THE DAWN OF REVOLUTION
State of France--Bad harvests--Universal famine--Chronic
disturbances--Crime prevalent--Cartouche--His organized gang--His
capture, sentence and execution--Pamphleteers and libelists
in the Bastile--Lenglet-Dufresnoy--Roy--Voltaire--His first
consignment to the Bastile--His release and departure for
London--Cellamare-Alberoni conspiracy--Mlle. De Launay, afterwards
Madame de Staal--Remarkable escapes--Latude and Allégre.
Dark clouds hovered over France in the latter years of the reign of
Louis XIV: an empty exchequer drained by the cost of a protracted and
disastrous war; the exodus of many thousands of the most industrious
producers of wealth, flying from religious intolerance; a succession
of bad harvests, causing universal famine and chronic disturbance.
The people rose against the new edicts increasing taxes upon salt,
upon tobacco and on stamped paper, and were repressed with harshness,
shot down, thrown into prison or hanged. The genuine distress in the
country was terrible. Thousands of deaths from starvation occurred.
Hordes of wretched creatures wandered like wild beasts through the
forest of Orleans. A Jesuit priest wrote from Onzain that he preached
to four or five skeletons, who barely existed on raw thistles, snails
and the putrid remains of dead animals. In the Vendomois, the heather
was made into bread with an intermixture of sawdust, and soup was
made with roots and the sap of trees. Touraine, once the very garden
of France, had become a wilderness. The hungry fought for a morsel of
horse flesh, torn from some wretched beast which had died a natural
death. Four-fifths of the inhabitants of the villages had become public
beggars. In one village of four hundred houses, the population had been
reduced to three persons.
Never in the history of France had robberies been so numerous or so
varied in character as during this period. Paris was filled with the
worst criminals and desperadoes. The provinces were overrun with them.
The whole country was ravaged and terrorised. Prominent among this
dangerous fraternity, whose name was legion, is one name, that of
Cartouche, the most noted evil doer of his or indeed any time. Others
might have excelled him in originality, intelligence and daring. That
which gave him especial distinction was his power of organisation, his
nice choice of associates and the far-reaching extent of his nefarious
plans. The devoted and obedient band he directed was recruited from
all sources, and included numbers of outwardly respectable persons
even drawn from the police and the French guards. He had agents at
his disposal for all branches of his business; he had spies, his
active assistants to deal the blows, his receivers, his locksmiths,
his publicans with ready shelter and asylums of retreat. The forces
controlled by Cartouche were extraordinarily numerous, and the total
was said to exceed a couple of thousand persons of both sexes.
Paris was dismayed and indignant when the operations grew and
increased, and the police proved less able to check them. In the
last months of 1719 and during 1720, widespread terror prevailed.
The thieves worked their will even in daylight. After dark the city
belonged to them. The richest quarters were parcelled out among the
various gangs, which broke into every house and summoned every wayfarer
to stand and deliver. As a specimen of their proceedings,--a party
visited the mansion, once the Hotel of the Maréchal de France and now
occupied by the Spanish Ambassador, entered the Ambassador's bedroom
at night and rifled it, securing a rich booty--several collars of fine
pearls, a brooch adorned with twenty-seven enormous diamonds, a large
service of silver plate and the whole of the magnificent wardrobe of
the lady of the house. This was only one of hundreds of such outrages,
which were greatly encouraged by the diffusion of luxury among the
upper classes, while the lower, as we have seen, were plunged in misery
and starvation.
This was the epoch of the speculations of the famous adventurer,
Law, who established the great Bank of Mississippi, and for the time
made the fortunes of all who joined in his schemes and trafficked in
his shares. Money was almost a drug; people made so much and made
it so fast that it was difficult to spend it. Houses were furnished
regardless of expense with gorgeous tapestry, cloth of gold hangings,
beds of costly woods encrusted with jewels and ormolu, Venetian glasses
in ivory frames, candelabra of rock crystal. All this luxury played
into the hands of Cartouche and his followers, who worked on a system,
recognising each other by strict signs and helping each other to
seize and pass away articles of value from hand to hand along a whole
street. Strict order regulated the conduct of the thieves. Many were
forbidden to use unnecessary violence, killing was only permitted in
self defence, the same person was never to be robbed twice, and some
were entrusted with the password of the band as a safe conduct through
a crowd.
