Old French Prisons. was the first one above. The plaintiff re covered in spite of his banquet. Of course you conclude, why, such a case is a fitting problem for a Philadelphia law
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yer; and when you discover it really was — you can't help commenting that you are not surprised that it came out of the place where one would expect it to come from.
OLD FRENCH PRISONS. II. THE BASTILLE. LA Bastille Saint Antoine owed its origin to the earlier wars with England. The name Bastel or Bastille was originally applied to all strong erections built to withstand mili tary attack, and it was in 1356 that Stephen Marcel, provost of the merchants of Paris, alarmed lest Edward, the English king, and his armies should penetrate to the very capi tal itself, constructed on either side of the gate Saint Antoine, at the eastern end of the city, two strong towers, calculated to arrest the invader's progress. Marcel, how ever, did not live to test the utility of his own erection. Shortly after its comple tion he was struck down on the very thresh old in civil fray with the Dauphin, thus baptizing with his blood his building, and heading with his name the long list of vic tims which mark the history of his towers. For four centuries those towers frowned over the city of Lutetia, and although in creased in number under the next monarch, Charles the Sixth, their construction was never materially altered, and, alternately used as a prison and a fortress, were a truly formidable object to those who dwelt within their shadow or passed beneath their arch ways. The walls were of immense thickness, and each tower rose a hundred feet in height and was divided into noisome dungeons and gloomy cells. Under the later Bourbons each cell had a fanciful designation, and
each prisoner, the more completely to oblit erate his identity, was called after his cell. Notwithstanding the works published by several writers — M. Ravaisson, in his " In troduction to the Annals of the Bastille," Victor Fournel, Bord, Bire, Begis, etc. — public opinion remains attached to the legend which represents the Bastille as full of iron cages and dark cells. Louis Blanc, speaking of this melodrama tic Bastille, says eloquently, " The man who enters it ceases to belong to the world." In 1789 the cells of the Bastille situated on the first floor of the old fortress had windows; for a century there had been no instrument of torture; the prisoner had a large room, and could furnish it as he pleased with fur niture from the outside; he could wear any clothes he liked and had no uniform; each room had a fireplace, the prison furnishing the wood; the prisoner could procure can dles, if he liked, as well as paper and ink. The prison had a library where he could get books; he could have as many as he liked sent to him from the outside. He was al lowed to play on the violin or the flute. There were concerts given in the chambers and even in the governor's rooms. Prisoners whose conduct was not disorderly were al lowed to visit each other, to play at cards, chess or trictrac; in the courts they could have games; they were authorized to take walks on the platform of the castle, and
