e horrible scenes, and consider the several methods of penal
sequestration and prison arrangements.

It is unnecessary to state that in barbarous times the cruel and pitiless
feeling which induced legislators to increase the horrors of tortures,
also contributed to the aggravation of the fate of prisoners. Each
administrator of the law had his private gaol, which was entirely under
his will and control (Fig. 353). Law or custom did not prescribe any
fixed rules for the internal government of prisons. There can be little
doubt, however, that these prisons were as small as they were unhealthy,
if we may judge from that in the Rue de la Tannerie, which was the
property of the provost, the merchants, and the aldermen of Paris in 1383.
Although this dungeon was only eleven feet long by seven feet wide, from
ten to twenty prisoners were often immured in it at the same time.

[Illustration: Fig. 352.--Empalement.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the
"Cosmographie Universelle" of Munster: in folio, Basle, 1552.]

Paris alone contained twenty-five or thirty special prisons, without
counting the _vade in pace_ of the various religious communities. The most
important were the Grand Chatelet, the Petit Chatelet, the Bastille, the
Conciergerie, and the For-l'Eveque, the ancient seat of the ecclesiastical
jurisdiction of the Bishop of Paris. Nearly all these places of
confinement contained subterranean cells, which were almost entirely
deprived of air and light. As examples of these may be mentioned the
_Chartres basses_ of the Petit Chatelet, where, under the reign of Charles
VI., it was proved that no man could pass an entire day without being
suffocated; and the fearful cells excavated thirty feet below the surface
of the earth, in the gaol of the Abbey of Saint Germain des Pres, the roof
of which was so low that a man of middle height could not stand up in
them, and where the straw of the prisoners' beds floated upon the stagnant
water which had oozed through the walls.

[Illustration: Fig. 353.--The Provost's Prison.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut
in J. Damhoudere's "Praxis Rerum Civilium."]

The Grand Chatelet was one of the most ancient prisons of Paris, and
probably the one which held the greatest number of prisoners. By a curious
and arbitrary custom, prisoners were compelled to pay a gaol fee on
entering and going out of this prison, which varied according to their
rank, and which was established by a law of the year 1425. We learn