Meanwhile the personality of Cartouche was constantly concealed. Some
went so far as to declare that he was a myth and did not exist in the
flesh. Yet the suspicion grew into certainty that Paris was at the
mercy of a dangerous combination, directed by and centred in one astute
and capable leader. Thieves taken red-handed had revealed upon the rack
the identity of Cartouche and the government was adjured to effect his
capture, but without result. So daring did he become that he openly
showed himself at carnival time with five of his chief lieutenants and
defied arrest.
Cartouche was a popular hero, for he pretended to succor the poor with
the booty he took from the rich. He was a species of Parisian Fra
Diavolo, and many stories were invented in proof of his generosity,
his sense of humor and his kindliness to those in distress. As a
matter of fact he was a brutal, black-hearted villain, whose most
prominent characteristic was his constant loyalty to his followers,
by which he secured their unswerving attachment and by means of it
worked with such remarkable success. To this day his name survives
as the prototype of a criminal leader, directing the wide operations
of a well organised gang of depredators that swept all before them.
Their exploits were at times marvellous, both in initiative and
execution, and owed everything to Cartouche. One among many stories
told of him may be quoted as illustrating his ingenious methods. It
was a robbery from the chief officer of the watch, from whom he stole
a number of silver forks in broad daylight, and while actually engaged
in conversation with his victim. Cartouche arrived at this official's
house in his carriage, accompanied by two tall flunkeys in gorgeous
livery. He announced himself as an Englishman, and was shown into the
dining-room, where dinner was in progress. Cartouche declined to take a
seat, but contrived to lead the host to a corner of the room where he
regaled him with a fabulous story of how an attack was being organised
by Cartouche on his house. The officer quite failed to recognise his
visitor, and listened with profound attention. It was not until after
Cartouche had left that it was discovered that not a single fork
or spoon remained upon his table, the silver having been adroitly
abstracted by Cartouche, who passed it unseen to his confederates--the
disguised footmen who had accompanied him. Many similar thefts were
committed by Cartouche and his gang, one victim being the Archbishop of
Bourges.
Cartouche, by his cleverness in disguise, long escaped capture, and
it was not until October 15th, 1721, that he was finally caught and
arrested. His capture naturally created an immense sensation in Paris,
and became the universal topic of conversation. Cartouche had been
traced to a wine shop, where he was found in bed by M. le Blanc, an
employé of the War Ministry, who had with him forty picked soldiers
and a number of policemen. Orders had been issued to take Cartouche,
dead or alive. His capture came about through a patrol soldier who
had recognised Cartouche and acted as a spy on his movements. This
man had been carried to the Châtelet by Pekom, major of the Guards,
and when threatened with the utmost rigor of the law confessed all
he knew about the prince of thieves. The prisoner was taken first
to the residence of M. le Blanc and afterwards to the Châtelet. It
was found necessary to be extremely circumspect with Cartouche on
account of his violence, and his cell was closely guarded by four men.
Cartouche soon made an attempt to escape in company with a fellow
occupant of his cell, who happened to be a mason. Having made a hole
in a sewer passage below, they dropped into the water, waded to the
end of the gallery and finally reached the cellar of a greengrocer
in the neighborhood thence they emerged into the shop, and were on
the verge of escape, but the barking of the greengrocer's dog aroused
the inmates of the house, who gave the alarm, and four policemen, who
happened to be in the neighborhood, came to the rescue. Cartouche was
recognised, captured and again imprisoned, being now securely chained
by his feet and hands. He was later transferred to the Conciergerie
and more closely watched than ever during his trial, which was
concluded on November 26th, 1721, when sentence was passed upon him
and two accomplices. On the day following, Cartouche was subjected to
the torture "extraordinary" by means of the "boot," which he endured
without yielding, and refused to make any confession. The scaffold,
meanwhile was erected in the Place de Grève where the carpenters put
up five wheels and two gibbets. Directly the place of execution became
known in Paris, the streets were filled with large crowds of people
and windows overlooking the Grève were let at high prices. Apparently
the magistrates did not care to gratify the curiosity of the public,
and before the afternoon four of the wheels and one of the gibbets
were removed. Towards four o'clock Charles Sanson, the executioner of
the Court of Justice, went to the Conciergerie, accompanied by his
assistants, and sentence was read to the culprit, who was afterwards
handed over to the secular arm. Cartouche had displayed no emotion
throughout the trial. He no doubt thought himself a hero, and wished
to die amidst the applause of the people who had long feared him.
