Captivity and Sufferings of Masers de Latude—Cause of his
Imprisonment—He is removed from the Bastile to Vincennes—He
escapes—He is retaken, and sent to the Bastile—Kindness of
M. Berryer—D’Alegre is confined in the same apartment with
him—Latude forms a plan for escaping—Preparations for executing
it—The Prisoners descend from the summit of the Bastile, and
escape—They are recaptured in Holland, and brought back—Latude
is thrown into a horrible dungeon—He tames rats, and makes a
musical pipe—Plans suggested by him—His writing materials—He
attempts suicide—Pigeons tamed by him—New plans suggested
by him—Finds means to fling a packet of papers from the top
of the Bastile—He is removed to Vincennes—He escapes—Is
recaptured—Opens a communication with his fellow-prisoners—Is
transferred to Charenton—His situation there—His momentary
liberation—He is re-arrested, and sent to the Bicêtre—Horrors
of that prison—Heroic benevolence of Madame Legros—She succeeds
in obtaining his release—Subsequent fate of Latude.
In one of the finest passages that ever flowed from his pen, Sterne
alludes to the comparatively trifling effect produced on the mind, when
it endeavours to form a collective idea of the misery which is felt by a
throng of sufferers. “Leaning my head upon my hand,” says he, “I began to
figure to myself the miseries of confinement. I was in a right frame for
it, and so I gave full scope to my imagination.
“I was going to begin with the millions of my fellow-creatures born to no
inheritance but slavery; but finding, however affecting the picture was,
that I could not bring it near me, but that the multitude of groups in it
did but distract me, I took a single captive, and having first shut him
up in his dungeon, I then looked through the twilight of his grated door
to take his picture.
“I beheld his body half wasted away with long expectation and
confinement, and felt what sickness of the heart it was which arises
from hope deferred. Upon looking nearer, I saw him pale and feverish; in
thirty years the western breeze had not once fanned his blood; he had
seen no sun, no moon, in all that time—nor had the voice of friend or
kinsman breathed through his lattice.”
It is even as Sterne asserts. The contemplation of the woes which are
undergone by a large aggregate of persons, seems indeed to act on the
mind somewhat in the manner of a heavy misfortune; it bewilders and
benumbs the feelings. When we read of a single individual falling beneath
the knife of a murderer, we are more violently startled and thrilled, and
the impression made is more permanent, than when we read of the thousands
who groan out their lives on the field of battle; though, in the latter
case, the largest part of the victims, mutilated, torn, trampled on, and
slowly dying without succour, and distant from all that is dear to them,
endure agonies far beyond those which are inflicted by the stab of an
assassin.
Let us, therefore, now follow the example of Sterne. Hitherto the reader
has seen only a rapid succession of captives passing before him, like the
shadows of a magic lantern; he has had but glimpses of the wretchedness
that falls to the lot of a prisoner; for, with respect to nearly the
whole of the individuals chronicled in this volume, we know, as to
their situation while in durance, little beyond the circumstance of
their having been incarcerated; their persecutors ensured their silence
by retaining them till they sunk into the grave, or by the terror of
becoming once more inmates of a dungeon. While the Bastile was standing,
few would venture even to whisper what they had experienced within its
walls. Fortunately, however, there does exist one faithful record of
the severest woes, protracted by untirable tormentors, through a series
of years, extending to half the natural life of man. Let us then avail
ourselves of it, fix our attention steadily on a single individual, watch
his anguish, bodily and mental, his privations, his struggles, and his
despair, and mark how deeply the iron can be made to enter into his soul
by vindictive and ruthless tyrants.
Henry Masers de Latude, the person alluded to, spent thirty-five years
in the Bastile and other places of confinement. If we did not know that
power, when it is held by the base-minded, is exercised by them without
mercy, to punish whoever offends them, we might suppose that Latude
brought his long agonies upon himself by the commission of some enormous
crime. That he committed a fault is undeniable, and it was a fault of
that sort which most disgusts high-spirited men, because it bears the
stamp of meanness and fraud. It deserved a sharp reprimand, perhaps
even a moderate chastisement; but no heart that was not as hard as the
nether millstone, could have made it a pretext for the infliction of such
lengthened misery as he was doomed to undergo.
Latude, who was in his twenty-fifth year when his misfortunes began,
was the son of the Marquis de Latude, a military officer, and was born
in Languedoc. He was intended for the engineer service, but the peace
of Aix-la-Chapelle prevented him from being enrolled. The notorious
Marchioness de Pompadour, who united in herself the double demerit of
being the royal harlot and procuress, was then in the zenith of her
power, and was as much detested by the people as she was favoured by the
sovereign. As Latude was one day sitting in the garden of the Tuileries,
he heard two men vehemently inveighing against her; and a thought
struck him, that, by turning this circumstance to account, he might
obtain her patronage. His plan was a clumsy one, and it was clumsily
executed. He began by putting into the post-office a packet of harmless
powder, directed to the marchioness; he then waited on her, related the
conversation which he had overheard, said that he had seen them put a
packet into the post-office, and expressed his fears that it contained
some extremely subtle poison. She offered him a purse of gold, but he
refused it, and declared that he was only desirous of being rewarded
by her protection. Suspicious of his purpose, she wished to see his
handwriting; and therefore, under pretence of intending to communicate
with him, she asked for his address. He wrote it, and, unfortunately for
him, he wrote it in the same hand in which he had directed the pretended
poison. He was then graciously dismissed. The sameness of the writing,
and the result of the experiments which she ordered to be made on the
contents of the packet, convinced her that the whole was a fraud. It is
scarcely possible not to smile at the blundering folly of the youthful
impostor; had he sent real poison, and disguised his handwriting, he
would perhaps have succeeded.
But this proved to be no laughing matter to the luckless Latude. The
marchioness looked upon the trick as an unpardonable insult, and she
was not slow in revenging it. In the course of a few days, while he was
indulging in golden dreams, he was painfully awoke from them by the
appearance of the officers of justice. They carried him to the Bastile,
and there he was stripped, deprived of his money, jewels, and papers,
clothed in wretched rags, and shut up in the Tower du Coin. On the
following day, the 2nd of May, 1749, he was interrogated by M. Berryer,
the lieutenant of police. Unlike many of his class, Berryer was a man of
feeling; he promised to intercede for him with the marchioness, and, in
the meanwhile, he endeavoured to make him as comfortable as a man could
be who was robbed of his liberty. To make the time pass less heavily, he
gave him a comrade, a Jew, a man of abilities, Abuzaglo by name, who was
accused of being a secret British agent. The two captives soon became
friends; Abuzaglo had hopes of speedy liberation through the influence
of the Prince of Conti, and he promised to obtain the exercise of that
influence in behalf of his companion. Latude, on his part, in case of
his being first released, bound himself to strain every nerve to rescue
Abuzaglo.
