On the 1st of May, 1749, a gentleman of the name of Latude was arrested by one of these _lettres de cachet_, and thrown into the Bastille. He was then but twenty years of age, and had given offense to Madame de Pompadour, by pretending that a conspiracy had been formed against her life. For thirty-five years he remained in prison enduring inconceivable horrors. In 1784, several years after the death of both the mistress and her subject king, he was liberated and wrote an account of his captivity. It was a tale of horror which thrilled the ear of Europe. Eloquently, in view of the letters of Latude, Michelet represents the people as exclaiming, "Holy, holy Revolution, how slowly dost thou come! I, who have been waiting for thee a thousand years in the furrows of the Middle Ages, what! must I wait still longer? Oh, how slowly time passes! Oh, how have I counted the hours! Wilt thou never arrive?" A young man, in a Jesuit College, in a thoughtless hour, composed a satirical Latin distich, making merry with the foibles of the professors and of the king. A _lettre de cachet_ was immediately served upon him, and for _thirty-one years_, until youth and manhood were giving place to old age, he remained moaning in living burial in one of the dungeons of the Bastille. One of the first acts of the Revolution was to batter down these execrable walls and to plow up their very foundations. In view of the facts here revealed one can not but be amazed at the manner in which many have spoken of the French Revolution, as if it were merely an outburst of human depravity. "Burke had no idea," writes De Tocqueville, "of the state in which the monarchy, he so deeply regretted, had left us." Michelet, glowing with the indignation which inflamed the bosoms of his fathers, exclaims, "Our fathers shivered that Bastille to pieces, tore away its stones with bleeding hands, and flung them afar. Afterward they seized them again, and, having hewn them into a different form, in order that they might be trampled under foot by the people forever, built with them the Bridge of Revolution."[38] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 35: Historical View of French Revolution, by J. Michelet, i., 66.] [Footnote 36: History of the Bastille, Chambers' Miscellany.] [Footnote 37: Old Régime, p. 191.] CHAPTER VI. THE COURT AND THE PARLIAMENT. Death of Louis XV.--Education of Louis XVI.--Maurepas, Prime Minister.--Turgot; his Expulsion from Office.--Necker.--Franklin.--Sympathy with the Americans.--La Fayette.--Views of the Court.--Treaty with America.--Popularity of Voltaire.--Embarrassment of Necker.--_Compte Rendu au Roi._--Necker driven into Exile.--Enslavement of France.--New Extravagance.--Calonne.