When, however, the cortège started, Cartouche began to grow uneasy
and finally his stolid indifference completely gave way. On reaching
the Place de Grève he noticed that only one wheel remained, and his
agitation became intense. He repeatedly exclaimed, "_Les frollants!_"
"_Les frollants!_" (the traitors), thinking his accomplices had been
induced to confess, and had betrayed him. Now his stoicism vanished,
and he insisted upon being taken back to the Hôtel de Ville to confess
his sins. On the following morning great crowds again assembled to
witness the execution. The condemned man had lost his bravado, but
still displayed strange firmness. His natural instincts appeared when
he was placed on the _Croix de St. André_, and the dull thud of the
iron bar descending extorted the exclamation "One" from him, as if
it was his business to count the number of blows to be inflicted.
Although it had been stipulated at the passing of sentence that
Cartouche should be strangled after a certain number of strokes, the
excitement of the clerk of the Court caused him to withhold the fact
from the executioner; and so great was the strength of Cartouche that
it required eleven blows to break him on the wheel.
Other executions speedily followed. Scaffold and gibbet were kept busy
till 1722, and in the succeeding years five females whom Cartouche
had found useful as auxiliaries to his society were put upon their
trial, sentenced and executed. Many receivers of stolen goods were also
brought to account before the long series of crimes that had defied the
police was finally ended.
In these days the prevailing discontent against the ruling authority
found voice in the manner so often exhibited by a ground-down and
severely repressed people. This was the age of the libellist and the
pamphleteer, and the incessant proceedings against them brought in
fresh harvests to the Bastile. The class was comprehensive, and its
two extremes ranged between a great literary genius such as Voltaire
and the petty penny-a-liner, who frequently found a lodging in the
State prisons. Of the last named category the most prolific was Gatien
Sandras de Courtilz, who produced about a hundred volumes of satirical,
political pamphlets and fictitious histories. Such a man was for ever
within four walls or in hiding beyond the frontier. Leniency was wasted
on him. Upon a petition to the Chancellor Pontchartrain, an inquiry
was instituted into the reasons of his imprisonment with the result
that he was released. Within two years he was found again distributing
libels, and was again thrown into the Bastile, this time to remain
there for ten years.
A curious specimen of this class distinguished himself in the following
reign,--a certain Abbé Nicolas Lenglet-Dufresnoy, who was for ever in
and out of the Bastile. He is spoken of as a man of wit and learning,
an indefatigable worker, a fearless writer, but of very indifferent
honesty, venial to the last degree, to be bought at any time and ready
for any baseness, even to espionage. Isaac d'Israeli mentions him in
his "Curiosities of Literature" and in terms of praise as a man of much
erudition with a fluent, caustic pen and daring opinions. He earned a
calm contempt for the rubs of evil fortune, and when a fresh arrest was
decreed against him, he accepted it with a light heart. He well knew
his way to the Bastile. At the sight of the officer, who came to escort
him to prison, he would pick up his night-cap and his snuff-box, gather
his papers together and take up his quarter in the old familiar cell
where he had already done so much good work. He suffered seven distinct
imprisonments in the Bastile between 1718 and 1752, and saw also the
inside of the prisons of Vincennes, Strasbourg and For-l'Évêque. At his
last release he signed the following declaration:
"Being at liberty, I promise, in conformity with the orders of the
King, to say nothing of the prisoners or other things concerning the
Bastile, which may have come to my knowledge. In addition to this I
acknowledge that all my good silver and papers and effects which I
brought to the said castle have been restored to me."