Ever on the listen to catch the conversation of the prisoners, the
jailors appear to have obtained a knowledge of the hopes and reciprocal
engagements of the friends. When Latude had been four months at the
Bastile, three turnkeys entered, and said that an order was come to
set him free. Abuzaglo embraced him, and conjured him to remember his
promise. But no sooner had the joyful Latude crossed the threshold of
his prison, than he was told that he was only going to be removed to
Vincennes. Abuzaglo was liberated shortly after; but believing that
Latude was free, and had broken his word to him, he ceased to take an
interest in his fate.
It is not wonderful that the health of Latude gave way under the pressure
of grief and disappointment. M. Berryer came to console him, removed
him to the most comfortable apartment in the castle, and allowed him to
walk daily for two hours in the garden. But he did not conceal that the
marchioness was inflexible, and in consequence of this, the captive, who
felt a prophetic fear that he was destined to perpetual imprisonment,
resolved to make an attempt to escape. Nearly nine months elapsed before
he could find an opportunity to carry his plan into effect. The moment
at length arrived. One of his fellow-prisoners, an ecclesiastic, was
frequently visited by an abbé; and this circumstance he made the basis of
his project. To succeed, it was necessary for him to elude the vigilance
of two turnkeys, who guarded him when he walked, and of four sentinels,
who watched the outer doors, and this was no easy matter. Of the
turnkeys, one often waited in the garden, while the other went to fetch
the prisoner. Latude began by accustoming the second turnkey to see him
hurry down stairs, and join the first in the garden. When the day came on
which he was determined to take flight, he, as usual, passed rapidly down
the stairs without exciting any suspicion, his keeper having no doubt
that he should find him in the garden. At the bottom was a door, which he
hastily bolted to prevent the second turnkey from giving the alarm to his
companion. Successful thus far, he knocked at the gate which led out of
the castle. It was opened, and, with an appearance of much eagerness, he
asked for the abbé, and was answered that the sentinel had not seen him.
“Our priest has been waiting for him in the garden more than two hours,”
exclaimed Latude; “I have been running after him in all directions to no
purpose; but, egad, he shall pay me for my running!” He was allowed to
pass; he repeated the same inquiry to the three other sentinels, received
similar answers, and at last found himself beyond his prison walls.
Avoiding as much as possible the high road, he traversed the fields and
vineyards, and finally reached Paris, where he shut himself up in a
retired lodging.
In the first moments of recovered liberty, the feelings of Latude were
those of unmixed pleasure. They were, however, soon alloyed by doubt,
apprehension, and anxiety. What was he to do? whither was he to fly? To
remain concealed was impossible, and, even had it been possible, would
have been only another kind of captivity; to fly from the kingdom was
nearly, if not quite as difficult; and, besides, he was reluctant to give
up the gaieties of the capital and his prospects of advancement. In this
dilemma he romantically determined to throw himself upon the generosity
of his persecutor. “I drew up,” says he, “a memorial, which I addressed
to the king. I spoke in it of Madame de Pompadour with respect, and on
my fault towards her with repentance. I entreated she would be satisfied
with the punishment I had undergone; or, if fourteen months’ imprisonment
had not expiated my offence, I ventured to implore the clemency of her I
had offended, and threw myself on the mercy of my sovereign. I concluded
my memorial by naming the asylum I had chosen.” To use such language was,
indeed, sounding “the very base-string of humility.”
This appeal of the sheep to the wolf was answered in a wolf-like manner.
Latude was arrested without delay, and immured in the Bastile. It was a
part of the tactics of the prison to inspire hopes, for the purpose of
adding the pain of disappointment to the other sufferings of a prisoner.
He was accordingly told that he was taken into custody merely to
ascertain by what means he had escaped. He gave a candid account of the
stratagem to which he had resorted; but, instead of being set free, as he
had foolishly expected, he was thrown into a dungeon, and subjected to
the harshest treatment.
Again his compassionate friend, the lieutenant of police, came to his
relief. He could not release him from his dungeon, but did all that lay
in his power to render it less wearisome. He condoled with him; tried,
but in vain, to soften his tormentor; and, as a loop-hole in the vault
admitted light enough to allow of reading, he ordered him to be supplied
with books, pens, ink, and paper. For six months these resources enabled
Latude to bear his fate with some degree of fortitude. His patience was
then exhausted, and he gave way to rage and despair, in the paroxysms of
which he vented his angry feelings in epigrams and satirical verses. One
of these compositions, which is certainly not deficient in bitterness,
he was imprudent enough to write on the margin of a book which had been
lent to him—
“With no wit or allurements to tempt man to sin,
With no beauty and no virgin treasure in store,
In France you the highest of lovers may win—
For a proof do you ask? Then behold Pompadour.”
Latude had taken the precaution to write this in a feigned hand; but he
was not aware, that, whenever a prisoner returned a book, every page of
it was carefully examined. The jailers discovered the epigram, and took
the volume to John Lebel, the governor, who dutifully hastened to lay it
before the mistress of the king. The fury of the marchioness was extreme.
Sending for M. Berryer, she exclaimed to him, in a voice half smothered
with passion, “See here! learn to know the man for whom you are so much
interested, and dare again to solicit my clemency!”
Eighteen dreary months passed away, during which Latude was strictly
confined to his dungeon, scarcely hearing the sound of a human voice. At
last M. Berryer took upon himself the responsibility of removing him to
a better apartment, and even allowing him to have the attendance of a
servant. A young man, named Cochar, was found willing to undertake the
monotonous and soul-depressing task of being domestic to a prisoner. He
was gentle and sympathising, and in so far was qualified for his office;
but he had miscalculated his own strength, and the weight of the burden
which he was to bear. He drooped, and in a short time he was stretched on
the bed of mortal sickness. Fresh air and liberty might have saved him.
Those, however, he could not obtain; for it was a rule that the fate of
any one who entered into the service of a prisoner became linked with
that of his master, and that he must not expect to quit the Bastile till
his employer was set at large. It was not till Cochar was expiring, that
the jailers would so much as consent to remove him from the chamber of
Latude. Within three months from his entrance into the Bastile, he ceased
to exist.
Latude was inconsolable for the loss of the poor youth, who had always
endeavoured to comfort him, as long as he had spirits to do so. To
mitigate his grief, M. Berryer obtained for him the society of a
fellow-captive, who could scarcely fail to have a perfect communion of
feeling with him. This new associate, D’Alegre by name, was about his
own age, full of activity, spirit, and talent, and had committed the
irremissible crime of offending the Marchioness de Pompadour. Taking it
for granted that she was reclaimable, though on what ground he did so it
would be difficult to discover, he had written to her a letter, in which
he apprised her of the public hatred, and pointed out the means by which
he thought she might remove it, and become an object of affection. For
giving this advice, he had already spent three years within the walls
of the Bastile. Yet his woes were now only beginning. The unfortunate
D’Alegre had ample cause to lament his having forgotten the scriptural
injunction, not to cast pearls before swine.
