JULES AND THE BASTILLE
Oct 21, 2026 · @Janet Kira Lessin
Janet Kira Lessin | Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D. | © 2026 Aquarian Media
Research: Claudia Lenore
Title image prompt (#1): A small, wiry French rebel with long dark hair and a torn white shirt falls from the fourth level of a towering eight-towered stone fortress in 1789 Paris, a ripped silk banner trailing from one hand, his glowing soul already rising out of his body. Above him, two laughing spirits, a tall fencer and a pregnant young woman, reach down from a golden sky. Below, a 1950s crib glows faintly in the courtyard shadows, the dreaming child who will remember him. Smoke, revolutionary flags, a black mare at the fortress gate.
My soul plays many roles at once, like light shining through every facet of a crystal. Jules came to me first. Before I could speak, I fell from a stone balcony in Paris night after night in my dreams, a small French rebel who chose to leave his body before he struck the ground.
This is his story, woven with the history of the fortress where he died and the people from that life who found me again as Janet. Some memories arrived in dreams, some in meditation, and some returned the moment I met a soul I had loved two centuries before.
The Ride
Image prompt (#2): A black mare named Bess at full gallop down a dark forest road in 1789 France, mane streaming. Her rider, Jules: small, wiry, long dark hair, torn white shirt faded to gray, dark breeches, rapier at his hip, face set with panic and resolve. Dragoons in blue coats chase him through the mist, far behind.
I remember my black mare, Bess, her mane flying as she ran at full gallop in answer to my panic. She read me like a lover, for she had stayed with me longer than anyone else ever had. My long dark hair and my white shirt, torn, stained and faded to gray, snapped in the wind like a flag in a storm. I wore dark breeches and kept my sword buckled at my side, always ready for battle. In that life, I was called Jules.
French troops rode hard behind me, yet I kept my eyes on the road and my heart on my mission. The king’s men had arrested my lover, Marie, and condemned her to die on the executioner’s block in a public square, an example to every noble tempted to join the rebels. The love of my life would lose her head unless I reached her first. How could one man, alone, accomplish the impossible?
Rebels of the Forest
Image prompt (#3): A ragged band of French freedom fighters in a deep forest camp in 1789: lean, hungry faces around a smoky fire, makeshift tents, swords and old muskets, a crust of bread passed hand to hand. A torn royal decree sealed in red wax burns at the edge of the flames. Moody green-and-gold light filters through the trees.
We lived as rebels in the deep forests, hungry and hunted, yet determined to free us all. France groaned in those years. Bread devoured most of a laborer’s wages, and a single letter under the king’s seal, a lettre de cachet, could lock a man away for life with no trial and no appeal. We fought that injustice and the chains it forged, for the freedom of all our people.
Powerful forces in far greater numbers overwhelmed us, and still we persisted.
Edouard Falls
Image prompt (#4): A forest clearing after a massacre. A grieving young rebel with long dark hair kneels beside his best friend Edouard, a tall, handsome fencer who lies in a pool of blood, eyes open to the sky, rapier still in his hand. Abandoned camp, scattered belongings, shafts of cold light.
I came home to the forest and found our camp in ruins, my comrades scattered, fled, arrested, or dead. I searched the faces of the fallen, and my heart sank when I found my best friend, Edouard, a superb fencer and almost my equal with a blade.
He lay in a pool of blood, his empty eyes fixed on the sky. I feel certain his last vision held the man or men who stole his life. They moved on, leaving him to gaze at the heavens while they hunted their next prey. They loved fighting rebels, and a kill made their day, because slaying “the enemy” gave their lives meaning.
A Triad of Freedom Fighters
Image prompt (#5): A warm memory scene: two young male rebels, one small and dark-haired, one a tall fencer, laugh with Marie, a beautiful, visibly pregnant young woman in a simple peasant dress, on a log beside a forest campfire. Joy, intimacy, and family love amid hardship. Soft golden glow, like a remembered dream.
Since I found no trace of my beloved among the dead, I knew the soldiers had captured her and meant to execute her, as they had executed all the others they took. Marie was of noble blood and had cast her lot with us, making her the prize the crown wanted most. She carried my child. Edouard and I used to argue over who had the right to marry her. We both made love with Marie, and jealousy found no place among us. We cared for one another like family.
Our lives ran short, with little time for courtship, and few women joined our movement. When you choose a freedom fighter’s life, you bond with those who share your values. One of us rode off on a mission most days, so we lived as a triad, and it suited us. The two who stayed behind protected each other and kept each other company.
Our quarrels over Marie served as a running joke. We laughed together and savored each moment of life we shared.
A Promise to the Dead
Image prompt (#6): The small dark-haired rebel closes his dead friend’s eyes and lays green pine branches over the body. His exhausted black mare waits nearby, head low. Somber twilight forest, a vow written on his face.