Lenglet rendered one important service to the State, the discovery of
the Cellamare-Alberoni conspiracy, but he would not proceed in the
affair until he had been assured that no lives should be sacrificed. He
was a painstaking writer, and kept one manuscript by him for fifty-five
years; it was, however, a work on visions and apparitions, and he was a
little afraid of publishing it to the world. His end came by a strange
accident. He fell into the fire as he slept over a "modern book" and
was burned to death. He was then eighty years of age.
Among the smaller people, scribblers and second rate litterateurs,
who were consigned to the Bastile, was Roy, an impudent rascal, who
lampooned royalty and royal things, and impertinently attacked the
Spanish ambassador. All Paris was moved by his arrest, his papers were
sealed and he was treated as of more importance than he deserved.
After four months' detention he was released, and banished from Paris
to a distance of ninety leagues. He soon returned and published a
defamatory ode on the French generals. General de Moncrieff met Roy in
the streets, boxed his ears and kicked him, but although the poet wore
his sword he did not defend himself. Roy raged furiously against the
Academy which would not elect him a member and wrote a stinging epigram
when the Comte de Clermont of the blood royal was chosen. The Comte
paid a ruffian to give him a thrashing, which was so severe that the
poet, now eighty years of age, succumbed to the punishment.
Another literary prisoner of more pretensions was the Abbé Prevost,
author of the well known _Manon Lescaut_, the only work which has
survived out of the 170 books he wrote in all. He was a Jesuit, who
joined the order of the Benedictines, but fled from their house in
St.-Germain-des-Prés, and went about Paris freely. He was arrested by
the police and sent back to his monastery. For seven years he remained
quiet, but when at length he proposed to publish new works in order "to
impose silence upon the malignity of his enemies," a _lettre de cachet_
was issued to commit him to the Bastile. The Prince de Conti came to
his help, and gave him money with which he escaped to Brussels.
Voltaire's first connection with the Bastile was in 1717, when he
was only twenty-two years of age, a law student in Paris. He had
already attracted attention by his insolent lampoons on the Regent
and the government, and had been banished from Paris for writing
an epigram styled the _Bourbier_, "the mud heap." This new offence
was a scandalous Latin inscription and some scathing verses which,
according to a French writer, would have been punished under Louis
XIV with imprisonment for life. He took his arrest very lightly. The
officer who escorted him to the Bastile reports: "Arouet (Voltaire)
joked a good deal on the road, saying he did not think any business
was done on feast days, that he did not mind going to the Bastile but
hoped he would be allowed to continue taking his milk, and that if
offered immediate release he would beg to remain a fortnight longer."
His detention ran on from week to week into eleven months, which
he employed in writing two of his masterpieces, _La Henriade_ and
_Oedipe_, the latter his first play to have a real success when put
upon the stage.
Voltaire, when released, was ordered to reside at Chatenay with his
father, who had a country house there, and offered to be responsible
for him. The charge was onerous, and the young man was sent to Holland
to be attached to the French ambassador, but he soon drifted back to
Paris, where he remained in obscurity for seven years. Now he came
to the front as the victim of a personal attack by bravos in the pay
of the Chevalier de Rohan, by whom he was severely caned. The poet
had offended the nobility by his insolent airs. Voltaire appealed for
protection, and orders were issued to arrest De Rohan's hirelings if
they could be found. The poet sought satisfaction against the moving
spirit, and having gone for a time into the country to practise
fencing, returned to Paris and challenged the Chevalier, when he met
him in the dressing-room of the famous actress, Adrienne Lecouvreur.
The duel was arranged, but the De Rohan family interposed and secured
Voltaire's committal to the Bastile, when he wrote to the Minister
Herault:
"In the deplorable condition in which I find myself I implore your
kindness. I have been sent to the Bastile for having pursued with too
much haste and ardor the established laws of honor. I was set upon
publicly by six persons, and I am punished for the crime of another
because I did not wish to hand him over to justice. I beg you to use
your credit to obtain leave for me to go to England."
