The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-05-31
told him, but he only answered: Sup pose I should be lost at sea."-Chicago Evening Post.
TWO LEGEND sMAsHERs.


 Sardou and Brentano Attack tho Bas-
 tile Legend-A Pleasant Prison h.
 deed-Astounding Privileges of the
 inmates-Good Food and Comfortable
 Quarters for Every Prisoner-Bless-
 ings Upon Gentle Tyrants of the Past.
 MT. Frantz Funck- -Brentano, the li- brarian of the Library of the Arsenal, has just published a curious volume which demolishes the legends of the Bastille. The preface is written by N. Victorien Sardou, who shows clearly that he shares the sentiments of MT. Brentano in regard to the famous pris- on.
 With few friends says Sardou, T visited the Exposition of 1889 and saw the model of the Bastille, which every body else saw and which could not be better calculated to give an erroneous idea of the thing itself.
 1T had hardly crossed the threshold of the principal door before saw in the l obscurity an old man with a long white beard lying upon a heap of the tradi- tional humid straw There he was rattling his chains and uttering laman- tations. The visitors guide said sol- | emnly: Here you see the unfprtunate Latude, who remained in that position, ! with his hands chained behind his back for thirty-five years
 T completed this piece of eloquence by remarking in exactly the same tone: And it was even in this attitude that he was clever enough to make the lad <ler, one hundred and twenty eight feet long, by which he escaped
 I The spectators looked at me with surprise, the guide frowned upon me | and I slipped out
 The idea which put that phrase into my mouth was precisely the one which | dictated to Mr. Brentano his book on the Bastille, in which he puts every thing in it's place and opposes to the le- 1 gends that everybody knows the facts and records that many people do not know. For, in spite of all that has been written upon this subject by M. Ravais- son, in the introduction to his Archives of the Bastile,' by Victor Fournel in his Men of the 14th of July and Messrs. Gustave Bord, Bire, Begis and others, opinion upon the interior re- gime of the Bastille in 1789 holds fast to this description by Louis Blanc.
 Iron cages recalling the Plessis-les- | Tours and the tortures of Cardinal Ia Balue, subterranean cells, the abode of toads, lizards, monstrous rats and spi- ders, and the entire furniture of which consisted of an enormous stone covered with a little straw, where the prisoner breathed an infectious air Enveloped in shades of mystery, condemned to ab- solutei ignorance of the crime with which he was charged and of the na- ture of the punishment that awaited him. the prisoner ceased to belong to | the earth.
 Now, if this Bastille of the melodra- ma ever existed certainly the one of the eighteenth century did not resem- ble it much. In 17S9 these cells, situa- ted upon the ground floor of the fort ress,, with windows looking out upon the trenches, were not, as in the time of Louis XIV, reserved for criminals con- T IuClllHCG LU uGetlIi, udAlS6IOuS lndUII6Il or prisoners convicted of violence, or even for the guards convicted of brooches of discipline. Under the first ministry of Necker they were abolished completely.
 "The prisoner, who was examined on the very first day of his arrival, was not left ignorant of the crime with which he was accused and did not have to worry himself over the penalty that awaited him, for, during century, at least, there was neither torture nor penalty of any description in the Bas- tile. Every prisoner instead of little loopholes or a cage of iron, occupied a rather large room, whose greatest fault was to be badly lighted by one large window fitted with iron bars some of which were in the interior. It was suf- ficiently furnished, and the prisoner | was at liberty to send for what furni- ture he wished from the outside. He could even procure all the clothes and linen that he desired, and if he had not the means to do so, they were given to him. Latude complained of rheuma- tism; furs were given to him. He even wanted a morning gown of 'calamancc with red stripes.' and there was consid- erable trouble hunting through the shops before his wish could be satisfied 4 .r .k t | | < < .& < sk < < k x & .ss ,1