Therefore he curtailed expenses and space when he caused to be constructed the habitation for his Eminence of Balue, and then again there was exercise for the Cardinal as the cage was swung to and fro or whirled on its pivot at the bidding of Louis. What a picture! The great, gloomy, conical shaped prison, with the cage swinging to and fro, now in dense shadow and anon in the rift of sunlight shooting in through the slits in the wall,--the grotesque figure of the wretched old King crouching on the incline in yonder passage mumbling prayers before the leaden figures of the Virgin with which his greasy old hat is laden, and stopping now and then to command Tristan to "further agitate his Eminence." It is not reported that any remarks came from the Cardinal in the cage for he knew he had been guilty of treason and hope was not for him. Cages would appear to have been the fad of King Louis. There were two in Loches, and one at the old palace of the Tournelles. The one in the Bastille was evidently too spacious (9 x 8 x 7 feet), and it was considered necessary to attach a ball to the ankle of the unfortunate Bishop of Verdun, who, it is also stated, was the originator of these cages and not Cardinal Balue. It was a distinction scarcely coveted, I fancy, to be confined in one of these "filets du Roi." The cages in Loches existed in perfect condition until the days of 1789, when they were destroyed and the wood given to the poor, but a relic of one still exists in the barred door through which you pass into the corridor just outside. That is the same door which shut in the Cardinal for so many years, and you feel like leaving one of your number--not your heir at law--on guard, to see that it does not do likewise for yourself. Knowing Louis, one is quite certain that these prisoners were not allowed to feel forgotten, as Louis XIV. probably forgot Matthioli, the Man of the Iron Mask, whose master, Charles of Mantua, was in Paris when he died in 1703. It is very doubtful whether master or captor would, at first, have remembered who the poor wretch was who was being dragged to his grave in the Cemetery of St. Paul whilst they feasted in the Luxembourg. The Bastille witnessed few such horrors as those so common within the walls of Loches. Passing up the corridor to lesser prisons, one comes to a chamber with a vast chimney where the question, ordinary and extraordinary, was applied, and where one still finds many of the instruments of torture. I know of no more gruesome spot on earth than this castle, unless it be those chambers at Nuremberg, where chamber after chamber is filled with every conceivable instrument of torture until one stands shuddering before the Iron Virgin. Still, after all, those chambers and their instruments meant a speedy death, but Louis knew that life, as he could dole it out here, was more horrible than _any_ death.