The strictest orders having been given to every officer connected with the Bastile to conceal from the prisoners the death of the marchioness, the surprise of the police minister on finding me apprised of it knew no bounds. He flew himself to interrogate me on the subject; and his tone and manner giving me every reason to conclude that if I were weak enough to betray my two young informants, I should compromise their safety, I told him he should tear me limb from limb before I would consent to name them. He had the meanness to say that this determination would be the price of my liberty.

Days and weeks having elapsed in the most horrible suspense, during which even the very jailers seemed touched with pity, and corroborated my suspicions that the heirs of the marchioness had combined with the minister to render my confinement perpetual, I wrote him in a fit of frenzy a letter, breathing nothing but submission and oblivion of the past, yet calculated, by its terrible truth, to exasperate him against me, and which I half hoped would have the effect of making him put an end at once to my sufferings and life.

M. de Sartine's reply was worthy of him. He remanded me to my dungeon, where I remained some weeks on bread and water. But having some appearances to keep with those who had heard his repeated promises to me not only of liberty, but reward, he reported through the château that he was going to grant me the former boon; but, to accustom me by degrees to breathe so novel an air, he meant to send me to pass a few months in a convent of monks. I was taken accordingly from my dungeon one night in the month of August, and bent down with a huge chain from my neck to my knees, the pain of which could hardly be exceeded had I been broken on the wheel, and every particular of which was detailed for my persecutor's satisfaction, and was conveyed, not to a convent, but to my old quarters at Vincennes! Here, by the kindness of the governor-whose reign, alas! was but too short I was allowed the great privilege of walking in the garden. This I chiefly valued as holding out, sooner or later, some lingering hope of escape. But eight months having elapsed without even my sanguine mind having afforded a possible scheme for effecting it, an unforeseen accident alone-of which my presence of mind might enable me to avail myself-could bring it about; and, almost incredible to relate, such a one did occur at a time least expected by myself.

I was walking on the 23d November 1765, about four in the afternoon, in tolerably clear weather, when suddenly an extraor dinary thick fog came on, which at once suggested a means of escape. Rushing from my guards, knocking down some, and deceiving others, I actually had the good fortune to get clear off I hid myself till night in the park, and then slipped into Paris. As soon as I found myself within the barriers, I went to claim protection of my two young friends opposite the Bastile

who, though they had concluded me dead, perfectly recognised me, and now for the first time confiding my secret to their father, a worthy hair-dresser, borrowed from him a supply of linen and a little money. They also gave me a room in the house, and waited upon me at meals with a kind assiduity, which confirmed my opinion of the excellence of their hearts.

The reader's opinion of my sanity, I fear, will be shaken when I say that I once more wrote to M. de Sartine, though in the most respectful and submissive terms, and such as might have moved any less vindictive spirit to desist from a persecution which, I assured him, it was my only wish to forget! But I took this step in the perfect consciousness that, to escape from the vigilance of that first of police ministers either by remaining concealed in France, or trying to escape abroad, was nearly hopeless, while by propitiating him I might purchase peace.

I begged him, in the event of his acceding to my request, to cause three crosses to be placed on a certain door in the Tuileries; which it seems he did; but instead of being marked on the door itself, they were on a paper, which some passer-by amused himself by tearing down. The signal, I afterwards learnt, had it met my agent's eye, was only designed to lure me to destruction. But, unaware of its having been complied with, and driven to desperation by the frightful hazards of my position, I resolved to throw myself on the compassion and generosity of the prime minister, the Duke de Choiseul, whose noble character, and superiority over his colleagues, seemed to promise me a chance of protection.

I wrote to him, and requested an audience for the 18th December at Fontainbleau, where the court then was, stating that my sole wish was, that he would himself be the judge of my cause, and not pronounce upon it till he had given me a hearing.

[Reckoning, with his usual confidence, on justice in this high quarter, De la Tude went to Fontainbleau, which he reached with great difficulty through heavy snows; and, as will be anticipated, was captured by the police on his arrival, and conveyed once more to Vincennes.]

They threw me this time into a horrible dungeon-the one marked A, whose very aspect made me tremble. It was scarce seven feet and a half long by six wide. Four doors, each at a foot from the other, some of iron, all of them garnished with enormous bolts, sufficed to exclude hope from this living tomb. Here the kind governor still came sometimes to see me. Although M. de Sartine had thrown upon him the blame of my flight, and he had nearly lost his situation, he still warmly importuned him on my behalf. About this time two persons came to me from Sartine, with the message that I might, with one word, obtain my liberty by simply naming the individual to whom I had intrusted my papers. To this I replied, without hesitation, "that I had entered prison an honest man, and would die there, rather

than go out of it a coward and a villain." They left me without uttering another word.

I know not how long I remained in this dungeon, having in it no means of distinguishing between day and night, and calculating the hours by sufferings alone. It would doubtless have been my grave, and my persecutor's object of my being forgotten in it speedily attained, but for the humanity of one of my turnkeys. I felt the approach of death, and however little cause I had to dread it, its lingering horrors appalled me; and summoning my last strength, I implored this man, whom I had sometimes seen affected by my miseries, to give me the means of ridding myself of them.

He rushed out of my cell, and shortly after returned with the surgeon of the château. Horrified at my situation, he found me so prodigiously swelled, that every part retained the impression of a finger when pressed upon it. But how could he prescribe for a wretch deprived of air, except for the moment in the day that his wicket was opened, and continually stretched, for want of room to move, on his heap of rotten straw? He insisted on my immediate removal, declaring I had not otherwise four-andtwenty hours to live; and though no one, not even the kind governor, would venture to ask the order from M. de Sartine, it was somehow or other at last effected, and in three hours two jailers came to take me out on their shoulders, and carried me to the first room on the left of the tower. My fever slowly subsided; but the swelling continuing, I prescribed for myself a cure, sanctioned by the doctor-a draught of hot wine, with a plentiful quantity of sugar in it, which opened my pores, closed for months by excess of cold, restored my strength, and at length removed the swelling.

