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"Tubal Cain;" our secret repository we named " Polyphemus," from the cave of that famous Cyclops; and the ladder "Jacob," in allusion to that of the patriarch in Holy Writ; our chief use of which jargon was, that if a visitor came upon us suddenly, and one of us perceived any article to be lying about, he had only to say "Jacob," "Anubis," or " Favorus," as the case might be, and the other would throw his handkerchief over or otherwise secrete it. By means of this unfaltering vigilance we were fortunately enabled to outwit all our Arguses.

These preliminary operations over, we occupied ourselves with the great ladder, which required to be at least 180 feet long. For this purpose we unravelled everything we could possibly spare-shirts, towels, stockings, drawers, and handkerchiefs, all that could furnish us with either thread or silk. Every ball we wound we consigned to Polyphemus; and when at length we had enough, we devoted a night to plaiting our rope; and I would defy the ablest ropemaker to twist a better.

Round the top of our tower there was a coping, which projected three or four feet, and which would necessarily cause our ladder to float and sway hither and thither during the descent in a manner sufficient to turn the steadiest head in the world. To obviate this, and save ourselves from being dashed to pieces, we made another rope 360 feet long, to run in a sort of pulley, and steady the first; also several others of various lengths, to secure our ladder to a cannon, or for unforeseen emergencies.

We next made 208 cross-bars for our two ladders; and to guard against the noise these wooden steps might make in rubbing against the wall, we muffled them all in cases, made out of the linings of our dressing-gowns and vests.

Eighteen months of incessant labour were spent in these preparations; but this was not all. We had, it is true, provided means for gaining the top of the tower, and letting ourselves down into the fosse, but for ascending from it there were two ways. One, before mentioned, was to get up on the parapet, and from it to the governor's garden, and thence down into the tower ditch at the Porte St Antoine; but then the parapet, which we must cross, was literally bristled with sentries. True, we might select a dark rainy night, when they kept within their boxes, and so possibly escape them. But it might suddenly clear up after we had embarked in our enterprise, and bring them out; besides the hazard of encountering the inspecting officers of the night, eternally going their rounds, and from whose lanterns it was impossible to conceal ourselves.

The other alternative increased our difficulties, but involved less of peril. It was to bore a passage through the wall separating the ditch of the fortress from that of the Porte St Antoine, the mortar of which, it occurred to me, might be softened, and in some degree decomposed, by its exposure to the frequent overflowings of the Seine. To pierce it required a gimlet, to enable

us to insert the points of two of our chimney bars, which we determined to carry with us. We made one out of an iron bolt of one of our beds, to which we attached a handle, in the shape of a

cross.

The reader who has followed us thus far in our operations, and no doubt entered, in so doing, in some measure into our feelings, shares doubtless in our anxiety for their result. We fixed on the 25th of February 1756 for our flight, when the river being swelled, there would be four feet of water in the two ditches; on which account I filled a leathern portmanteau with a complete change of clothes for each, should we have the good fortune to escape.

No sooner had our dinner been taken away, than we put together our principal ladder, hiding it under our bed, in hopes that it might lie safe there during any further visits for the day. We then put up our wooden ladder in three pieces, and slipped our iron bars for boring the wall into their sheaths, to guard against noise. Furnishing ourselves with a bottle of eau de vie, to revive and strengthen us during our nine hours' labour up to the neck in water, we awaited the arrival and removal of our supper, and locking up for the night.

I was the first to mount the chimney, and soon forgot a rheumatic pain I laboured under in one arm, from the acute agony I experienced in both, from having neglected the precautions adopted by chimney-sweepers, of guarding their elbows and knees with shields of leather. Suffocated with dust and soot, and running down with blood both from arms and legs, I reached the top of the chimney; and letting down a ball of twine, D'Alégre fastened to it the rope attached to the portmanteau, which I launched to take its fate on the platform below. I drew up by the same means the wooden ladder, iron bars, and all our other treasures, concluding with the rope-ladder, which I so managed to secure to the chimney-top, as to assist my companion, and save him the pain I had endured in the ascent. This done, I got down from my uneasy position on the chimney, and we both stood on the platform of the Bastile!