M. Berryer took the same warm interest in D’Alegre as in Latude. He was
indefatigable in his exertions to obtain their pardon, and for a while
he flattered himself that he should succeed. At last, wearied by his
importunity, the marchioness vowed that her vengeance should be eternal,
and she commanded him never again to mention their names. He was,
therefore, obliged to communicate to them the melancholy tidings, that
their chains could be broken only by her disgrace or death.
D’Alegre was almost overwhelmed by the first shock of this intelligence;
it inspired Latude, on the contrary, with a sort of insane energy, and
his mind immediately began to revolve projects of escape. The very
idea of escaping would seem to be indicative of madness; egress through
the gates, tenfold guarded as they were, was utterly impossible, and to
ascend to the summit of the lofty tower, which must be done through the
grated chimney, then to descend from the dizzy height into the ditch,
and, lastly, to break through or climb the outward wall, appeared to be
equally impracticable. Yet, with no apparent means of accomplishing his
purpose, Latude firmly made up his mind to try the latter plan. He had
two things in his favour, time and perseverance, and their sovereign
efficacy has often been proved.
When Latude mentioned to him his scheme, D’Alegre considered it as
little better than the ravings of delirium. Latude, however, continued
to meditate deeply upon it, though in silence. The first step towards
the execution of it, without the success of which no other could be
taken, was to find a hiding-place for the tools and materials which must
be employed. From his being unable to hear any of the movements of the
prisoner in the chamber below, Latude concluded that there was a space
between the floor of his own room and the ceiling of his neighbour’s,
and he immediately set himself to ascertain whether this was the fact.
As he was returning with D’Alegre from mass, he contrived that his
fellow-prisoner should drop his toothpick to the bottom of the stairs,
and request the turnkey to pick it up. While the turnkey was descending,
Latude looked into the under chamber, and estimated its height at about
ten feet and a half. He then counted the number of stairs between the two
rooms, measured one of them, and found, to his infinite delight, that
there must be a vacancy of five feet and a half between the bottom of the
one room and the top of the other.
As soon as they were locked in, Latude embraced D’Alegre, and exclaimed
that, with patience and courage, they might be saved, now that they had a
spot where they could conceal their ropes and materials. At the mention
of ropes, D’Alegre thought that his companion’s wits were wandering, and,
when he heard him assert, that he had more than a thousand feet of rope
in his trunk, he felt sure that the assertion was prompted by madness.
“What!” said Latude, “have I not a vast quantity of linen[9]—thirteen
dozen and a half of shirts—many napkins, stockings, nightcaps, and other
articles? Will not these supply us? We will unravel them, and we shall
have abundance of rope.”
D’Alegre began to have a gleam of hope, but he still started numerous
difficulties, among which were the want of wood for ladders, and of tools
to make them, and to wrench the iron gratings from the chimney. Latude
silenced him by replying, “My friend, it is genius which creates, and we
have that which despair supplies. It will direct our hands; and once more
I tell you, we shall be saved.”
Their first essay in tool-making was to grind down to an edge, on the
tiled floor, two iron hooks, taken from a folding table; with these they
meant to remove the chimney gratings. The next was to convert a part
of the steel of their tinder-box into a knife, with which they made
handles for the hooks. The hooks were immediately applied to raise the
tiles, in order to find whether there was really a cavity beneath. After
six hours’ toil, the prisoners found that there was an empty space of
about four feet, and, having gained this satisfactory knowledge, they
carefully replaced the floor of their cell. The threads of two shirts
were then drawn out, one by one, tied together, wound into small balls,
and, subsequently, formed into two larger balls, each composed of fifty
threads, sixty feet in length. These were ultimately twisted into a rope,
from which was made a ladder of twenty feet, intended to support the
captives, while they extracted the bars by which the chimney was closed.
The removal of the bars was a work of horrible labour. Cramped into the
most painful postures, it was impossible for them to work more than an
hour at a stretch, and their hands were always covered with blood. The
mortar was nearly as hard as iron, they had no means of softening it but
by blowing water on it from their mouths, and they thought themselves
lucky when they could clear away as much as an eighth of an inch in the
course of a night. As fast as the bars were extracted they replaced them,
that their operations might not be betrayed. Six months’ unremitting toil
was bestowed upon this single object.
Having opened the passage up the chimney, they proceeded to construct
their ladders. Their fuel, which was in logs of about eighteen or twenty
inches long, supplied the rounds for the rope ladder, by which they
were to descend from the tower; and the whole of that by which they
were to scale the outward wall. More tools being required to cut the
wood, Latude converted an iron candlestick into a saw, by notching it
with the remaining half of the steel which belonged to the tinder-box.
To this implement he afterwards added others. They then set to work on
their wooden ladder, which it was necessary to make of the length of
twenty or five-and-twenty feet. It had only one upright, three inches
in diameter, through which the rounds passed, each round projecting six
inches on either side; the pieces of which it consisted were joined by
mortises and tenons, and each joint was fastened by two pegs, to keep
them perpendicular. As fast as the pieces were finished, the rounds were
tied to them with a string, that no mistake might occur when they were
put together in the dark. They were then carefully hidden under the floor.
As in case of the prison spies chancing to overhear them talking about
their employment, it was of consequence to prevent their enemies from
understanding what was said, they invented a vocabulary of names for
all the tools and the portions of the apparatus. For instance, the saw
was _the monkey_, the reel _Anubis_, the hooks _Tubal Cain_, the wooden
ladder _Jacob_, the rounds _sheep_, the ropes _doves_, a ball of thread
_the little brother_, and the knife _the puppy dog_; the hole in which
they concealed them was christened _Polyphemus_.
It now remained for them to make their principal rope ladder. This was
an arduous and almost endless task, as it was more than a hundred and
eighty feet long, and, consequently, double that length of rope was
wanted. “We began,” says Latude, “by unravelling all our linen, shirts,
towels, nightcaps, stockings, drawers, pocket-handkerchiefs,—every thing
which could supply thread or silk. When we had made a ball, we hid it in
_Polyphemus_; and when we had a sufficient quantity, we employed a whole
night in twisting it into a rope, and I defy the most skilful rope maker
to have done it better.”
There was still a pressing necessity for another enormous quantity of
rope. Along the upper part of the outside of the Bastile ran a kind
of cornice, which stood out three or four feet beyond the wall. The
effect of this would be, to make the ladder hang loosely in the air, and
vibrate in such a terrific manner, that there would be great danger of
the captive who led the way being precipitated headlong to the ground.
To avert this peril, they made a second rope, three hundred and sixty
feet long, to be tied round the person first descending, and passed
gradually through a sort of block fixed above, in order to steady him.
Shorter ropes were also provided, to fasten the ladder to a cannon, and
for any other occasion that might occur. On measuring the whole of their
manufacture, they found that it extended to more than fourteen hundred
feet. Two hundred and eight rounds were required for the ladders, and,
lest their knocking against the wall should give the alarm, they covered
them with the linings of their morning gowns, waistcoats, and under
waistcoats. These last preparations for flight occupied eighteen months.
