his family, and his family having lost all trace of him, he lingered eleven years. "Oh, who can tell what days, what nights he spent Of tideless, waveless, sailless, shoreless woe!" At last his jailer ventured to inform him that Richelieu was on a dying bed. Hoping that in such an hour the heart of the haughty cardinal might be touched with sympathy, he wrote to him as follows: "My lord, you are aware that for eleven years you have subjected me to the endurance of a thousand deaths in the Bastille--to sufferings which would excite compassion if inflicted even upon the most disloyal subject of the king. How much more then should I be pitied, who am doomed to perish here for disobeying an order, which, obeyed, would have sent me to the final judgment with blood-stained hands, and would have consigned my soul to eternal misery. Ah! could you but hear the sobs, the lamentations, the groans which you extort from me, you would quickly set me at liberty. In the name of the eternal God, who will judge you as well as me, I implore you, my lord, to take pity on my woe, and, if you wish that God should show mercy to you, order my chains to be broken before your death-hour comes. When that hour arrives you will no longer be able to do me justice, but will persecute me even in your grave."