And he passed the first line of sentinels, while Pitou returned towards the square.
At the drawbridge he was again obliged to parley.
Billot showed his passport. The drawbridge was let down, the iron—grated gate was opened.
Close beside the gate stood the governor.
This interior court, in which the governor was waiting for Billot, was the courtyard which served as a promenade to the prisoners. It was guarded by eight towers,—that is to say, by eight giants. No window opened into it. Never did the sun shine on its pavement, which was damp and almost muddy. It might have been taken for the bottom of an immense well.
In this courtyard was a clock, supported by figures representing enchained captives, which measured the hours, and from which fell the regular and slow sounds of the minutes as they passed by, as in a dungeon the droppings from the ceiling eat into the pavement slabs on which they fall.
At the bottom of this well the prisoner, lost amid the abyss of stone, for a moment contemplated its cold nakedness, and soon asked to be allowed to return to his cell.
Close beside the grated gate which opened on this courtyard stood, as we have said, Monsieur de Launay.
Monsieur de Launay was a man from forty—five to fifty years of age. On that day he was dressed in a gray coat. He wore the red ribbon of the order of Saint Louis, and in his hand he carried a sword—cane.
This Monsieur de Launay was a man of wicked disposition. The memoirs of Linguet had just bestowed upon him a sorrowful celebrity; he was almost as much detested as the prison itself.
In fact, the De Launays, like the Châteauneufs, the Levrillières, and the Saint Florentins, who held the lettres de cachet from father to son, also from father to son transmitted the Bastille to one another.
For, as is well known, it was not the minister of war who appointed the officers of this jail. At the Bastille, all the places were sold to the highest bidder, from that of the governor himself, down to that of the scullion. The governor of the Bastille was a jailer on a grand scale, an eating—house keeper wearing epaulettes, who added to his salary of sixty thousand livres, sixty thousand more which he extorted and plundered.
It was highly necessary that he should recover the capital and interest of the money he had invested.
Monsieur de Launay, in point of avarice, far surpassed his predecessors. This might, perhaps, have arisen from his having paid more for the place, and having foreseen that he would not remain in it so long as they did.
He fed his whole house at the expense of his prisoners. He had reduced the quantity of fuel, and doubled the hire of furniture in each room.
He had the right of bringing yearly into Paris a hundred pipes of wine, free of duty. He sold his right to a tavern—keeper, who brought in wines of excellent quality; then with a tenth part of this duty he purchased the vinegar with which he supplied his prisoners.
The unhappy prisoners in the Bastille had only one consolation; this was a small garden, which had been formed on one of the bastions. There they could walk; there for a few moments they could inhale pure air, the perfumes of the flowers, and enjoy the light.
He rented this little garden to a gardener, and for fifty livres a year which he received from him he had deprived the prisoners of this last enjoyment.
It is true that to rich prisoners his complaisance was extreme. He conducted one of them to the house of his own mistress, who had thus her apartments furnished, and was kept in luxury, without its costing a stiver to him, De Launay.
See the work entitled “The Bastille Unveiled,” and you will find in it this fact, and many others besides.
And, notwithstanding, this man was courageous.
Since the previous evening the storm had been threatening around him. Since the previous evening he perceived the waves of this great commotion, which was still ascending, beat against his walls.