It had originally been their intention, after having reached the ditch,
to climb the parapet, and get into the governor’s garden, and from thence
descend into the moat of the gate of St. Antoine. On consideration,
however, this plan was abandoned, because in this part they would be
more exposed than elsewhere to be detected by the sentinels. It was
therefore deemed advisable, though the labour would be greatly increased,
to break a way through the wall which divided the ditch of the Bastile
from that of the St. Antoine gate. Latude was of opinion that the mortar
of the wall on this side, having been weakened by frequent floods, might
be removed with comparative ease. Two bars from the chimney were to be
used as levers to raise the stones, and an auger, to make holes for the
insertion of the bars, was fabricated out of a screw from one of the
bedsteads, to which a wooden cross handle was added.
All was now prepared for their flight, and they had only to decide upon
the day for attempting their hazardous enterprise. The 25th of February,
1756, was the day which they chose. A portmanteau was filled with a
change of clothes, the rounds were fastened into the rope ladder, the
wooden ladder was got ready, the two crowbars were put into cases to
prevent them from clanging, and a bottle of brandy was prudently added to
their baggage, to hearten them while they worked in the water—for the
Seine had overflowed, and at that moment there was from four to five feet
water in the moat of the Bastile, and ice was floating upon it.
Supper being over, and the turnkey having locked them in for the
night, the captives, doubtless with throbbing hearts, began their
operations. Latude was the first to ascend the chimney. “I had the
rheumatism in my left arm,” says he, “but I thought little of the pain,
for I soon experienced one more severe.” Before he reached the top,
his knees and elbows were so excoriated, that the blood ran down from
them. When he arrived at the summit, he let down a rope, by means of
which he successively drew up the portmanteau, the ladders, and the
other articles. The end of the rope ladder he allowed to hang down,
and the upper part he fastened across the funnel with a large wooden
peg. D’Alegre was thus enabled to mount with less difficulty than his
predecessor had experienced.
At last they breathed the free air of heaven on the platform of the
Bastile. As the du Trésor tower appeared to be the most favourable for
their descent, they carried their apparatus thither. One end of the
rope ladder was made fast to a cannon, and it was gently let down. The
safety rope was next passed through a firmly fixed block, and it was tied
securely round the body of Latude. The daring adventurer now commenced
his fearful descent of more than fifty yards; D’Alegre meanwhile slowly
letting out the rope. It was well that they had taken this precaution;
for, at every step that he took, Latude swung so violently in the air
that it is probable he would have lost his hold, had not the safety rope
given him confidence. In a few moments, which however must have seemed
hours, he reached the ditch unhurt. The portmanteau and the other effects
were then lowered to him, and he placed them on a spot to which the
water had not risen. D’Alegre himself followed; and, as Latude applied
all his strength to steady the ladder, the descent of his companion was
effected with less annoyance and hazard than his own had been. That
regret, at being unable to carry away their ladder and implements, should
have found a place among the feelings by which they were agitated, may at
the first glance seem strange, but was certainly not unnatural; articles
on which they had bestowed such persevering toil, which had proved the
instruments of their deliverance, and were also the trophies of their
triumph, they must have regarded with something like affection.
As they heard a sentinel pacing along at the distance of ten yards, they
were obliged finally to relinquish the scheme of climbing the parapet,
which they had still cherished a hope of carrying into execution. There
was, therefore, no resource but to break a hole through the wall.
Accordingly they crossed the ditch of the Bastile, to the spot where
the wall separated it from that of the St. Antoine gate. Unluckily, the
ditch had been deepened here, and the water, on which ice was floating,
was up to their arm-pits. They, nevertheless, set to work with a vigour
which can be inspired only by circumstances like those under which they
were placed. Scarcely had they begun, when, about twelve feet above their
heads, they saw light cast upon them from the lantern which was carried
by a patrol major; they were compelled instantly to put their heads under
water, and this they had to do several times in the course of the night.
The wall at which they were working had a thickness of a yard and a half;
so that, although they plied their crowbars without intermission, they
were nine mortal hours in making a hole of sufficient size for them to
creep through. Their task was ultimately achieved, they passed through
the aperture, and were now beyond the walls of their prison. But even at
this moment of exultation, they had a narrow escape from perishing. In
their way to the road by which they were to go, there was an aqueduct;
it was not more than six feet wide, but it had ten feet of water and
two feet of mud. Into this they stumbled. Fortunately, Latude did not
lose his upright position; having shaken off his companion, who had
mechanically grasped him, he scrambled up the bank, and then drew out
D’Alegre by the hair of his head.
The clock struck five as they entered the high road. After having
joyously clasped each other in a long and close embrace, they dropped on
their knees, and poured forth fervent thanks to the Divine Being, who had
so miraculously aided them in their dangerous undertaking. In consequence
of the evaporation which was taking place, they now began to feel more
acutely than when they were in the water the effects of their immersion;
their whole frame was rapidly becoming rigid. They, therefore, drew a
change of clothes from the portmanteau; but they were so much benumbed
and exhausted, that neither of them could dress without being assisted by
his friend. When they were somewhat recovered, they took a hackney-coach,
and eventually found shelter in the house of a kind-hearted tailor, a
native of Languedoc, who was known to Latude.
To gain strength after their toils, as well as to let the hue and cry
die away, the friends remained nearly a month in concealment. It having
been settled between them that, in order to avoid being both caught at
once, they should quit the country separately, D’Alegre, in the disguise
of a peasant, set out on his journey to Brussels. He reached that city
in safety, and informed Latude of his success. Furnished with a parish
register of his host, who was nearly of his own age, and with some old
papers relative to a lawsuit, and dressed as a servant, Latude departed.
He went on foot a few leagues from Paris, and then took the diligence for
Valenciennes. He was several times stopped, searched, and questioned,
and, on one occasion, was in imminent danger of being detected. By dint,
however, of sticking to his story, that he was carrying law papers to his
master’s brother at Amsterdam, he got safely to Valenciennes, at which
town he removed into the stage for Brussels. He was walking when they
reached the boundary post which marks the frontier line of France and
the Netherlands. “My feelings,” says he, “got the better of my prudence;
I threw myself on the ground, and kissed it with transport. At length,
thought I, I can breathe without fear! My companions, with astonishment,
demanded the cause of this extravagance. I pretended that, just at the
very moment, in a preceding year, I had escaped a great danger, and that
I always expressed my gratitude to Providence by a similar prostration
when the day came round.”
