Chapter VII (3)

The money thus obtained was lavishly spent on the pomps and amusements of the court. A part was dissipated at the gaming-table; Louis being then a constant and an unlucky gamester. Theatrical entertainments absorbed another portion. The getting up of a single grand ballet is said to have cost no less than forty thousand pounds. Guy Patin had reason to exclaim, “they talk much at the Louvre of balls, ballets, and rejoicings, but nothing is said of relieving the people, who are dying of such unexampled want, after so great and solemn a general peace has been concluded. O pudor! ô mores! ô tempora!”

But though, in his private letters, Patin could venture to censure profusion and exaction, he would soon have been fitted with what he somewhere calls “a stone doublet,” had he dared to breathe a word against them in public. It was dangerous even for a barrister to perform faithfully his duty to a client. M. Burai, an eminent advocate, was committed to the Bastile, in 1655, for having undertaken the defence of Guenegaut, one of the treasurers, who was prosecuted by the government.

The press was completely muzzled. We find De Prez, a printer, sent to the Bastile, for having printed a letter by the Bishop of Aleth, which displeased the jesuits; a second unlucky typographer, for offending the Archbishop of Paris; and a third, named Coquier, for privately printing an answer to a work of the Chevalier Talon, who had attacked Coquier’s former master, the superintendant Fouquet. It was a perilous task for a man to defend himself against the minions of favour. The Journal des Sçavans having abused Charles Patin, he was about to reply, when it was intimated to him that if he did not desist, the Bastile would receive him: the journal happened to be protected by M. Colbert, the minister. Such protection gave a decisive advantage over a less fortunate rival. The conduct of Renaudot, the printer of the Gazette, affords a strong proof of the tyrannical use which was made of it. There appears to have been at this period a sort of partnership, the members of which gained a livelihood by compiling and vending a manuscript gazette. As the sale of this paper diminished that of his own, Renaudot made a bold attempt to get rid of his competitors. He is said to have been extremely desirous that they should be hanged; but his benevolent wish was not gratified. He had, however, the satisfaction of procuring seven of them to be sent to the Bastile, one of whom was publicly whipped through the streets. Yet these measures, harsh as they were, did not succeed in putting down the manuscript gazetteers; for, five years afterwards, six more of them were committed to prison. From its long continuance, and the risks which the traders were willing to encounter, we may infer that the trade was productive.

To have a different opinion from the sovereign, as to the merit of any one whom he placed in office, was a heavy offence. M. de Montespan expiated, by imprisonment in Fort-l’Evêque, his having doubted the wisdom of choosing M. Montausier as governor to the dauphin. Some were thrown into the Bastile for impossible crimes; such was the case of St. Severin, a priest, who was accused of sorcery. Of others, the fault and the meaning of their punishment are now undiscoverable. With respect to L’Epine, a priest, for example, we are only told that he was discharged from the Bastile, on condition of quitting Paris within twenty-four hours, and going to Egypt. The reason of this singular species of banishment must remain an enigma.

One of the instances in which despair prompted an inmate of the Bastile to commit suicide, occurred in 1669, and is recorded by Patin. “A state prisoner,” says he, “has poisoned himself in the Bastile, terrified by the punishment which could not fail to be inflicted on him, for having spoken very badly _de Domino Priore_.”