From various reliable sources we learn that there was a place in the Grand Chatelet, called the Chausse d’Hypocras, in which the prisoners had their feet continually in water, and where they could neither stand up nor lie down; and a cell, called Fin d’aise, which was a horrible receptacle of filth, vermin, and reptiles; as to the Fosse, no staircase being attached to it, the prisoners were lowered down into it by means of a rope and pulley.

By the law of 1425, the gaoler was not permitted to put more than two or three persons in the same bed.  He was bound to give “bread and water” to the poor prisoners who had no means of subsistence; and, lastly, he was enjoined “to keep the large stone basin, which was on the pavement, full of water, so that prisoners might get it whenever they wished.”  In order to defray his expenses, he levied on the prisoners various charges for attendance and for bedding, and he was authorised to detain in prison any person who failed to pay him.  The power of compelling payment of these charges continued even after a judge’s order for the release of a prisoner had been issued.

[Illustration:  Fig. 354.—­The Bastille.—­From an ancient Engraving of the Topography of Paris, in the Collection of Engravings of the National Library.]

The subterranean cells of the Bastille (Fig. 354) did not differ much from those of the Chatelet.  There were several, the bottoms of which were formed like a sugar-loaf upside down, thus neither allowing the prisoner to stand up, nor even to adopt a tolerable position sitting or lying down.  It was in these that King Louis XI., who seemed to have a partiality for filthy dungeons, placed the two young sons of the Duke de Nemours (beheaded in 1477), ordering, besides, that they should be taken out twice a week and beaten with birch rods, and, as a supreme measure of atrocity, he had one of their teeth extracted every three months.  It was Louis XI., too, who, in 1476, ordered the famous iron cage, to be erected in one of the towers of the Bastille, in which Guillaume, Bishop of Verdun, was incarcerated for fourteen years.

The Chateau de Loches also possessed one of these cages, which received the name of Cage de Balue, because the Cardinal Jean de la Balue was imprisoned in it.  Philippe de Commines, in his “Memoires,” declares that he himself had a taste of it for eight months.  Before the invention of cages, Louis XI. ordered very heavy chains to be made, which were fastened to the feet of the prisoners, and attached to large iron balls, called, according to Commines, the King’s little daughters (les fillettes du roy).

[Illustration:  Fig. 355.—­Movable Iron Cage.—­Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the “Cosmographie Universelle” of Munster, in folio, Basle, 1552.]