Latude had appointed D’Alegre to meet him at the Hôtel de Coffi,
in Brussels. Thither he went immediately on his arrival; but there
disappointment and sorrow awaited him. The landlord at first denied any
knowledge of D’Alegre, and, when further pressed, he hesitated, and
became extremely embarrassed. This was enough to convince the inquirer
that his friend had been seized; and the conviction was strengthened, by
his having heard nothing from him, though D’Alegre knew the moment when
his companion would reach Brussels. As his friend could be arrested on
the Austrian territory, it was obvious that Latude could not remain in
it without danger; and, with a heavy heart, he resolved to fly instantly
from this inhospitable soil. He secured a place in the canal boat, which
was that night to proceed to Antwerp. In the course of the voyage, he
learned the fatal truth from a fellow-passenger. He was told, that
one of the two prisoners, escaped from the Bastile, had arrived at the
Hôtel de Coffi, had been apprehended by a police officer, and had been
ultimately sent under a strong escort to Lille, and there delivered into
the custody of a French exempt; and, moreover, that all this was kept as
secret as possible, in order not to alarm the other fugitive, the search
after whom was carried on with such activity that he must inevitably fall
into the hands of his pursuers.
Believing that, if he went on immediately to Amsterdam he would find
there an officer of the police waiting to seize him, he directed his
steps to Bergen-op-Zoom. But now another trouble fell upon him. He had
nearly exhausted his scanty stock of money, and had not found at Brussels
a remittance which he expected from his father; he afterwards learned
that it had been intercepted by the French exempt, who was employed
to trace him. While he remained at Bergen-op-Zoom, which was till he
supposed that his enemies would have lost the hope of his coming to
Amsterdam, he wrote to his father for a supply. But a considerable time
must elapse before he could receive it, and, in the meanwhile, he would
run the risk of starving. When he had paid the rent of his wretched
garret at Bergen-op-Zoom, and the fare of the boat which was to convey
him to Amsterdam, a few shillings was all that was left. In this state
of penury, unwilling to beg, he tried whether life could be supported
by grass and wild herbs alone. The experiment failed, for his stomach
rejected the loathsome food. To render his herbs less disgusting, he
bought four pounds of a black and clay-like rye bread, to eat with them.
Hoping that by this time the bloodhounds of the marchioness had desisted
from seeking him in the Dutch capital, Latude ventured to embark. To hide
his poverty, he kept aloof as much as possible from his fellow-voyagers.
He was, however, not unobserved. There was in the boat one John
Teerhorst, who kept a sort of humble public-house, in a cellar at
Amsterdam. Under his unprepossessing exterior, he had a heart as kind as
ever beat in a human breast. Chancing to catch a sight of Latude’s sorry
fare, he could not help exclaiming, “Good God! what an extraordinary
dinner you are making! You seem to have more appetite than money!” Latude
frankly owned that it was so. The good-natured Dutchman immediately led
him to his own table. “No compliments, Mr. Frenchman,” said he, “seat
yourself there, and eat and drink with me.” On further acquaintance with
him, Latude discovered that his host was not only a truly benevolent man,
but that he had also the rare talent of conferring favours with such
delicacy as not to wound the feelings of the person whom he obliged.
When they reached Amsterdam, Teerhorst offered to introduce him to
a Frenchman named Martin, who, judging from himself, he doubted not
would be delighted to serve him. Latude, however, found that his
fellow-countryman was one of the most soulless animals whom he had ever
seen; a being who cared only for self. He was better fitted to be a
turnkey of the Bastile than the consoler of one of its victims. The tears
and low spirits of his guest disclosed to the Dutchman the reception
which Latude had met with, and the forebodings that oppressed him. Taking
his hand, he said, “Do not weep—I will never abandon you: I am not rich,
it is true, but my heart is good; we will do the best we can for you, and
you will be satisfied.”
Teerhorst’s underground habitation was divided by a partition into two
rooms; one of which served as kitchen, while the other was at once shop,
sitting-room, and bed-room. Though the narrow tenement was already
crowded, Teerhorst contrived to make a sleeping place for Latude in
a large closet, and he and his wife cheerfully gave him a mattress
from their own bed. Not content with feeding and lodging the fugitive,
Teerhorst strove to divert him from melancholy thoughts, by taking
him wherever there was anything that could amuse him. His charitable
efforts were but partially successful; for the mind of Latude was
deeply begloomed by his own precarious situation, and still more by his
incessantly brooding over and regretting the fate of D’Alegre.
Though Latude had found no sympathy in Martin, he was more fortunate in
another of his countrymen, Louis Clergue, who was a native of Martagnac,
where the fugitive was born. Rich and compassionate, Clergue gave him
a room in his house, made him a constant partaker of his table, and
furnished him with clothes and linen. The linen was not the least
acceptable of these gifts; for Latude had been forty days without a
change of it. Clergue also assembled his friends, to hear the story of
his guest, and to consult what could be done for him. They were all of
opinion that Latude had nothing to fear, as neither the States General
nor the people of Amsterdam would ever consent to deliver up a persecuted
stranger, who had confidingly thrown himself on their protection. Even
Latude himself began to believe that at last he was safe.
The unfortunate man was soon woefully undeceived. Not for a moment had
his pursuers slackened in the chase, not a single precaution had they
neglected that could lead to success. In aid of the subaltern agents,
the French ambassador had also exerted himself. By representing the
fugitive as a desperate malefactor, he had obtained the consent of the
States to arrest him. Calumny was one of the weapons uniformly employed
against prisoners, in order to insulate them from their fellow-creatures,
by extinguishing pity. But, in this instance, there seems reason for
believing that bribery was an auxiliary to calumny; the expense of
following up the fugitives was no less than 9000_l._ sterling—a sum for
which it is impossible to account, without supposing that much of it was
expended in bribes.
Though Latude had changed his name, and the address to which his friends
were to direct their communications, the active agents of the marchioness
had succeeded in intercepting all his letters. One was at last allowed to
reach him, as the means of effecting his ruin. It does not appear whether
his residing in the house of M. Clergue was known to them; probably it
was; but, if it were, they perhaps thought that it would be imprudent
to seize him there, as his protector might proclaim to the populace the
innocence of his guest, and thus excite a tumult. A letter from Latude’s
father, containing a draft on a banker, was therefore forwarded to him.
Into this snare he fell. As he was proceeding to the banker’s, the Dutch
police officers pounced upon him, and he was immediately fettered and
dragged along. The crowd which had by this time gathered, were told that
he was a dangerous criminal; but, as the numbers nevertheless continued
to increase, the brutal officers, who were armed with heavy bludgeons,
dealt their blows liberally on all sides, to clear the way to the Town
Hall. One of these blows struck the prisoner with such violence, on the
nape of his neck, that he dropped senseless to the ground.
When consciousness returned, he was lying on a truss of straw, in a
dungeon; there was not a ray of light visible, not a sound to be heard.