All hope of freedom, either from the justice or relenting of the minister, being at an end, the returning activity of my mind began to exert itself upon the means of communication with my fellow-prisoners, both to beguile my present sorrows, and perhaps to find friends who might one day hold out to me a helping hand. To establish this intercourse from a chamber where I was under the strictest surveillance, was no easy matter; but it sufficed that it was not impossible for me to undertake it.

To attain my object, it was necessary to perforate the enormous wall of the keep towards the garden, where the prisoners went to take the air; and for this task I had no tools save my ten fingers. I recollected having picked up in my walks the previous year an old sword-blade and the iron hoop of a bucket, and carefully secreting them for some time of need; but they were still in the garden, and on no account would the officials grant me the privilege of walking there, which I had twice abused to escape from their grasp.

I managed, nevertheless, to pass a sufficient time there to ess myself of my treasures. I had observed that when

any repairs were required in a prisoner's room, the inmate was always turned out during the stay of the workman employed. I broke, so naturally as not to excite suspicion, a couple of panes in my window, and my room being close to the outer door, I was locked up, for the few minutes of the glazier's stay, in the nearest place of safety-the garden. I concealed the swordblade, and also the hoop, under my clothes, and returned to my . room as if nothing had happened, but full of the use I was to make of my tools.

The walls of the prison were at least five feet thick, while my hoop was only three feet long. Yet in twenty-six months of incredible labour, during which I a hundred times abandoned and resumed my attempts, I contrived to make a hole in the tower. I chose a dark spot near the chimney, where the mantelshelf cast a deep shadow. The opening into the room I closed with a plug of cement, undistinguishable from the solid stone; and had the far smaller aperture outside attracted attention from without, I had the precaution always, when not in actual use, to keep the sword-blade in the aperture.

My opening completed, I made myself, by uniting slender bits of wood with twine made from my shirts, a sort of long fishingrod-like stick, which, with a ribbon at the end of it, I passed out at the hole at a moment when I heard a single prisoner locked into the garden. His astonishment on pulling the stick towards him, and finding it was held at the other end, may be imagined, and still more when he learned who I was, and how I had worked through the wall. He told me in return that he was a Baron de Venac, from my own country, a fellow-sufferer in the same cause, having now expiated for nineteen years the crime of giving Madame de Pompadour a warning, which, while it saved her life, was calculated to wound her pride.

The next I made acquaintance with was a gentleman of Montpellier, also a victim of the marchioness, who had him arrested seventeen years before on the mere suspicion of having spoken ill of her! He was very unwell, and so weak, that he could scarcely stand; and as he never returned, he must, I fear, have sunk under the evils of protracted confinement.

Among other prisoners whose causes of imprisonment in many instances were equally frivolous, I naturally dwell on those which were the same as my own. A Chevalier de Rochegerault had, like myself, been arrested at Amsterdam, as the suspected author of a pamphlet against Madame de Pompadour. He had been twenty-three years a prisoner; yet he declared to me, by everything sacred, that he had never so much as seen the unlucky pamphlet. To justify himself had been impossible, as no opportunity of doing so had ever been afforded him.

My other persecutor, M. de Sartine, had shown himself equally implacable. An aged prisoner, named Monsieur de Mirabelle, told me that he had picked up by ear four lines of verse (no

doubt an epigram against that minister), and had the misfortune to repeat them in society. "I heard," said he, "that I was to be arrested, and, like you, thought to disarm my enemy by frankness and submission. I went to M. de Sartine, and asked him which prison I should drive to? He said Vincennes. I came, and here I have since remained eleven years. In that time I have several times seen M. de Sartine, and could never get out of him but these words, 'Either you are the author of those. lines, or you know who wrote them: if the latter, your silence involves equal guilt. Name the author, and you are that moment free!""

It was not the enjoyment of conversation alone which I and others owed to my hole in the wall. Through it those prisoners who were allowed pen and paper transmitted supplies of them to me; nay, even by saturating with ink cotton ravellings, that precious fluid itself was conveyed to me. By these means I not only extended my own communications, but enabled others, who never met, to conduct theirs; and my cell became a sort of general post-office, whence circulated a very active correspondence. This was an especial blessing to those victims of ministerial resentment who not only, like myself, never quitted their chambers, but were denied every alleviation of their lot.

Mine had been ameliorated, as far as in him lay, by M. Guyonnet. But about this time we unhappily lost him, and there was sent in his stead a Sieur de Rougemont, a sordid and tyrannical wretch. The room I had been removed to commanded a superb view. The new governor's first action was to have the windows built up and narrowed, so that I could not enjoy it. This not sufficing, he put up across the bars a wire grating, so close, as almost to exclude the light of day; and grudging me even this dim and sepulchral glimmer, he ended by placing at the top of the window a sort of penthouse, by which my view of the sky was limited to an almost imperceptible point.

M. de Sartine, who about this time was promoted to the ministry of marine, had so bequeathed his resentments and line of conduct to his successor, M. le Noir, that an attempt to procure judicial redress for my wrongs only occasioned my being remanded to a yet worse dungeon, in which, totally deprived of light, and obtaining air only through the keyholes of three enor mous doors, I was probably destined to pass the miserable remnant of my life.

Nine long months did my present purgatory endure, the damp having now brought on not only my former swelling, but universal rheumatism in every limb. I had just begun to hail death as a welcome deliverer, when, as usual at these direst periods of my sufferings, a fit of humanity seized my persecutors, and they snatched me from his grasp. For three months, during