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and which he was no doubt carrying back to his employers when, surprised by treacherous liquor, he fell into the Seine. Let this be a lesson, young man, to yourself!" "Ah, Monsieur Dacheux, there is little fear of my forgetting it. But are you really quite sure this pocket-book was my grandfather's?" "Yes; by the tokens of this silver watch, which was also upon him, and the little steel chain from which still hangs your grandmother's golden heart, and by that of the two fingers of the left hand which were missing from the old man I drew out of the river, and the scar from the tip of the right ear to the chin. How could all these marks meet in any but the right person? Nay, my own heart tells me this restitution is the dictate of Heaven. I am too happy in making it, to be under any delusion.”

So saying, he warmly embraced the delighted young man, whose honest gratitude found vent in the expressions of unsophisticated nature, and whose goodness of heart soon prompted him to make his relatives at home the sharers of his joy. Panting and breathless, scarce able to speak for delight, he announced to the two dear maternal friends of his youth the happy change in their circumstances, and thrust into the shaking hand of his grandmother the well-known pocket-book, saying as he did so, in his turn, "Here is your own."

"Nay, yours, my children!" exclaimed the palsied one, exerting, to transfer it, more strength than she had done for long. "Methinks I feel reviving already, and as though God might yet grant me to see my great-great-grandchildren."

The marriage of Maurice with Celestine Aubert took place soon after, and joining his father-in-law, whose experience in the cider trade was very extensive, they were soon at the head of that flourishing branch of business. The old grandmother quitted her lodging up five pair of stairs, and came to live with her daughter and the young couple on the Quai de L'Ecole, where the good air she breathed, and the sight of her children's happiness, so far restored her, that she could sally forth on crutches, to thank in person the author of all their prosperity. She and the friends and neighbours by whom she was accompanied, found the indefatigable friend of humanity engaged in his vocation, having just rescued from a watery grave an interesting young woman, making, with her unborn infant, the two hundred and fifteenth life he had been enabled to preserve!

Every one present crowded round the general benefactor, proclaiming him the honour of his country, and a model for mankind; and all united in beseeching him to continue, while strength permitted, his heroic career, exclaiming, "Never will your memory perish from that of your fellow-citizens, or that proudest of titles with which they have thought fit to associate it, when they conferred on you the affecting surname of 'The Man of the Shore.' 999

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T the eastern boundary of Paris, on the way towards the cemetery of Pere la Chaise, we have occasion to cross an open space, on which once stood the famous prison-fortress, the Bastile. The name of Bastile or Bastel was, in ancient times, given to any kind of erection calculated to withstand a military force; and thus, formerly in England and on the borders of Scotland, the term Bastelhouse was usually applied to places of strength and fancied security. Of the many Bastiles in France, that at Paris, whose history we propose to narrate, and which at first was called the Bastile St Antoine, from being erected near the suburb of St Antoine, retained the name longest. This fortress, of melancholy celebrity, was erected under the following circum

stances:

In the year 1356, when the English, then at war with France, were in the neighbourhood of Paris, it was considered necessary by the inhabitants of the French capital to repair the bulwarks of their city. Stephen Marcel, provost of the merchants, undertook this task, and, amongst other defences, added to the fortifications at the eastern entrance to the town a gate flanked with a tower on each side. The popularity which the provost acquired by this measure, and others equally judicious, was for some time considerable; but his secret connexion with the king of Navarre, who laid pretensions to the French throne, proved his ruin. On the 31st of July 1358 he attempted to introduce that prince into Paris through the gate of the Bastile, but his intention having transpired, he could not succeed in having it opened. His eneNo. 166.

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mies, who were alike fierce and numerous, soon reached the spot, and surrounded him. The provost, holding the keys in his hand, strove to defend himself from his assailants, and, ascending the entrance-ladder, endeavoured to take refuge in one of the towers; but a man named De Charny having struck him on the head with his axe, he fell, and was despatched by the infuriated crowd at the foot of that Bastile which he had himself caused to be erected.

Hugh Aubriot, the next who, after Stephen Marcel, added to the constructions of the Bastile, proved scarcely more fortunate. He was provost of Paris under Charles V., king of France, who, not thinking the walls of the Bastile sufficiently strong and high, and wishing to complete them, charged him to superintend the necessary extensions. In the year 1369 Aubriot accordingly added two towers, which, being placed opposite to those already existing on each side of the gate, made of the Bastile a square fort, with a tower at each of the four angles. Notwithstanding his great talents and integrity, or rather on account of these very qualities, Aubriot had acquired many enemies, by whom, on the death of Charles V., he was bitterly persecuted. Although, owing to the influence of his friends at court, his life was spared, he was condemned to perpetual confinement, and placed in the Bastile, of which, according to some historians, he was the first prisoner. After some time he was thence conveyed to Fort l'Evêque, another prison, where he remained forgotten until 1381. The Maillotins, a band of insurgents, so named from the leaden mallets with which they were armed, then delivered him, to place him at their head; but though he seemingly joined in their plans, Aubriot escaped from them the same night, and safely reached Burgundy, his native province, where he died within the space of a year.