Leave was granted, accompanied with release, and in due course Voltaire
arrived in London, where he remained three years. This period tended
greatly to develop his mental qualities. "He went a discontented poet,
he left England a philosopher, the friend of humanity," says Victor
Cousin. He became a leader among the men who, as Macaulay puts it,
"with all their faults, moral and intellectual, sincerely and earnestly
desired the improvement of the condition of the human race, whose blood
boiled at the sight of cruelty and injustice, who made manful war with
every faculty they possessed on what they considered as abuses, and
who on many signal occasions placed themselves gallantly between the
powerful and the oppressed."
Voltaire was presently permitted to return to Paris. Minister Maurepas
wrote him: "You may go to Paris when you like and even reside there....
I am persuaded you will keep a watch upon yourself at Paris, and do
nothing calculated to get you into trouble." The warning was futile.
Within four years he was once more arrested and lodged in the castle
prison of Auxonne, with strict orders that he was never to leave the
interior of the castle. His offences were blasphemy and a bitter
attack upon the Stuarts. He had, moreover, published his "Lettres
Philosophiques," and a new _lettre de cachet_ was to be issued, but he
was given time and opportunity to make his escape into Germany. The
work was, however, burned by the public executioner, and the wretched
publisher sent to the Bastile, after the confiscation of all his stock,
which meant total ruin. Prison history is not further concerned with
Voltaire. His friendship with Frederick the Great, his long retreat in
Switzerland and the fierce criticisms and manifestoes he fulminated
from Ferney must be sought elsewhere.
Reference has been made in a previous page to the Cellamare-Alberoni
conspiracy first detected by Abbé Lenglet, which had for object the
removal of the Duc d'Orleans from the Regency and the convocation of
the States General, the first organised effort towards more popular
government in France. A secondary aim was a coalition of the powers
to re-establish the Stuart dynasty in England. Nothing came of the
conspiracy, but the arrest of those implicated. Among them were the
Duc and Duchesse de Maine. A certain Mdlle. de Launay, who was a
waiting woman of the Duchess, staunchly refused to betray her mistress
and was imprisoned in the Bastile. Out of this grew a rather romantic
love story. The King's lieutenant of the Bastile, a certain M. de
Maison Rougé, an old cavalry officer, was greatly attracted by Mdlle.
de Launay. "He conceived the greatest attachment that any one ever had
for me," she writes in her amusing memoirs. "He was the only man by
whom I think I was ever really loved." His devotion led him to grant
many privileges to his prisoner, above all in allowing her to open a
correspondence with another inmate of the Bastile, the Chevalier de
Ménil,--also concerned in the Cellamare conspiracy,--with whom she had
a slight acquaintance. M. de Maison Rougé went so far as to allow them
to meet on several occasions, and, much to his chagrin, the pair fell
desperately in love with each other. Mdlle. de Launay expected to marry
the Chevalier after their release, but on getting out of the Bastile
she found herself forgotten. Some fifteen years later she became the
wife of Baron de Staal, an ex-officer of the Swiss Guards under the Duc
de Maine. She must not be confused, of course, with the Madame de Staël
of Napoleon's time.
While some prisoners like Masers Latude--of whom more directly--followed
their natural bent in making the most daring and desperate attempts
to escape from the Bastile, there were one or two cases in which
men showed a strong reluctance to leave it. One of the victims of
the Cellamare conspiracy was an ex-cavalry officer, the Marquis de
Bonrepas, who had been shut up for four or five years. He found friends
abroad who sought to obtain his release. But he received the offer
of liberty with a very bad grace, declaring his preference for the
prison. He was a veteran soldier, old, poor and without friends, and
he was only persuaded to leave the Bastile on the promise of a home at
the Invalides with a pension. A doctor of the University, François du
Boulay, was sent to the Bastile in 1727 and remained there forty-seven
years. Then, when Louis XVI ascended the throne, search was made
through the registers for meet subjects for the King's pardon, and Du
Boulay was one of those recommended for discharge. He went out and
deeply regretted it. He was quite friendless and could find no trace of
any member of his family. His house had been pulled down and a public
edifice built upon the site. He had been quite happy in the Bastile,
and begged that he might return there. His prayer was refused, however,
and he withdrew altogether from the world and passed the rest of his
days in complete solitude.
