Legends of the Bastille. Frantz Funck-Brentano
La Rouërie asked for a billiard table for himself and his friends, and he got it.
The prisoners were permitted to walk on the platform of the fortress, from which they could see the people passing up and down the Rue Saint-Antoine and the vicinity, and watch the animated crowds on the boulevard at the hours when fashionable people were accustomed to take their drives. By the aid of telescopes and big letters written on boards they were able to communicate with the people of the neighbourhood, and, like Latude, to keep up a secret correspondence with the grisettes of the district. Michelet, with too obvious a design, declares that under Louis XVI. the regulations of the prison were more severe than under Louis XV., and that this promenade on the platform was done away with. There is not a word of truth in it. The promenade was forbidden only to those prisoners who, like the Marquis de Sade, took advantage of it to stir up riots among the passers-by; and from the accession of Louis XVI. and the visitation of Malesherbes,[6] the rule of the prison grew milder day by day.
Certain of the prisoners were invited to dine with the governor, and to walk in his gardens, in excellent company. Some were allowed to leave the fortress, on condition of returning in the evening; others were even allowed to remain out all night!
Those who had servants could have them in attendance if the servants were willing to share their captivity. Or they had room-mates, as was the case with Latude and Allègre.
In regard to food, the prisoners are unanimous in declaring that it was abundant and good. “I had five dishes at dinner,” says Dumouriez, “and five at supper, without reckoning dessert.” The Provost de Beaumont declared that he had quitted the Bastille with regret, because there he had been able to eat and drink to his heart’s content. Poultier d’Elmotte says: “M. de Launey had many a friendly chat with me, and sent me what dishes I wished for.” Baron Hennequin, a hypochondriac who found fault with everything, confesses nevertheless that they gave him more meat than he could eat. The Abbé de Buquoy affirms that he fared sumptuously, and that it was the king’s intention that the prisoners should be well fed. The splenetic Linguet owns, in his pamphlet, that he had three good meals a day, and that meat was supplied to him in such quantities that his suspicions were aroused: “They meant to poison me!” he says. But he omits to say that de Launey sent him every morning the menu for the day, on which he marked down with his own hand the dishes he fancied, “choosing always the most dainty, and in sufficient quantities to have satisfied five or six epicures.”
In Louis XIV.’s time, Renneville drew up the following list of dishes served to him: “Oysters, prawns, fowls, capons, mutton, veal, young pigeons; forcemeat pies and patties; asparagus, cauliflower, green peas, artichokes; salmon, soles, pike, trout, every kind of fish whether fresh-water or salt; pastry, and fruits in their season.” We find Latude complaining that the fowls given him were not stuffed! M. Funck-Brentano tells the amusing story of Marmontel’s eating by mistake the dinner intended for his servant, and finding it excellent.
Mdlle. de Launay, afterwards Madame de Staal, who was imprisoned for complicity in the Cellamare[7] plot, relates that on the first evening of her sojourn in the Bastille, she and her maid were both terrified by the strange and prolonged sound, beneath their feet, of a mysterious machine, which conjured up visions of an instrument of torture. When they came to inquire, they found that their room was over the kitchen, and the terrible machine was the roasting-jack!
The prisoners were not only allowed to receive visits from their relations and friends, but to keep them to dinner or to make up a rubber. Thus Madame de Staal held receptions in the afternoon, and in the evening there was high play. “And this time,” she says, “was the happiest in my life.”
Bussy-Rabutin received the whole court, and all his friends—especially those of the fair sex. M. de Bonrepos—an assumed name—was so comfortable in the Bastille that when he was directed to retire to the Invalides,[8] he could only be removed by force.
“I there spent six weeks,” says Morellet, “so pleasantly, that I chuckle to this day when I think of them.” And when he left, he exclaimed: “God rest those jolly tyrants!”
Voltaire remained there for twelve days, with a recommendation from the lieutenant of police that he should be treated with all the consideration “due to his genius.”
The objection may be raised that these cases are all of great lords or men of letters, towards whom the government of those days was exceptionally lenient. (How delightful to find writers put on the same footing with peers!) But the objection is groundless.
I have referred to Renneville and Latude, prisoners of very little account. The one was a spy; the other a swindler. In the three-volume narrative left us by Renneville, you hear of nothing but how he kept open house and made merry with his companions. They gambled and smoked, ate and drank, fuddled and fought, gossiped with their neighbours of both sexes, and passed one another pastry and excellent wine through the chimneys. How gladly the prisoners in our jails to-day would accommodate themselves to such a life! Renneville, assuredly, was not treated with the same consideration as Voltaire; but, frankly, would you have wished it?
As to Latude—who was supplied with dressing-gowns to suit his fancy—the reader will see from M. Funck-Brentano’s narrative that no one but himself was to blame if he did not dwell at Vincennes[9] or in the Bastille on the best of terms—or even leave his prison at the shortest notice, by the front gate, and with a well-lined pocket.
For that was one of the harsh measures of this horrible Bastille—to send away the poor wretches, when their time was expired, with a few hundred livres in their pockets, and to compensate such as were found to be innocent! See what M. Funck-Brentano says of Subé, who, for a detention of eighteen days, received 3000 livres (£240 to-day), or of others, who, after an imprisonment of two years, were consoled with an annual pension of 2400 francs of our reckoning. Voltaire spent twelve days in the Bastille, and was assured of an annual pension of 1200 livres for life. What is to be said now of our contemporary justice, which, after some months of imprisonment on suspicion, dismisses the poor fellow, arrested by mistake, with no other indemnity than the friendly admonition: “Go! and take care we don’t catch you again!”
Some wag will be sure to say that I am making out the Bastille to have been a palace of delight. We can spare him his little jest. A prison is always a prison, however pleasant it may be; and the best of cheer is no compensation for the loss of liberty. But there is a wide difference, it will be granted, between the reality and the notion generally held—between this “hotel for men of letters,” as some one called it, and the hideous black holes of our system of solitary confinement. I once said that I should prefer three years in the Bastille to three months at Mazas.[10] I do not retract.
Linguet and Latude, unquestionably, were the two men whose habit of drawing the long bow has done most to propagate the fables about the Bastille, the falsity of which is established by incontrovertible documents. Party spirit has not failed to take seriously the interested calumnies of Linguet, who used his spurious martyrdom to advertise himself, and the lies of Latude, exploiting to good purpose a captivity which he had made his career.
Let us leave Linguet, who, after having so earnestly urged the demolition of the Bastille, had reason to regret it at the Conciergerie at the moment of mounting the revolutionary tumbril, and speak a little of the other, this captive who was as ingenious in escaping from prison, when locked up, as in hugging his chains when offered the means of release.
For the bulk of mankind, thirty-five years of captivity was the price Latude paid for a mere practical joke: the sending to Madame de Pompadour of a harmless powder that was taken for poison. The punishment is regarded as terrific: I do not wonder at it. But if, instead of relying on the gentleman’s own fanfaronades, the reader will take the trouble to look at the biography written by M. Funck-Brentano and amply supported by documents, he will speedily see that if Latude remained in prison for thirty-five years, it was entirely by his own choice; and that his worst enemy, his most implacable persecutor, the author of all his miseries was—himself.
If, after the piece of trickery which led to his arrest, he had followed the advice of the excellent Berryer, who counselled patience and promised his speedy liberation, he might have got off with a few months of restraint