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 The Hundred Years' War 483 memory, and he forgot nothing, but knew everybody, as well in other countries as in his own. .. . . I am of opinion that if all the days of his life were com- puted in which his joys and pleasures outweighed his pain and trouble, they would be found so few, that there would be twenty mournful ones to one pleasant. He lived about sixty-one years, yet he always fancied he should never out- live sixty, giving this for a reason, that for a long time no Jking of France had lived beyond that age. His last illness continued from Monday to Saturday night. Upon which account I will now make comparison between the evils and sorrows which he brought upon others and those which he suffered in his own person : for I hope his torments here on earth have translated him into paradise and will be a great part of his purgatory. And if, in respect of their greatness and duration, his sufferings were inferior to those he had brought upon other people, yet, if you con- sider the grandeur and dignity of his office, and that he had never before suffered anything in his own person, but had been obeyed by all people, as if all Europe had been created for no other end but to serve and be commanded by him, you will find that that little which he endured was so con- trary to his nature and custom that it was more grievous for him to bear. . . . The king had ordered several cruel prisons to be made : some were cages of iron, and some of wood, but all were covered with iron plates both within and without, with terri- ble locks, about eight feet wide and seven high. The first contriver of them was the bishop of Verdun, who was immediately put in the first of them that was made, where he continued fourteen years. Many bitter curses he has had since for his invention, and some from me as I lay in one of them eight months together in the minority of our present king. He also ordered heavy and terrible fetters to be made in Germany, and particularly a certain ring for the feet, which was extremely hard to be opened, and fitted like an iron collar, with a thick weighty chain, and a great globe of iron at the end of it, most unreasonably heavy, Apprehen- sions and precautions of the dying Louis. Louis XI's ideas of prison reform.