dom and
brief appearance in his good city of Paris, since there he did not feel
about him enough pitfalls, gibbets, and Scotch archers.

He had come, that day, to sleep at the Bastille. The great chamber five
toises* square, which he had at the Louvre, with its huge chimney-piece
loaded with twelve great beasts and thirteen great prophets, and his
grand bed, eleven feet by twelve, pleased him but little. He felt
himself lost amid all this grandeur. This good bourgeois king preferred
the Bastille with a tiny chamber and couch. And then, the Bastille was
stronger than the Louvre.

* An ancient long measure in France, containing six feet
and nearly five inches English measure.

This little chamber, which the king reserved for himself in the famous
state prison, was also tolerably spacious and occupied the topmost
story of a turret rising from the donjon keep. It was circular in form,
carpeted with mats of shining straw, ceiled with beams, enriched with
fleurs-de-lis of gilded metal with interjoists in color; wainscoated
with rich woods sown with rosettes of white metal, and with others
painted a fine, bright green, made of orpiment and fine indigo.

There was only one window, a long pointed casement, latticed with brass
wire and bars of iron, further darkened by fine colored panes with the
arms of the king and of the queen, each pane being worth two and twenty
sols.

There was but one entrance, a modern door, with a fiat arch, garnished
with a piece of tapestry on the inside, and on the outside by one of
those porches of Irish wood, frail edifices of cabinet-work curiously
wrought, numbers of which were still to be seen in old houses a hundred
and fifty years ago. "Although they disfigure and embarrass the places,"
says Sauvel in despair, "our old people are still unwilling to get rid
of them, and keep them in spite of everybody."

In this chamber, nothing was to be found of what furnishes ordinary
apartments, neither benches, nor trestles, nor forms, nor common
stools in the form of a chest, nor fine stools sustained by pillars and
counter-pillars, at four sols a piece. Only one easy arm-chair, very
magnificent, was to be seen; the wood was painted with roses on a red
ground, the seat was of ruby Cordovan leather, ornamented with long
silken fringes, and studded with a thousand golden nails. The loneliness
of this chair made it apparent that only one person had a right to sit
down in this apartment. Besid