Now it had ended. Edouard lay dead. I gazed one last time into his eyes, searching for the consciousness of my friend who once lived there, and found his soul had flown. I closed his eyes, covered his body with pine branches and promised to return and bury him with honor. I prayed the vermin would leave him in peace, though my heart told me I would fail to keep that promise.
I leaped onto my weary mare, and we flew like the wind to save Marie.
History: The Fortress at the Gate of Paris
Image prompt (#7): A cutaway view of the Bastille Saint-Antoine in the 1780s: eight round stone towers joined by massive walls, a wide moat, two drawbridges and an inner courtyard far below. Each tower shows four stacked levels of rooms, with soldiers walking the tops of the walls from tower to tower. An old-engraving texture blends with rich painterly color.
The word bastille began as the Occitan bastida, a fortified place. Any walled gate into a medieval town could earn the name, and Grenoble and Lübeck still keep theirs. One bastille outgrew all the rest: the Bastille Saint-Antoine, raised under King Charles V in the 1370s to guard the eastern road into Paris during the Hundred Years’ War.
Its builders gave it eight round towers about 24 meters (79 feet) high, linked by walls of equal height and ringed by a moat more than 24 meters wide. Each tower held four stories of rooms. Soldiers could walk the tops of the walls from tower to tower without touching the ground, and from those heights they looked down into the inner courtyards.
In the 1600s, Cardinal Richelieu turned the fortress into a state prison. A lettre de cachet, signed by the king or by his ministers in his name, sent someone there without trial. In a typical year, the Bastille held about 40 prisoners, including Voltaire, the mysterious Man in the Iron Mask, and the Marquis de Sade. Families used the same letters to silence an unruly son or a scandalous relative.
When Jules climbed to the fourth and final level, he climbed the fortress as it stood: four stories of rooms in every tower, a courtyard far below and soldiers who could flood in from any side.
Into Paris
Image prompt (#8): Dusk in 1789 Paris at the Saint-Antoine gate. The rider leaps from his spent black mare beside the massive stone wall of the Bastille, eight round towers looming above, and touches her neck in farewell. Thunder of cavalry hooves and rising dust in the street behind.
I knew the French military rode behind me, still a fair distance back, and the swelling thunder of hooves told me their numbers grew with every mile. Why did they think me so important that they would kill me at any cost?
We reached Paris, rounded the corner, and climbed the rise along a vast stone wall at the base of the ancient fortress. My horse had given me everything, so I jumped down to spare her. I bade farewell to my loyal Bess, for I knew this ride marked my last hurrah, and we would meet again only in a future lifetime.
The Servants’ Stair
Image prompt (#9): Inside a narrow, torchlit stone spiral staircase in a medieval fortress tower. The small rebels race upward, swords drawn, while soldiers with sabers crowd the steps below and more burst through a doorway above. Tight, dramatic shadows.
I faced the front of the Bastille, mounted the steps in great haste, and veered right to a spiral staircase that climbed to the second floor. The militia breathed down my neck, but for a moment I caught them off guard. Servants used that stair far more than soldiers, and I knew it through my own humble birth.
My relief lasted a heartbeat. When I emerged from the stairwell, troops drew their swords and charged from either side. I ducked back into the stairs, and now the forces from the second level chased me while reinforcements crowded the narrow passage behind them.
I shook them off on the third level, yet I knew the chase would end only one way, so I spiraled up to the fourth and final level. There, I burst onto a balcony overlooking a grand courtyard four floors below. Sconces lined the walls, and a long blue-and-gold silk banner hung beside the railing. After a long season as an outlaw in the forest, I had forgotten such finery existed, and I had no time to admire it.
Dance on the Railing
Image prompt (#10): The small, athletic rebel balances on a stone balcony railing four stories above a grand courtyard, a long blue-and-gold silk banner hanging beside him, dueling a tall, menacing captain called Nemesis, who raises his saber. Soldiers step back to watch. Dizzying height, acrobatic grace, timeless enemies locked in combat.
Short, tiny, wiry, and built like a circus acrobat, I sprang onto the railing and danced back and forth along it like a balance beam, going for the gold. The captain of the troops, a man I called Nemesis, shouldered his way from the rear and raised his saber. We have battled each other since time began.
His troops stepped aside, confident their champion would win. We fought on and on, and I could have run him through a dozen times. Each time, I held my blade back.
Never a Killer
Image prompt (#11): A split-scene collage: on one side, a sunny forest glade where two young rebels spar with rapiers, Edouard laughing and teasing; on the other, the same small fencer on the balcony railing, sword lowered, unable to strike Nemesis. Bittersweet and reflective.
I recalled Edouard’s teasing: “You’ll never be able to kill a man, Jules. You don’t have it in you.” I laughed it off, since I won most of our mock battles. Small as I stood, I remained undefeated.