Landed there, we made our various arrangements, and began by rolling our rope-ladder into a coil, which formed a mass of four feet diameter by one in thickness. We rolled it on to the tower called the Tour du Trésor, which appeared to us most favourable for our descent. We secured one of the ends of the ladder to a piece of ordnance, and then fastening our pulley, passed through it the three-hundred-and-sixty-feet-long rope, which I lashed round my body, and which D'Alégre payed out gently as I descended. In spite of this precaution, I fluttered in the air at every motion I made a sensation which may be judged of by the shudder its very idea inspires. I arrived, notwithstanding, without accident in the fosse.

The first thing D'Alégre did was to hand me down the port

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manteau and other things; and having fortunately found a little mound high and dry above the water, I deposited them there. Once more it was in my power to aid my companion, by holding on fast to the rope, and so steadying his descent; which was safely accomplished. And now we could not help both feeling regret at the impossibility of carrying with us our ladder, and the other fruits of our ingenuity and skill, as rare and precious monuments of human industry when animated by the love of freedom.

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It did not rain, and we heard a sentry on his walk within a few paces of us; it was therefore out of the question to mount the parapet, and escape through the governor's garden. We therefore fell back on our other plan, and making straight for the wall between the two fosses, set to work without delay. Just here, as ill luck would have it, the ditch was small and narrow, and consequently the water in it deeper. Elsewhere we should only have been up to the middle, here we had it shoulder-high. There had been a frost a day or two before, so that the water was still full of icicles; and yet we had to stay in it for nine hours, exhausted by excessive toil, and our limbs stiffened with cold.

We had hardly commenced working, when I saw coming, about twelve feet over our heads, a patrol, whose light fell directly on the spot where we were, so that we had no other resource, either at that time or many others during the night, but to dive overhead till the danger was past.

At length, after nine hours' labour, and alarms more painful still, we managed, by tearing asunder the stones with incredible difficulty, to make, in a four feet and a half wall, an opening sufficiently wide to drag ourselves through. We were beginning to give way to our joy when we were beset by a peril we had never foreseen, and which very nearly proved fatal. In crossing the fosse St Antoine, to gain the open road, as ill luck would have it, we stumbled on the aqueduct in the middle of it, having ten feet water at least above our heads, and two feet of mud, which prevented our moving to clear it; for it was only six feet broad. D'Alégre came tumbling on me, and all but threw me down. If he had, we should have been both lost, and perished in this slough. But on feeling him take hold, I obliged him to let go by a violent blow with my fist; and, by a desperate effort, I wrenched myself out of the mud, and seizing my companion by the hair, succeeded in extricating him also. We soon cleared the ditch, and as five o'clock struck, were on the high road.

Moved by a simultaneous impulse, we first threw ourselves into each other's arms in a long and close embrace; then both knelt down to pour out to God, who had carried us through so many perils, our lively gratitude. Such moments may be conceived to describe them is impossible.

This duty fulfilled, we bethought ourselves of the dry clothes I had so fortunately brought; and now much more sensible than

tion at Vincennes, that I had the inconceivable luck to escape from it. I pursued my flight through the fields and vineyards, keeping at the greatest possible distance from the high road. Í reached Paris at last, and shut myself up in a lodging, to enjoy the bliss of being at liberty after fourteen months' captivity.

This first burst of joy, however, was of short duration. Something must be done. That I should be strictly sought after, there could not be a doubt; and were I to be retaken, it was equally certain that a fresh punishment would await me for my escape. If I ventured to show myself, I was lost. Flight was equally fraught with danger; besides, my station and habits gave me a hankering to Paris. So my only alternative seemed to be to remain concealed, self-doomed to a captivity scarce less cruel than that I had left behind.

