ABSTRACT
BEFORE I suffered my friends at Paris to conduct me through the usual routine of convents, churches, and palaces, I requested to visit the Bastille; feeling a much stronger desire to contemplate the ruins of that building than the most perfect edifices of Paris. When we got into the carriage, our French servant called to the coachman with an air of triumph, † “A la Bastille, mars nous n’y resterons pas.” We drove under that porch which so many wretches have entered never to repass, and alighting from the carriage, descended with difficulty into the dungeons, which were too low to admit of our slanding upright, and so dark that we were obliged at noon-day to visit them with the light of a candle. We saw the hooks of those chains 17by which the prisoners were fastened round the neck, to the walls of their cells; many of which being below the level of the water, are in a constant state of humidity; and a noxious vapour issued from them, which more than once extinguished the candle, and was so insufferable that it required a strong spirit of curiosity to tempt tone to enter. Good God!—and to those regions of horror were human creatures dragged at the caprice of despotic power. What a melancholy consideration, that —“Man! proud man, Draft in a little brief authority, Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, As make the angels weep.”———