After the insurrection of the Maillotins in 1382, the young king, Charles VI., still further enlarged the Bastile by adding four towers to it, thus giving it, instead of the square form it formerly possessed, the shape of an oblong or parallelogram. The fortress now consisted of eight towers, each a hundred feet high, and, like the wall which united them, nine feet thick. Four of those towers looked on the city, and four on the suburb of St Antoine. To increase its strength, the Bastile was surrounded by a ditch twenty-five feet deep and a hundred and twenty feet wide. The road which formerly passed through it was turned on one side, the old gate blocked up, and a new one, which retained the name of its predecessor, erected on the left of the fortress. The Bastile was now completed (1383), and though additions were subsequently made to it, the body of the fortress underwent no important change.

Each of the eight towers which composed the Bastile bore a different name. One of the two which had been erected by Stephen Marcel was called the Tower of the Chapel, and the

other the Tower of the Treasure, from the large sums deposited in it by Sully, minister of Henri IV. One of those added by Aubriot received the name of the Tower of Liberty, and the other the Tower de la Bertaudière; whilst of the four towers which Charles VI. caused to be built, one was termed the Tower of the Well, from the well which was near it; the second, the Tower of the Corner, on account of its position; the third, the Tower de la Bazinière, from a gentleman of that name who was confined in it; and the fourth, the Tower de la Comté. Each of the towers was four storeys high, besides the low and horrible dungeons situated beneath the level of the soil. Nothing can be conceived more gloomy or wretched than one of these noisome dens. The damp stone walls and ceiling were continually dropping water, and the slimy flooring swarmed with rats, toads, newts, and other kinds of vermin. A narrow slit in the wall, on the side of the ditch, admitted light, and too frequently, instead of air, unwholesome exhalations, to this abode of misery; a few planks, supported by iron bars fixed in the wall, and scantily covered with straw, formed the prisoner's couch, whilst ponderous double doors, each seven inches thick, and provided with enormous locks and bolts, shut out the captive from the world, and never admitted any other form than that of a jailor.

The three first floors above this dungeon consisted each of a single room of an irregular octagonal shape, about eighteen feet high, and twenty feet wide. Most of the rooms had double ceilings, a fact which the prisoner De la Tude discovered, and turned to advantage, by making use of this vacant space to conceal in it the rope-ladder through which he effected his escape. A small closet, made in the thickness of the walls, frequently accompanied these apartments. The room on the fourth and last floor, termed La Calotte, was narrower and lower than the rest. It was so arched, in order to support a platform above, that the individual confined in it could not stand upright in any other part than the centre. The narrow windows or openings which gave light to these apartments afforded no prospect from without, not only on account of the thickness of the walls, but also owing to the double grating of iron bars, each as thick as a man's arm, with which they were provided. In the lower storeys of the building these openings were half filled up with stone and mortar, and even some of them could not be reached save by ascending three steps. The floorings were either of tiles or stones, and the chimneys were secured by iron bars in several places. All the rooms, and even the staircases leading to them, were closed by thick double doors. Previously to the year 1761, it was in some of those apartments, then of course more comfortable, but the only official ones, that the governor and his suite resided.

Both as a place of military defence, and as a state prison of great strength, the Bastile was, even at an early period, very

formidable. During the troubled reign of the insane Charles VI., it frequently served as a prison and a fortress by turns, and assumed some importance in the struggles of the period. The kingdom of France, the greatest part of which was in the power of the English, was, moreover, distracted by the dissensions of the Burgundians and Armagnacs. The king's eldest son, the dauphin, who belonged to the last party, was in possession of Paris, and his devoted friend, Tannegui du Châtel, held the Bastile with a strong garrison. When Paris was, through treachery, delivered to the Burgundians on the night of the 28th of May 1418, Tannegui had barely time to run to the youthful prince's hotel, snatch him half-awake from his bed, and, wrapping him up in the bedclothes, carry him in his arms to the Bastile, which he fortunately reached in safety. From the towers of the fortress the dauphin, however, beheld the massacre of almost all his adherents and friends; none of the Armagnacs was spared by their vindictive foes, and the streets of Paris literally flowed with blood. Tannegui soon abandoned the Bastile, which fell into the power of the Burgundians, and two years afterwards was held by the English, then masters of Paris, which they kept for sixteen years. During this space of time, L'Isle Adam, a Burgundian general, was the only prisoner of the Bastile. When, in 1436, the dauphin, now Charles VII., stormed Paris, the English governor, Willoughby, retired to the Bastile. An honourable capitulation having been offered to him, he in a few days surrendered the fortress, of which he was the last English military occupant.

Under the reign of the tyrannical Louis XI., the Bastile became a prison of some importance, and received many of the unfortunate victims of that monarch's hatred. Amongst these, Cardinal Balue and several others are worthy of mention. The cardinal was a man of obscure origin, noted for his ingratitude towards all those who contributed to his elevation. Louis XI., who, notwithstanding his suspicious temper, had confided entirely in him, he betrayed, with D'Harancourt, bishop of Verdun, without so much as the shadow of an excuse. The ecclesiastical character of the offenders screened their lives, but it could not save them from the king's vengeance. Balue he caused to be shut up in one of those iron cages of which the cardinal himself is said to have been the inventor, and which were so fearfully contrived, that the unhappy being immured in them could not experience even one moment's repose. The cardinal remained for eleven years in the castle of Loches, whence he was occasionally transferred to the Bastile, in order that Louis might, when in Paris, enjoy the sight of his torments. In 1480, three years before the death of Louis XI., he was at last set free, and quietly ended his days in 1491.

His accomplice, D'Harancourt, fared still worse. He was confined in the Bastile, where a cage was constructed expressly

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