He seemed to be cut off from the human race, and he resigned himself
wholly to despair. His tumultuous reflections were interrupted, in the
morning, by a visit from St. Marc, the French exempt, who had pursued
him from Paris. This brutal caitiff had the baseness to aggravate his
sufferings by an awkward attempt at irony. “He told me,” says Latude,
“that I ought to pronounce the name of the Marchioness de Pompadour with
the most profound respect; she was anxious only to load me with favours;
far from complaining, I ought to kiss the generous hand that struck
me, every blow from which was a compliment and an obligation.” In a
second visit, some time after, the exempt brought him an ounce of snuff,
which he strongly recommended, but which Latude did not use, because he
imagined, and not unreasonably, that it was poisoned.
Latude remained nine days in this dungeon, while his captors were
waiting for permission to carry him through the territory of the Empress
Maria Theresa. They were anxious to receive it without delay, for M.
Clergue and the other friends of the prisoner were loudly asserting his
innocence, and the citizens began to murmur at the disgrace which was
cast upon their country by his seizure being permitted. The permission
soon came, and the myrmidons of the Marchioness hastened to bear off
their prey.
In this instance, the Dutch and Austrian governments must bear the shame
of having been ready instruments of the persecutors. It is, however,
doubtful whether, had those governments acted otherwise, the fugitives
would have escaped. To effect their purpose, the emissaries of the
Bastile did not scruple to violate the territory of foreign powers.
In 1752, a M. Bertin de Fretaux was carried off from England. He was
secretly seized at Marylebone, put on board ship at Gravesend, and
conveyed to the Bastile, where he died after having been confined for
twenty-seven years. Even foreign subjects were not safe. The publisher of
a Leyden Gazette having printed a satire on Louis XIV., he was kidnapped
in Holland, and conveyed to the rock of St. Michael, on the Norman coast,
and shut up in a cage till he died.
At two in the morning, on the 9th of June, 1756, the jailers of Latude
came to remove him. Round his body they fastened a strong leathern belt,
on which were two large rings, fastened by padlocks. Through these rings
his hands were passed; so that his arms were pinioned down to his sides,
without the power of motion. He was then conveyed to a boat, into the
foulest corner of which he was thrown. As he could not feed himself, the
office of feeding him was committed to two men; they were so horribly
filthy that he refused, for four-and-twenty hours, to take nourishment
from them. Force was then employed to make him eat. “They brought me,”
says Latude, “a piece of beef swimming in gravy; they took the meat in
their hands, and thrust it into my mouth; they then took some bread,
which they steeped in the grease, and made me swallow it in a similar
manner. During this disgusting operation, one of these ruffians blew his
nose with his fingers, and, without wiping them, soaked some bread, and
approached it to my mouth. I turned my head aside, but it was too late.
I had seen these preliminaries, and my stomach revolted. The consequence
was, a long and severe fit of vomiting, which left me almost without
strength or motion.”
The mode of confinement by the belt was absolute torture to the prisoner.
At length, thanks to the compassionate interference of a servant on
board, who declared that, if no one else would, he himself would cut it,
the belt was removed, and Latude was indulged, by being only handcuffed
on the right arm, and chained to one of his guards. When they arrived at
Lille, St. Marc halted for the night, and sent the prisoner to the town
jail, where he was bolted to the chain of a deserter, scarcely nineteen,
who had been told that he was to be hanged on the morrow. The despairing
youth spent the night in trying to convince him that he, too, would
be hanged, and in proposing that they should elude a public execution
by strangling themselves with their shirts. For the remainder of the
journey, Latude, with his legs ironed, travelled in a carriage with St.
Marc, who took the precaution of carrying pistols, and had likewise an
armed servant by the side of the vehicle, whose orders were to shoot the
captive if he made the slightest motion.
By his associates at the Bastile, St. Marc was received like some victor
returning from the scene of his triumph. They swarmed round him, listened
with greedy ears to the tale of his exertions and stratagems, and
lavished praises and attentions upon him. The group must have borne no
very distant resemblance to fiends exulting over a lost soul.
Stripped, and reclothed in rags which were dropping to pieces, his hands
and feet heavily ironed, the prisoner was thrown into one of the most
noisome dungeons of the fortress. A sprinkling of straw formed his bed;
covering it had none. The only light and air which penetrated into this
den of torment came through a loop-hole, which narrowing gradually from
the inside to the outside, had a diameter of not more than five inches
at the furthest extremity. This loop-hole was secured and darkened by
a fourfold iron grating, so ingeniously contrived that the bars of one
net-work covered the interstices of another; but there was neither glass
nor shutters, to ward off the inclemency of the weather. The interior
extremity of this aperture reached within about two feet and a half of
the ground, and served the captive for a chair and a table, and sometimes
he rested his arms and elbows on it to lighten the weight of his fetters.
Shut out from all communication with his fellow-beings, Latude found some
amusement in the society of the rats which infested his dungeon. His
first attempt to make them companionable was tried upon a single rat,
which, in three days, by gently throwing bits of bread to it, he rendered
so tame that it would take food from his hands. The animal even changed
its abode, and established itself in another hole in order to be nearer
to him. In a few days a female joined the first comer. At the outset she
was timid; but it was not long before she acquired boldness, and would
quarrel and fight for the morsels which were given by the prisoner.
“When my dinner was brought in (says Latude) I called my companions: the
male ran to me directly; the female, according to custom, came slowly
and timidly, but at length approached close to me, and ventured to take
what I offered her from my hand. Some time after, a third appeared, who
was much less ceremonious than my first acquaintances. After his second
visit, he constituted himself one of the family, and made himself so
perfectly at home, that he resolved to introduce his comrades. The next
day, he came, accompanied by two others, who in the course of the week
brought five more; and, thus, in less than a fortnight, our family circle
consisted of ten large rats and myself. I gave each of them names, which
they learned to distinguish. When I called them they came to eat with me,
from the dish, or off the same plate; but I found this unpleasant, and
was soon forced to find them a dish for themselves, on account of their
slovenly habits. They became so tame that they allowed me to scratch
their necks, and appeared pleased when I did; but they would never permit
me to touch them on the back. Sometimes I amused myself with making them
play, and joining in their gambols. Occasionally I threw them a piece of
meat, scalding hot: the most eager ran to seize it, burned themselves,
cried out, and left it; while the less greedy, who had waited patiently,
took it when it was cold, and escaped into a corner, where they divided
their prize: sometimes I made them jump up, by holding a piece of bread
or meat suspended in the air.” In the course of a year, his four-footed
companions increased to twenty-six. Whenever an intruder appeared he met
with a hostile reception from the old standers, and had to fight his way
before he could obtain a footing. Latude endeavoured to familiarize a
spider, but in this he was unsuccessful.
Another source of comfort was unexpectedly opened to the solitary
captive. Among the straw which was brought for his bed, he found a piece
of elder, and he conceived the idea of converting it into a sort of
flageolet. This, however, was a task of no easy accomplishment, for his
hands were fettered, and he had no tools. But necessity is proverbially
inventive. He succeeded in getting off the buckle which fastened the
waistband of his breeches, and bending it into a kind of chisel by means
of his leg irons; and, with this clumsy instrument, after the labour of
many months, he contrived to form a rude kind of musical pipe. It was
probably much inferior to a child’s whistle, but his delight when he had
completed it was extreme; the feeling was natural, and the sounds must
have been absolute harmony to his ear.
