“We will not describe the Bastille—it would be useless.
“It lives as an eternal image, both in the memory of the old and in the imagination of the young.
“We shall content ourselves with merely stating, that, seen from the boulevard, it presented, in front of the square then called Place de la Bastille, two twin towers, while its two fronts ran parallel with the banks of the canal which now exists.
“The entrance to the Bastille was defended, in the first place, by a guard-house, then by two lines of sentinels, and besides these by two drawbridges.
“After having passed through these several obstacles, you came to the courtyard of the government-house—that is to say, the residence of the governor.
“From this courtyard a gallery led to the ditches of the Bastille.
“At this other entrance, which opened upon the ditches, was a drawbridge, a guard-house, and an iron gate.”
Then follow some pages of incident and action, which may be fact or may be fiction. The detail which comes after is picturesque and necessary to the plot:
“The 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 thought the bottom of an immense well.
“In this courtyard was a clock, supported by figures representing enchained captives, which measured the hours, 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.