They heard sighs. A report ran about that there were hidden dungeons known only to the Government, in which the unhappy prisoners were suffered to die of hunger.
The architect of the city, Citizen Palloy, was ordered to pull down the old fortress. Of the best stones, he made eighty-six models of the Bastille, which he sent to eighty-six different departments.
With the others, he built the Pont de la Revolution, on which the head of Louis XVI was exposed after execution.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE DUKE D’ENGHIEN’S LAST DAY’S SPORT.
For a long time, reports of hidden dungeons and forgotten prisoners agitated Paris. Paris had had a mountain on its breast, and could not accustom itself to the deliverance from it.
To pity succeeded fear. Had they really escaped from that calamity with which De Launay had threatened them? They reported that there were underground passages from the Bastille to Vincennes; and that in those passages the powder was concealed just under the Faubourg St. Antoine, which would one day blow up from one end to the other.
These fears had a good effect. They, for a time, dissipated the feeling of famine which was gradually creeping over Paris.
Foulon said, “The French have no bread; why should they not eat hay? My horses eat it.”
True or not, he expiated this sneer with his life, and they carried his head about with a mouthful of hay stuffed between his teeth.