To each of the four towers, four stories; and at each story a hall thirty feet long, and from fifteen to eighteen feet wide. At the four corners of the hall, four dismal chambers—the prisoners' cells. These cells were like miniature fortresses. A solid outer door being opened, a second one presented itself. Beyond the second was a third; and the third, iron-plated on both sides, and armed with two locks and three bolts, was the door of the cell. The three doors acted upon one another in such a manner that, unless their secret were known, the second barred the first, and the third barred the second. Light entered the cells through four loopholes, of which the inner orifices were a foot and a half in width, and the outer only six inches.
In the great halls on which the cells opened, prisoners were exercised for a limited time (never more than an hour) on rainy days, or when the orders of the governor forbade them to descend to the walled garden of the dungeon.
The hall of the first floor, celebrated in the annals of barbarism, was called the _Salle de la Question_, or torture chamber. It had its stone benches, on which, the miserable creatures were placed to wait and watch the preparations for their torment; and great iron hoops or rings attached to the walls, to compress their limbs when the Question was to be put. Hard by this frightful chamber—which was fitted with every contrivance for the infliction of bodily suffering—were certain diminutive cells, deprived of light and air, and furnished with plank beds, on which prisoners were chained for a moment of repose between the first and second applications of the torture.[7]
Up to the reign of Louis XVI., every prison in Paris and the principal courts of justice had a torture chamber, and precise rules existed as to the various kinds of torture that might be resorted to, the mode in which each was to be applied, the persons who were to be present during the Question, the preliminary examination of the prisoner by a surgeon, the manner of binding, stretching, etc., together with the minutest details respecting the several forms of the Question, and the means to be employed to restore the sufferer for a second application.