Here, a clock, the face upheld by chained captives in carving, dropped the seconds like water oozing through a ceiling on the dungeon slabs. At the bottom of this pit, the prisoner, lost in the stony gulf, would glance up at the inexorable nakedness and sue to be led back into his cell.
Governor Launay was about fifty years of age; he wore a grey linseywoolsey suit this day; it was crossed by a red sash of the Order of St. Louis, and he carried a swordcane. He was a bad man: Linguet's Memoirs had just shown him up in a sad light and he was hated almost as much as the jail. His father had been governor before him.
The officers here were on the purchase system, so that the officials tried to make all the money they could squeeze out of the prisoners and their friends. The governor, chief warder, doubled his 60,000 francs appointments by extortion.
In the way of meanness Launay out-did his foregoers: he may have had to pay more highly for the post than his father and so had to put on the screw to retrieve his outlay. He fed his household out of the prisoners' rations; he reduced the firing allowance and doubled the hire of furniture. Maybe he foresaw that he was not to enjoy the berth long.
He had the right to pass a hundred casks of wine into Paris free of duty. He sold it to a wine-shopkeeper who got in the best vintage and supplied him for the prisoners with vinegar.
The latter had one relief, one pleasure--a little garden made on a bastion where they got a whiff of sweet air and saw flowers and grass and sunshine. He let this out to a truck-gardener, robbing the prisoners for fifty livres a-year.
On the other hand he was yielding to rich captives: he let one furnish his room in his own style and have any visitors he liked.
For further particulars see "The Bastile Unveiled."
He might be pale, but he was calm, although the storm had raged against him from the previous evening. He felt aware of the riot becoming a revolt for the waves broke at the foot of his castle wall.
It is true that he had four cannon and a garrison of old soldiers and Swiss--with only one unarmed man confronting him. For Billet had handed his fowling-piece to Ange on entering the stronghold.
He understood that a weapon might get him into trouble beyond the barrier.