The name of Latude, mentioned above, is classed in prison history with
those of Baron Trenck, Sack, Shepherd, Casanova and "Punch" Howard as
the heroes of the most remarkable prison escapes on record. He is best
known as Latude, but he had many aliases,--Jean Henri, Danry, Dawyer,
Gedor; and his offence was that of seeking to curry favor with Madame
de Pompadour by falsely informing her that her life was in danger.
He warned her carefully to avoid opening a box that would reach her
through the post, which, in fact, was sent by himself. It enclosed a
perfectly harmless white powder. Then having despatched it he went in
person and on foot to Versailles expecting to be handsomely rewarded
for saving the life of the King's favorite.
Unfortunately for Latude the innocuous nature of the powder was
disbelieved, and the mere possibility of foul play sufficed to raise
suspicion. Both Louis XV and his mistress shivered at the very whisper
of poison. The police promptly laid hands upon the author of this sorry
trick, and he was committed to Vincennes to begin an imprisonment
which lasted, with short intervals of freedom after his escapes,
for thirty-four years. Latude was well treated and was visited by
the King's doctor, as it was thought his mind was deranged. He was,
however, keen witted enough to snatch at the first chance of escape.
When at exercise in the garden, apparently alone, a dog ran against
the door and it fell open. Latude instantly stepped through and got
into the open fields, through which he ran for his life, and made
his way into Paris, to the house of a friend, one Duval. Thence he
wrote a letter to Madame de Pompadour beseeching her forgiveness and
imprudently giving his address. The authorities at once laid hands upon
him, and after being no more than twenty-four hours at large he was
once more imprisoned, this time in the Bastile.
He now found a prison companion with whom his fortunes were to be
closely allied, one Allégre, who had been accused of the same crime,
that of attempting to poison Madame de Pompadour. Allégre, who in the
end died in a lunatic asylum, was a violent, unmanageable and hardly
responsible prisoner. He always denied the charges brought against
him, as did also Latude. The two joined forces in giving trouble and
breaking the prison rules. They were caught in clandestine conversation
with others, from floor to floor in the Bazinière Tower, and in passing
tobacco to each other. Latude addressed an indignant appeal against
his treatment to the authorities, written upon linen with his blood.
He complained of his food, demanded fish for breakfast, declaring he
could not eat eggs, artichokes or spinach, and would pay out of his
own pocket for different food. He became enraged when these requests
were refused. When fault was found with his misuse of the linen, he
asked for paper and more shirts. He got the former, and began a fresh
petition of interminable length and, when the governor grew weary of
waiting for it, threw it into the fire.
As the chamber occupied by Latude and Allégre was in the basement
and liable to be flooded by the inundation of the Seine, it became
necessary to remove them to another. This was more favorable to escape,
and to this they now turned their attention with the strange ingenuity
and unwearied patience so often displayed by captives. The reason for
Latude's demand for more shirts was now explained. For eighteen months
they worked unceasingly, unravelling the linen and with the thread
manufacturing a rope ladder three hundred feet in length. The rungs
were of wood made from the fuel supplied for their fire daily. These
articles were carefully concealed under the floor. When all was ready,
Latude took stock of their productions. There was 1,400 feet of linen
rope and 208 rungs of wood, the rungs encased in stuff from the linings
of their dressing gowns, coats and waistcoats to muffle the noise of
the ladder as it swung against the wall of the Tower.
The actual escape was effected by climbing up the interior of the
chimney of their room, having first dislodged the chimney bars, which
they took with them. On reaching the roof, they lowered the ladder and
went down it into the ditch, which was fourteen feet deep in water.