Though his flageolet and his animal companions made his lonely hours
somewhat less burthensome, and at moments drew his attention wholly from
maddening thoughts, the longing for liberty would perpetually recur,
and he racked his mind for plans to shake off his chains. The thought
occurred to him, that if he could be fortunate enough to suggest some
plan which would benefit the state, it might be repaid by the gift of
freedom. At that time the non-commissioned military officers were armed
only with halberts, which could be of no use but in close engagement;
Latude proposed to substitute muskets for the halberts, and thus make
effective at least 20,000 men. But how was he to communicate his idea
to the king and the ministers? he had neither pen, ink, nor paper, and
strict orders had been given that he should be debarred from the use of
them. This obstacle, however, he got over. For paper, he moulded thin
tablets of bread, six inches square; for pens he used the triangular
bones out of a carp’s belly; for ink his blood was substituted—to obtain
it he tied round a finger some threads from his shirt, and punctured the
end. As only a few drops could be procured in this way, and as they dried
up rapidly, he was compelled to repeat the operation so often, that his
fingers were covered with wounds, and enormously swelled. The necessity
of frequent punctures he ultimately obviated, by diluting the blood with
water.
When the memorial was finished, there was yet another difficulty to be
surmounted; it must be copied. In this emergency, Latude clamorously
demanded to see the Major of the Bastile. To that officer he declared
that, being convinced he had not long to live, he wished to prepare
for his end, by receiving religious assistance. The confessor of the
prison was in consequence sent to him, was astonished and delighted by
the memorial, became interested in his favour, and obtained an order
that he should be supplied with materials for writing. The memorial was
accordingly transcribed, and presented to the king.
The suggestion was adopted by the government; the unfortunate prisoner
was, however, left to languish unnoticed in his dungeon. Again he tasked
his faculties for a project which might benefit at once his country and
himself. At this period no provision was made in France for the widows
of those who fell in battle. The king of Prussia had recently set the
example of granting pensions; and Latude deemed it worthy of being
imitated. But, knowing that an empty treasury would be pleaded in bar,
he proposed a trifling addition to the postage of letters, which he
calculated would raise an ample fund. His memorial and the data on which
it was founded, were forwarded to the monarch and the ministers. The tax
was soon after imposed, and nominally for the purpose pointed out by
Latude; but the widows, nevertheless, continued to be destitute, and the
projector unpitied.
Foiled in all his efforts, the firmness of Latude gave way. He had
been pent for three years and five months in a loathsome dungeon,
suffering more than pen can describe. Exposed in his horrible fireless
and windowless abode to all the blasts of heaven, three winters, one of
which was peculiarly severe, had sorely tortured his frame. The cold, the
keen winds, and a continual defluxion from his nostrils, had split his
upper lip, and destroyed his front teeth; his eyes were endangered from
the same causes, and from frequent weeping; his head was often suddenly
affected by a sort of apoplectic stroke; and his limbs were racked by
cramp and rheumatism. Hope was extinct; intense agony of mind and body
rendered existence insufferable; and the unhappy victim resolved to throw
off a burthen which he could no longer bear. No instrument of destruction
being within reach, he tried to effect his purpose by starving himself;
and for a hundred and thirty-three hours he obstinately persisted in
refusing all food. At last, his jailers wrenched open his mouth, and
frustrated his design. Still bent on dying, he contrived to obtain and
secrete a fragment of broken glass, with which he opened four of the
large veins. During the night he bled till life was all but extinct.
Once more, however, he was snatched from the grave, and he now sullenly
resigned himself to await his appointed time.
After he had been confined a considerable time longer, a fortunate
overflowing of the Seine occasioned his removal. The turnkey complained
heavily that he was obliged to walk through the water to the prisoner,
and Latude was in consequence removed to an apartment in the tower
of La Comté. It had no chimney, and was one of the worst rooms in the
tower, but it was a paradise when compared with the pestiferous hole from
which he had emerged. Yet, so strong is the yearning for society, that,
gladdened as he was by his removal, he could not help bitterly regretting
the loss of his sociable rats. As a substitute for them, he tried to
catch some of the pigeons which perched on the window; and, by means of a
noose, formed from threads drawn out of his linen, he finally succeeded
in snaring a male and a female. “I tried,” says he, “every means to
console them for the loss of liberty. I assisted them to make their nest
and to feed their young; my cares and attention equalled their own.
They seemed sensible of this, and repaid me by every possible mark of
affection. As soon as we had established this reciprocal understanding,
I occupied myself entirely with them. How I watched their actions, and
enjoyed their expressions of tenderness! I lost myself entirely while
with them, and in my dreams continued the enjoyment.”
This pleasure was too great to be lasting. He had been placed in his
present apartment because it was under the care of a brutal turnkey named
Daragon, who had been punished for Latude’s former escape, and cherished
a rankling feeling of revenge. It was Daragon who purchased the grain
for the pigeons, and for this service the prisoner, besides the large
profit which the turnkey made, gave him one out of the seven bottles of
wine which was his weekly allowance. Daragon now insisted on having four
bottles, without which he would purchase no more grain. It was to no
purpose that Latude pleaded that the wine was indispensably necessary to
restore his health; the turnkey was deaf to reason. Latude was provoked
into asperity; Daragon rushed out in a rage; and in a short time he
returned, pretending that he had an order from the governor to kill
the pigeons. “My despair at this,” says Latude, “exceeded all bounds,
and absolutely unsettled my reason; I could willingly have sacrificed
my life to satisfy my just vengeance on this monster. I saw him make a
motion towards the innocent victims of my misfortunes; I sprang forward
to prevent him. I seized them, and, in my agony, I crushed them myself.
This was perhaps the most miserable moment of my whole existence. I never
recall the memory of it without the bitterest pangs. I remained several
days without taking any nourishment; grief and indignation divided my
soul; my sighs were imprecations, and I held all mankind in mortal
horror.”
Fortunately, a humane and generous man, the Count de Jumilhac, was,
soon after, appointed governor of the Bastile. He compassionated the
sufferings of Latude, and exerted himself to relieve them. He obtained
for him an interview with M. de Sartine, the minister of police, who gave
him leave to walk for two hours daily on the platform of the Bastile,
and promised to befriend him. That promise he soon broke. Hope revived
in the breast of Latude, and he again set to work to form plans for the
good of the country. Schemes for issuing a new species of currency, and
for establishing public granaries in all the principal towns, were among
the first fruits of his meditations. With respect to the latter project,
he says, “nothing could be more simple than the mode I suggested of
constructing and provisioning these magazines. It consisted in a slight
duty upon marriage, which all rich people, or those who wished to appear
so, would have paid with eagerness, as I had the address to found it upon
their vanity.” This project pleased M. de Sartine so much, that he wished
to have the merit of it to himself, and, by means of a third person, he
sounded Latude, to know whether he would relinquish his claim to it, on
having a small pension secured to him. Latude gave a brief but peremptory
refusal, and M. de Sartine was thenceforth his enemy. All letters and
messages to him remained unnoticed.