In the end, I knew he spoke the truth. As perfect as I was in form, style, and performance, I had spared every life I ever held at sword’s point. Now that mercy would cost me my own life, or worse, Nemesis and his troops would capture and torture me until I begged for death.
The Banner Tears
Image prompt (#12): A mid-air moment: the rebel swings out from the balcony on a long blue-and-gold silk banner that rips apart. As his body begins to fall, a luminous, translucent soul rises free above it. The courtyard lies far below, soldiers’ faces turned upward, fabric flowing.
I grew tired, and I refused to let Nemesis take me alive. A breeze caught the banner and whisked it close to my face. When it swung back, I grabbed it and swung out from the balcony, hoping to ride it down to a level where I could jump and escape. The silk gave way under my weight and ripped.
As I began to fall, I left my body. I knew how it felt to hit bottom and expire, for I had done so in lifetimes before. I willed myself to die and leave my body, and it worked. I was free, and my soul took flight.
Reunion in the Sky
Image prompt (#13): Three glowing souls, Jules, Edouard and Marie, embrace and soar together above the rooftops and towers of 1789 Paris, laughing with joy, Marie’s arms flung wide as her friends cry out his name. Luminous clouds open onto a radiant passage to the in-between world.
Marie and Edouard flew toward me, crying out, “Jules! Jules!” They had already died. I came too late to rescue Marie, for she had met the blade, and I had seen Edouard’s body with my own eyes. Both laughed with abandon. I rushed into their arms, and they caught me on either side, lifted me higher, and we flew together.
“What an amazing, wild ride!” Marie exclaimed. She spoke the truth, and we had so much fun. Perhaps in another lifetime, we could ride it again.
We left for the in-between world to rest, unravel, and process until we chose when, where, and how we would incarnate again.
History: Before the Guillotine
Image prompt (#14): The Place de Grève before the Hôtel de Ville in 18th-century Paris at dawn: a wooden scaffold with an executioner’s block and a long, gleaming sword resting beside it, a silent crowd gathering in the mist. Above, the faint, glowing face of a young woman looks toward the light. Solemn, painterly, no gore.
Marie lost her head in the last years before France built its famous machine. Under the old regime, the law sorted the condemned by rank. Nobles died by sword or axe, and a clean stroke required a skilled executioner. Commoners usually died on the gallows, and the crown reserved the wheel and the stake for crimes it wished to punish with terror.
As a noblewoman, Marie earned the sword, and the crown staged her public death to frighten every aristocrat who sided with the rebels. Paris held its public executions on the Place de Grève, the square before the Hôtel de Ville. Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proposed a beheading machine on October 10, 1789, three months after the Bastille fell, so that rich and poor would meet the same swift end. The Assembly made beheading the law in 1791, the blade fell on its first victim in April 1792, and during the Terror of 1793 and 1794 it took thousands of lives.
Marie met the sword on a public scaffold, a noblewoman’s death France gave her three years before the guillotine changed everything.
The Falling Dream
Image prompt (#15): A toddler in a 1950s crib wakes with a start in a dark bedroom, heart pounding. Above her hovers a ghostly, translucent image of the Bastille fall: banner tearing, small figure falling, soul rising. The scene fades to a young woman in her early twenties, waking from the same dream under the same moonlight.
I dreamed of my fall from the Bastille for years, from the time I slept in my crib until my early twenties. Night after night I woke with my heart thumping, breathless, as if I had just run a marathon. I always woke before I hit the floor, just as Jules had chosen to leave his body before the courtyard stones could claim it.
Edouard Returns
Image prompt (#16): Two timelines merge: a modern man in Renaissance fencing garb in Honolulu, palm trees behind him, crosses swords with the ghostly image of his 18th-century self. A woman watches from a glowing computer screen and recognizes a soul she has known across lifetimes. Golden threads link them through time.
Years later, in my thirties, I met Et, my Edouard from the French lifetime, and I recognized him at once. I fell madly in love with him, though we met online rather than face to face. When you share breath and energy with someone in person, you receive a whole stream of information that distance withholds. Yet with Et, his knowing and our connection came through stronger than most people ever feel in the same room. He has deep psychic gifts, and our soul bond runs so profound that it surged into this lifetime.
This time we came as male and female. I have always felt a deep, eternal bond with Et, whatever form we chose. Souls rotate through roles as lovers, parents, children, bosses, friends, and even enemies, and this time we carried sexual energy and a romantic spark.
He gave himself away when he told me he fenced with a passion with the Society for Creative Anachronism in Honolulu. We had crossed swords for endless hours in our past life, and those hours felt as present to me as if we had spent them together in this one. Memories bleed through and overlap across incarnations. The veil holds most of them sealed away to protect the current avatar’s sanity, yet love can pull a thread loose.
