The interior of the gloomy fabric must now be described. Having passed down St. Anthony’s-street, and arrived nearly at the city gate, leading to the suburb of the same name, he who wished or was compelled to visit the Bastile, turned to the right hand, in the direction of the Arsenal, where stood a sentinel, to warn off all idle gazers. Before, however, the main building could be entered, the visiter had to pursue his way along an approach, bent nearly into the form of three sides of a square, ⊐, flanked with buildings of various kinds, on the whole of one side, and a part of the other. Over the entrance gate was an armoury, and on the right of it a guard-room; on the left hand was a range of suttling-houses, and on the right were barracks. The road then made an abrupt turn, on the right of which were stables, coachhouses, and a door into a space which was called the Elm Court. This first division was named the Passage Court. At the extremity of it was a drawbridge, with a guard-house at its further end. This bridge led to a second court, taking its name from the governor’s house, which, with his garden, occupied one half of its circuit. Another abrupt turn brought the visiter opposite the portal of the fortress, which he at length reached, after having passed by the kitchens, and traversed the great drawbridge. Between the street and the interior of the fortress there were five massy gates, at all of which sentinels were posted. The principal drawbridge being passed, and the gate opened, the visiter stood within the Bastile itself. Leaving on his right a guard-room, he found himself in the Great Court of the Castle, a parallelogram of about a hundred and two feet long by seventy-two broad, containing six towers, three on the side looking towards the suburb, and as many on the city side: the former were named de la Comté, du Trésor, and de la Chapelle; the latter de la Bazinière, de la Bertaudière, and de la Liberté. Between the three left hand towers were rooms for the archives and other purposes, and the chapel; between the towers du Trésor and de la Chapelle was, in former times, the gate of St. Anthony, and the road into the city. A pile of buildings, comparatively modern, extending across the shortest diameter of the fortress, from the Tour de la Chapelle to the miscalled Tour de la Liberté, divided this principal court from another, called the Well Court. This pile contained the council chamber, the library, the repository for the prisoners’ effects, and apartments for the king’s lieutenant, the major, and other officers, and, occasionally, for the sick, and captives of distinction. The length of the Well Court was between seventy and eighty feet, the breadth between forty and fifty. At the angle on the right was the tower du Coin, on the left the tower du Puit. In this court were some lodgings for the drudges of the place; and, as the poultry were fed and the offal was thrown out here, it was always dirty and unwholesome.