The Fort-l'Évêque, in the Rue Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, was one of the two prisons of the Bishop of Paris. Its oubliettes were subterranean dungeons, separated from one another by stout timbers. The prisoners, attached to a common chain, were fastened to the wall by iron rings, in such a manner that they could not approach one another. They never saw their gaolers, and their meagre rations were handed in through a narrow wicket in the door. Hugues Aubriot occupied his oubliette for many years. In the insurrection of the Maillotins he was discovered by the rioters and set free. In 1674, the Bishop's jurisdiction was reunited with that of the Châtelet, but the prison of the Fort-l'Évêque was in existence until 1780.
Dulaure says that the penalties imposed by the episcopal court were inflicted in various places, according to the gravity of the offence. Sentences of hanging or burning were carried out beyond the precincts of Paris; but if it were "a mere bagatelle of cutting off the culprit's ears," justice was done at the Place du Trahoir.
In the middle of the seventeenth century, the Fort-l'Évêque was the prison for "debtors and refractory comedians"; and about a hundred years later, in 1765, it received the entire company of the Comédie-Française. The episode is one of the oddest in the history of the House of Molière. A second-rate member of the famous troupe, named Dubois, who had been under medical treatment for some malady, refused to pay the doctor's bill. Mademoiselle Clairon, the tragic actress, delicate on the point of honour, summoned the rest of the company, and it was resolved to appeal to M. de Richelieu, gentilhomme de la chambre. This functionary treated it as "an affair of vagabonds," and told the company to settle it amongst themselves. Dubois, accordingly, was put out of the troupe. His daughter carried her father's grievance and her own charms (elle met en œuvre tous ses charmes) to the Duc de Fronsac, through whose intervention she succeeded in forcing for Dubois the doors of the Comédie-Française. But the company were resolved not to act with him again, and put a sudden stop to the performances of that very successful piece, the Siège de Calais. De Sartines, of the police, now came forward in the pretended interests of the public, and ordered the arrest of Dauberval, Lekain, Molé, Brisard, Mademoiselle Clairon, and others of the company. The public, however, were on the side of the players, and Mademoiselle Clairon and her fellows had a semi-royal progress to the Fort-l'Évêque; roses and rhetoric were showered on them, and les plus nobles dames de Paris disputed the honour of attending the tragédienne to the threshold of the prison. Their captivity lasted, nevertheless, for five and twenty days; but the final victory was with the players, for Dubois was dismissed with a pension, and appeared no more on the stage of the Théâtre Français.
Fêted every day in her chamber in the ecclesiastical prison—for there was scarcely question of an oubliette in her case,—receiving the visits of noblemen and dames of fashion, artists, wits, and poets, Mademoiselle Clairon had small leisure to bethink her that, under the litter of flowers pressed by her dainty feet, lay the bones of whole generations of victims of the church's tyranny; victims of those too familiar charges of magic, heresy, and sacrilege.
Yet (I quote again from MM. Alhoy and Lurine) had she in the still night lent a listening ear to those grey walls, the wailing murmurs of the phantoms of Fort-l'Évêque might have chilled her heart:—
"We expiated in the oubliettes of the Fort-l'Évêque, under the reign of Francis I., the wrong of believing in God without believing also in the infallibility of the Pope. Look ... there is blood on our shrouds!"
"We are two poor Augustine monks. They accused us, in Charles VI.'s time, of being idolaters, invokers of evil spirits, utterers of profane words. They accused us of making a pact with the powers below; our only crime was believing that our science might heal the madness of the King. Look ... there is blood on our shrouds!"