My head, it will be seen, had hitherto proved but a sorry counsellor. I now consulted my heart, and with little better success. I judged of Madame de Pompadour by myself, and idly fancied I might pique her into generosity by avowing the place of my retreat, and throwing myself on her clemency for pardon of the past. I little knew the person with whom I had to deal. But mad as was the project, I was unfortunate in its mode and execution.

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I drew up a memorial to the king, which, however respectfully worded towards the favourite, and however calculated, by its humble and penitent tone, to excite the compassion of both, might have been sure, had my knowledge of life been greater, would doubly offend the lady, for its not being addressed directly to herself, and exposing her in the eyes of the monarch; while he again, accustomed to yield to her every suggestion, was sure to do so on an occasion when her private feelings were so deeply engaged. But I was young, and knew little of the hearts of men, far less of tyrants; and dearly did I pay for my fatal inexperience.

THE BASTILE.

I had told my enemies where to find me, and it was not long ere they had me back in the Bastile; though at first they pretended it was only to get from me the way in which I had escaped from Vincennes, to obviate the possibility of its hap pening again. If there had been any one to blame in the transaction, they should never have extorted the confession; but as I had been the sole agent in my deliverance, I honestly told them how I had brought it about. I was still simp enough to expect my freedom as the promised reward of my frankness. I did not then know that similar promises were t official jargon of all state prisons; designed only to enhance, the hopes to which they gave birth, the bitterness of fresh

carceration.

I was now, for the first time, in a literal dungeon, whe

horrors, however, were as yet mitigated by the compassion of the good M. Berryer, who, though he could not remove me from it, allowed me my former diet; and, as a small loophole afforded me the light of day, authorised my being supplied, should I wish it, with pen, ink, and paper.

These formed for a long time a solace to my woes. But at the end of six months they became insupportable; and the horrors of suspense, and my despair of release, so acted on my naturally fiery temperament, that I had the madness to inscribe on the margin of a book, which had been lent me, some satirical lines on the authoress of my misery. The book, strictly examined, like everything else within the walls, was carried to the governor; and he was not one to forego the opportunity of ingratiating himself by showing it to Madame de Pompadour. Her rage, amounting to frenzy at this fresh outrage, may easily be imagined. It knew no bounds; and if it could hardly add to the wretchedness of my situation, it at least insured its permanence.

I remained eighteen months in my dungeon ere M. Berryer even dared to take upon him to transfer me to an upper chamber; in addition to which kindness, he granted me-the expense being willingly defrayed by my sorrowing father-the inestimable luxury of a domestic. But even this solace of human speech and human sympathy-for the lad shared as well as Soothed my sorrows-was destined to become a source of bitter anguish to me. The poor fellow, at the end of three months, sunk under the evils of confinement. He wept, pined, and fell sick; and though it needed but a breath of free air, and a taste of freedom, to revive and save him, yet the cruel prison rules having doomed to the same captivity any servant attaching himself to a prisoner, it was in vain we both pleaded, and I implored in his behalf. His murderers chose to add to my torments the spectacle of this poor faithful creature expiring for me, and beside me; nor was he removed from my chamber till in the act of breathing his last sigh!

I nearly sunk under the blow; and M. Berryer, to divert my gloomy thoughts, once more allotted me a companion in a man of about my own age, full of activity, talent, and spirit: guilty of the same crime, and the victim of the same persecution. He too had written to Madame de Pompadour, and his aim had been still vainer than mine; namely, to point out to that worthless favourite a line of conduct by which she might disarm public censure, nay, even, by conducting the king aright, gain something like popularity. Three years had young D'Alégre-a native like myself of the south of France-deplored in the Bastile the consequences of his rash advice.

One day our mutual friend Berryer, who regarded D'Alégre with affectionate interest, in reply to the intreaties with which ve jointly assailed him to procure our liberation, let the dreadful ruth escape, that our exasperated persecutress had vowed against

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