The Road to Paris: A Story of Adventure

by Robert Neilson Stephens

"To the Bastile," was what the man had called out.

Why had Dick not thought of this possibility sooner?—he asked himself. There were two very obvious reasons, if not more, why Necker should wish to keep him caged. First, imprisonment might induce him to break his silence as to the Brotherhood's place of meeting and as to what names his eye had caught during the signing of his own to the list. Secondly, his disclosure, with every attendant circumstance, might be suspected of being a ruse to gain favor, similar to that by which Latude had brought well-nigh a lifetime of captivity upon himself; for men who devise such ruses are to be held as dangerous.

Yes, imprisonment was the logical conclusion of this incident. Dick shuddered as the word "Bastile" repeated itself in his ears. It had a far more formidable sound than that of Newgate, though, thank heaven, a far more gentlemanly one. And so Dick was now about to round out his prison experience, begun in America as a prisoner of war, and resumed in London as a civil prisoner, by being a prisoner of state in France! He sighed, and resigned himself to the inevitable. He looked not into the future. He might be out again in a day, or he might pine in his cage, purposely forgotten, the rest of his years. Well, well, no reason to be downcast! "Heart up, lad!" he said within himself, in the language of old Tom MacAlister; "wha kens the morrow's shift of the wind of circumstance?"

After a long ride through streets of frowning houses, the carriage approached an open "place" or square, at one side of which Dick could make out, through the window, a huge rectangular building whose uniform towers, bulging out at regular intervals from straight stone walls, darkened the sky above an outer wall that enclosed the whole edifice. That end of the building which fronted the square contained two of the towers. Towards this front the carriage drove, crossing a drawbridge, and stopping for the man in command to show his order to the guard officer.

Dick was then driven past the outer guard-house, crossed a second bridge, a court, and other enclosures, and finally arrived at a second guard-house, where he was put down and his name entered on the prison register. He was then given into the charge of a squad of men, and by these conducted to an interior paved court, to which an iron-grated gate opened, and which seemed like the bottom of a vast well. This was the inside of the rectangle bounded by the eight towers and their connecting walls.

By the light of lanterns, Dick was led through a door at the side, and thence, through corridors and up steep stairways, to a large cell. The lantern's light showed a bare stone-floored chamber, with a table, a stool, a small bed, an empty fireplace, and in the wall an aperture in whose depths, though it was designed to serve the purpose of a window, Dick's sight was lost before coming to the outer end. Before he had time to ask a question, his conductors had closed the door upon him, turned its heavy lock, and left him alone in the darkness.

He had been searched in the guard-house, but not required to put on other clothes. Pleased at this, and at his not having been shackled, he groped his way to the bed, undressed, and fell into a deep sleep. So ended the, to him, eventful day of Wednesday, March 12, 1777.

He was visited on Thursday by Monsieur Delaunay, the governor of the Bastile, and on Friday by the lieutenant of police, each accompanied to the cell door by soldiers. Each tried by questions, vague promises, and implied threats, to make him speak of the Brotherhood. Their attempts failing, the governor visited him a week later, thinking imprisonment might have had effect upon him. The governor spoke incidentally of the dungeons, nineteen feet below the level of the courtyard, and five feet below that of the ditch, their only opening being a narrow loophole to the latter. But Dick only smiled. A fortnight elapsed before the governor's next appearance, and still Dick was as silent on the one topic as ever. The hint as to the dungeon was not carried out. Perhaps the worthy governor received more money for the food of a prisoner in an upper cell than for that of a prisoner in a dungeon, and consequently could make more by underfeeding him. The governor now allowed a month to pass before renewing his persuasions; after that, two months; and then he came no more.

Meanwhile, Dick had little to complain of. In fact, many an honest and hard-working man of talent nowadays might envy such a life as the ordinary prisoner in the Bastile could lead, especially in the reign of Louis XVI. Such a prisoner's state, in those old days of tyranny and oppression, was heavenly, compared with that of an innocent man merely awaiting trial in the prison of a police court in New York City in this happy age of liberty and humanity.

Dick was allowed to walk, under guard, not only in the interior court, but also in a small garden on one of the bastions, where the pure air was sweetened by the perfume of flowers. He was permitted to have books, some of which were lent him by the governor, the royal intendant, the surgeon, and other officers, and some of which were bought, at his request, out of money allowed for his food. Could he have afforded it out of his own purse, he might have hired a servant, furnished his room luxuriously, dressed in the height of fashion, eaten of the choicest delicacies, practised music and participated in concerts got up under the governor's patronage, kept birds or cats or dogs, and otherwise brought to himself the world to which he was forbidden from going. The comforts of the Bastile, however, were at that time accessible to only about half a dozen prisoners besides Dick. In 1761 there had been only four. In 1789, when the Bastile was destroyed, there were only seven.