For a member of Parliament, about 15s.
For an ordinary judge, a priest, a captain in the army, or an official of good standing, about 7s. 6d.
For a barrister or a citizen of means, about 2s. 6d.
For a small tradesman, about 1s. 6d.
At such rates as these, all prisoners should have been well cared for in those days; but the truth is that the governors who entered Vincennes with small means left it rich men. Not only the moneys allotted for food, but the allowances of wood, lights, etc., were shamelessly pilfered; and prisoners who were unable or forbidden to supplement the royal bounty from their own purses were often half-starved and half-frozen in their cells. As for the quality of the food, warders and kitchen-assistants sometimes tried to sell in Vincennes meat taken from the prison kitchen, but it had an ill name amongst the peasants: "That comes from the dungeon; it's rotten." On the other hand, wealthy prisoners who enjoyed the governor's favour, or who could bring influence to bear on him from without, were allowed to beguile the tedium of captivity by unlimited feasting and drinking. The inmate of one cell, lying in chains, dirt, and darkness, might be kept awake at night by the tipsy strains of his neighbour in the cell adjoining. Governors avaricious above the common generally had their dark cells full, so as to be able to feed on bread and water the prisoners for whom they received the regular daily tariff. Ordinarily, there were but two meals a day, dinner at eleven in the morning and supper at five in the evening; hence, if your second ration were insufficient, you must go hungry for eighteen hours. A privileged few were allowed a valet at their own charge, but the majority of the prisoners of both sexes were served by the turnkeys.
The turnkeys visited the cells three times a day, rather as spies, it seems, than as ministers to the needs of the prisoners. "They came like heralds of misfortune," says one. "A face hard, expressionless, or insolent; an imperturbable silence; a heart proof against the sufferings of others. Useless to address a question to them; a curt negative was the sole response. 'I know nothing about it,' was the turnkey's eternal formula."
Some prisoners, but by no means all, were allowed to walk for an hour a day in one of the confined gardens at the base of the tower; always in company with a warder, who might neither speak nor be spoken to. As the hour struck, the exercise ceased.
Such seems to have been the external routine of life at Vincennes. Beneath the surface was the perpetual tyrannous oppression of the governor and his subordinates on the one side, and on the other a weight of suffering, extended to almost every detail of existence, endured by the great majority of the prisoners; silently even unto death in some instances, but in others not without desperate resistance, long sustained against overwhelming odds.
The recital of Mirabeau's captivity throws into curious relief the inner life of the dungeon. The governor was a certain De Rougemont, of most unrighteous memory, whom Latude describes as having written his name in blood on the walls of every cell. Elsewhere the same narrator says that prisoners occasionally strangled themselves to escape the rage of De Rougemont, who was seventeen years in charge of Vincennes.
The fiery, impetuous Mirabeau was ceaselessly at variance with this "despotic ape," who delighted in trying to repress by the most contemptible annoyances that irrepressible spirit. Complaint was a fault in the eyes of De Rougemont, impatience a crime.