“‘To the magistrate! to the magistrate!’ cried several voices.
“‘What in heaven’s name does it all mean?’ said the lady.
“‘The crowd reproaches you, madame, with having braved the police order which appeared this morning, prohibiting all cabriolets from driving through the streets until the spring.’”
This must have been something considerable of an embargo on pleasure, and one which would hardly obtain to-day, though asphalted pavements covered with a film of frost must offer untold dangers, as compared with the streets of Paris as they were then—in the latter years of the eighteenth century.
CHAPTER XV.
THE BASTILLE
The worshipper at the shrines made famous by Dumas—no less than history—will look in vain for the prison of La Roquette, the Bastille, the hôtel of the Duc de Guise, at No. 12 Rue du Chaume, that of Coligny in the Rue de Bethusy, or of the Montmorencies, “near the Louvre.”
They existed, of course, in reality, as they did in the Valois romances, but to-day they have disappeared, and not even the “Commission des Monuments Historiques” has preserved a pictorial representation of the three latter.