Et sparked my dreams again, and like a paused movie, they picked up where they had left off, richer in detail than ever. That series of dreams revealed our friendship as rebels in our forest community, our shared love, and a bond that transcends time and space. Through the millennia, we incarnate and find one another. Et drew me across the Pacific to Hawaii and changed the course of my life. Our paths have parted in this lifetime, and our connection endures forever.
Marie Returns
Image prompt (#17): A modern living room: a man touches his throat while his wife looks on with sudden recognition. Behind him shimmers a faint, translucent image of Marie, the young French woman, her hand at her neck before a shadowy executioner’s block. Playful, eerie, a moment of psychic insight.
I also discovered that my second husband had lived as Marie. One day I noticed him touching his neck in an odd way, and I decided to speak up. “You’re not going to lose your head this time,” I told him.
He reacted in a big way. He grabbed his neck, protested, squealed, and made strange motions and sounds. It blew me away. I stifled a laugh and did my best to comfort him. Sometimes my psychic gifts amaze even me. How did I know he was Marie from the way he caressed his throat?
I vowed to protect his peace and kept that moment to myself from then on. Yet my psyche had reconnected with our trio, and my subconscious mind released more details of the life we shared.
History: July 14, 1789, and the Key to Liberty
Image prompt (#18): A great iron key, the main key of the Bastille, glows inside a gilded glass lantern case in the candlelit central hall of an 18th-century Virginia mansion. Behind it, like a vision in smoke, the crowd of July 14, 1789 swarms across a lowered drawbridge beneath eight stone towers. Golden light, liberty unlocked.
On July 12, 1789, royal authorities moved 250 barrels of gunpowder into the Bastille, and its governor, Bernard-René Jordan de Launay, raised both drawbridges. At dawn on July 14, a crowd armed with muskets, swords, and makeshift weapons gathered outside to demand the arms and powder. Men climbed an outer wall and lowered the first drawbridge, and the fighting raged until de Launay surrendered around five in the afternoon.
The victors found just seven prisoners inside: four forgers, two men judged insane and one held at his own family’s request. The crowd dragged de Launay to the Hôtel de Ville and killed him there. Demolition began within days, and the Place de la Bastille now fills the ground where the towers stood. France celebrates July 14 as its national holiday.
The Marquis de Lafayette, named commander of the new Paris militia, received the fortress’s main key. In March 1790, he entrusted it to Thomas Paine to carry to George Washington, along with a drawing of the ruins, and called it the key of the fortress of despotism. Washington hung it as a token of liberty’s victory, and the key still rests at Mount Vernon today.
One Soul, Many Keys
Image prompt (#19): A woman in her seventies stands in a Maui rainforest at sunset, a glowing key in her open palm. Around her, translucent figures from her lives circle like constellations: a small French rebel with a rapier, a tall fencer, a pregnant young woman in a peasant dress, a black mare. Behind them, eight stone towers dissolve into light. Mystical, joyful, cosmic.
The Bastille fell in a single afternoon, yet its key opened a story that still travels the world. Memory works the same way for me. A dream, a stranger’s touch at his throat, or a man who fences in Honolulu turns the lock, and a life I thought sealed away swings open.
From the soul’s height, Jules leaping from the balcony and Janet waking breathless in her crib share one vast present. I carry Jules’s courage and mercy, and the joy of three friends who laughed as they flew. Marie called it an amazing, wild ride, and she spoke for every life I have lived.
Image Batches for Minerva
Nineteen images in two batches. Paste this style line ahead of each batch so the set matches:
Style for all: large, high-detail collage art, 16:9, sized for PowerPoint and big TV screens, painterly and cinematic, 1789 France. Keep the same hero throughout: Jules, a small, wiry young Frenchman with long dark hair, torn white shirt faded to gray, dark breeches, rapier. Marie: beautiful young woman, visibly pregnant, simple peasant dress. Edouard: tall, handsome fencer. Bess: black mare. No text in the images.
| Batch | Images | Sections |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | #1 to #10 | Title through Dance on the Railing |
| 2 | #11 to #19 | Never a Killer through One Soul, Many Keys |
Pull Quotes
- “You’ll never be able to kill a man, Jules. You don’t have it in you.”
- “What an amazing, wild ride!”
- “You’re not going to lose your head this time.”
Sources
- Bastille, Britannica
- Bastille (fortification), Wikipedia
- The Bastille fortress, French Moments
- Storming of the Bastille, Wikipedia
- French revolutionaries storm the Bastille, HISTORY
- Bastille Day, University of Birmingham Cultural Calendar
- How the Storming of the Bastille Sparked the French Revolution, TheCollector
- Guillotine, New World Encyclopedia
- France Adopts the Guillotine, EBSCO
- Lafayette to George Washington, 17 March 1790, Founders Online
- Key to the Bastille, Mount Vernon collection