Notwithstanding this, they attacked the outer wall with their chimney
bars of iron, and after eight hours' incessant labor broke an opening
through its ponderous thickness and despite the fear of interruption
from patrols passing outside with flaming torches. Both fugitives
when at large hastened to leave Paris. Allégre got as far as Brussels,
whence he wrote an abusive letter to Madame de Pompadour, and at the
instance of the French King was taken into custody and lodged in
the prison at Lille, thence escorted to the frontier and so back to
the Bastile. Latude took refuge, but found no safety, in Amsterdam.
His whereabouts was betrayed by letters to his mother which were
intercepted. He, too, was reinstalled in the Bastile--after four brief
months of liberty.
Latude's leadership in the escapades seems to have been accepted
as proved, and he was now more harshly treated than his associate,
Allégre. He lay in his cell upon straw in the very lowest depths of the
castle, ironed, with no blankets and suffering much from the bitter
cold. For three years and more he endured this, and was only removed
when the Seine once more overflowed and he was all but drowned in his
cell. The severity shown him was to be traced to the trouble his escape
had brought upon his gaolers, who were reprimanded, fined and otherwise
punished. The only alleviation of his misery was the permission to
remove half his irons, those of his hands or feet.
As the years passed, this harsh treatment was somewhat mitigated,
but the effect on Latude was only to make him more defiant and
irreconcilable. He found many ways of annoying the authorities. He
broke constantly into noisy disturbances. "This prisoner," it is
reported, "has a voice of thunder, which can be heard all through and
outside the Bastile. It is impossible for me to repeat his insults as
I have too much respect for the persons he mentioned." Not strangely,
his temper was irritable. He swore over his dinner because it was
not served with a larded fowl. He was dissatisfied with the clothes
provided for him, and resented complying with the rules in force.
When a tailor was ordered to make him a dressing-gown, a jacket and
breeches, he wished to be measured, whereas, according to the rules of
the Bastile, the tailor cut out new clothes on the pattern of the old.
The conduct of Allégre (who was no doubt mad) was worse. He was
dangerous and tried to stab his warders. Then he adopted the well known
prison trick of "breaking out," of smashing everything breakable in
his cell, all pottery, glass, tearing up his mattress and throwing
the pieces out of the window, destroying his shirts, "which cost the
King twenty francs apiece," and his pocket handkerchiefs, which were
of cambric. He had nothing on his body but his waistcoat and his
breeches. "If he be not mad he plays the madman very well," writes the
governor, and again: "This prisoner would wear out the patience of
the most virtuous Capuchin." The medical opinion on his state was not
definite, but he was removed to Charenton, the famous lunatic asylum,
and confined there in a new cage.
Fifteen years had passed since his first arrest. Latude continued to
forward petitions for his release, and always got the same answer, that
the proper moment for it had not yet arrived. But he was once more
transferred to Vincennes and again managed to escape. Taking advantage
of the evident laxity of supervision he slipped away in a fog. He
could not keep quiet but wrote to M. de Sartine, now the Lieutenant of
Police, offering terms. If he were paid 30,000 francs for the plans and
public papers he had drawn up, he was willing to forget and forgive
the cruelties practised upon him. Failing to receive a reply, he went
in person to Fontainebleau to press his case upon the Duc de Choiseul,
who forthwith ordered him back into imprisonment. After three weeks of
freedom he found himself again inside Vincennes.
As time passed, he also exhibited signs of madness, and was at last
also transferred for a time to Charenton, from which he was finally
released in 1777. He went out on the 5th of June with orders to reside
at Montagnac, and in little more than a month was again in trouble for
writing his memoirs a little too openly. He passed through the Little
Châtelet and thence to Bicêtre, the semi prison-asylum, and stayed
there generally in an underground cell and on the most meagre diet for
seven more years, and was then interned once more at Montagnac. The
latest official account of him was in Paris, living on a pension of
400 francs a year from the treasury; but a public subscription was
got up for him, and after the Revolution, in 1793, the heirs of Madame
de Pompadour were sentenced to allow him an income of 70,000 francs a
year. Only a part of this was paid, but they gave him a small farm on
which he lived comfortably until his death at eighty years of age.