While he was one day walking on the platform, he learned the death of
his father. The sentinel who guarded him had served under his father,
but did not know that the prisoner was the son of his old officer.
Latude was overwhelmed by this fatal intelligence, and he fainted on the
spot. His mother still lived; but she, too, was sinking into the grave
from grief. It was in vain that, in the most pathetic language, she
repeatedly implored the harlot marchioness to have mercy on the captive.
Her prayers might have moved a heart of flint, but they had no effect
on Madame de Pompadour. But the horrors of imprisonment were not enough
to be inflicted on him; he was made the victim of calumny, and a stain
was fixed upon his character. To get rid of importunity in his behalf,
the men in office replied to his advocates, “Beware how you solicit the
pardon of that miscreant. You would shudder if you knew the crimes he has
committed.”
Thus goaded almost to madness, it is not to be wondered at that he was
eager to take vengeance on his persecutors. Since the heart of Madame de
Pompadour was inaccessible to pity, he determined that it should at least
feel the stings of mortification and rage. His plan was, to draw up a
memorial, exposing her character, and to address it to La Beaumelle, who
had himself tasted the rigours of the Bastile. “I had only,” says he, “to
place in trusty hands the true history of her birth and infamous life,
with all the particulars of which I was well acquainted; in depriving
me of existence, she would dread my dying words, and even from the tomb
I should still be an object of terror to her. There was nothing then
to restrain the blow with which I had the power of crushing her. The
faithful friends who were to become the depositaries of my vengeance,
in apprising her of the danger, would merely give her a single moment to
escape it by doing me justice.”
It was while he was walking on the platform of the Bastile that he formed
this chimerical project, for chimerical it was, there being scarcely a
probability that any one would have courage enough to second his attack
on the potent and vindictive marchioness. Having calculated the distance
between the top of the tower and the street of St. Anthony, on which he
looked down, he perceived that it was possible to fling a packet into
the street. Nothing of this kind could, however, be done while he was
closely watched by Falconet the aid-major, and a serjeant, both of whom
always attended him in his walk. Falconet was insufferably garrulous,
particularly on his own exploits, and Latude hoped to disgust him by
perpetual sarcasm and contradiction. He succeeded in silencing him, but
Falconet still clung to him like his shadow. To tire him out, Latude
adopted the plan of almost running during the whole of the time that
he was on the platform. The aid-major remonstrated, but the prisoner
answered, that rapid motion was indispensably necessary to him, in order
to excite perspiration. At last, Falconet suffered him to move about as
he pleased, and fell into gossiping with the serjeant, in which they both
engaged so deeply that Latude was left unnoticed.
The next step of Latude was to gaze into the windows of the opposite
houses, and scrutinise the faces of the persons whom he saw, till
he could see some one whose countenance seemed indicative of humane
feelings. It was on the female sex, as having more sensibility than the
male, that he mainly relied for pity and succour; and his attention was
finally fixed on two young women, who were sitting by themselves at work
in a chamber, and whose looks appeared to betoken that they were of kind
dispositions. Having caught the eye of one of them, he respectfully
saluted her by a motion of his hand; the sign was answered by both of
them in a similar manner. After this dumb intercourse had continued for
some days, he showed them a packet, and they motioned to him to fling it;
but he gave them to understand that it was not yet ready.
The means of conveyance for his intended work were now secured, but, as
he no longer had materials for writing, he had still much to contrive.
But he was not of a nature to be discouraged even by serious obstacles.
He had fortunately been allowed to purchase some books, and he resolved
to write between the lines and on the margins of the pages. As a pen
made of a carp bone would not write a sufficiently small hand for
interlineations, he beat a halfpenny as thin as paper, and succeeded in
shaping it into a tolerable pen. Ink was yet to be provided, and this
was the worst task of all to accomplish. Having on the former occasion
narrowly escaped gangrene in his fingers, he was afraid to use blood,
and was therefore compelled to find a substitute. To make his ink of
lampblack was the mode which occurred to him; but as he was allowed
neither fire nor candle, how was the black to be obtained? By a series
of stratagems he managed to surmount the difficulty. Under pretence of
severe tooth-ache, he borrowed from the serjeant, who attended him on
the platform, a pipe and the articles for lighting it, and he secreted a
piece of the tinder. By a simulated fit of colic, he got some oil from
the doctor. This he put into a pomatum pot, and made a wick from threads
drawn out of the sheets. He then made a bow and peg, like a drill, and
with this and the piece of tinder, by dint of rapid friction, he ignited
two small bits of dry wood, and lighted his lamp. The first view of the
light threw him, he says, into a delirium of joy. The condensed smoke he
collected on the bottom of a plate, and in six hours he had sufficient
for his purpose. But here he was stopped short, and all his trouble
seemed likely to be thrown away; for the light and oily black floated
on the water instead of mixing with it. He got over this by affecting
to have a violent cold. The prison apothecary sent him some syrup, and
Latude employed it to render the lamp black miscible with water.
Thus provided with materials for writing, Latude sat down to compose
his work. “My whole heart and soul were in it,” says he, “and I steeped
my pen in the gall with which they were overflowing.” Having completed
the history of his persecutor, he wrote a letter of instructions to La
Beaumelle, another to a friend, the Chevalier de Mehegan, in case of La
Beaumelle being absent, and a third to his two female friends, in which
he directed them how to proceed, and entreated them to exert themselves
in his behalf. The whole of the papers he packed up in a leathern bag,
which he formed out of the lining of a pair of breeches. As the packet
was rather bulky, and the carrying of it about his person was dangerous,
he was anxious to get rid of it as soon as possible. Some time, however,
elapsed before he could catch sight of his friendly neighbours. At length
one of them saw his signal, descended into the street, and caught the
packet. Three months and a half passed away, during which he frequently
saw them, and they seemed to be pleased with something that related to
him, but he was unable to comprehend their signs. At last, on the 18th of
April, 1764, they approached the window, and displayed a roll of paper,
on which was written in large characters, “The Marchioness of Pompadour
died yesterday.”
“I thought I saw the heavens open before me!” exclaimed Latude. His
oppressor was gone, and he felt an undoubting confidence that his
liberation would immediately follow as a necessary consequence. He was
soon cruelly undeceived. After some days had passed over, he wrote to the
lieutenant of police, and claimed his freedom. Sartine had given strict
orders to all the officers of the Bastile to conceal the death of the
marchioness, and he instantly hurried to the prison, to discover how the
news had reached Latude. He summoned the prisoner into his presence, and
harshly questioned him on the subject. Latude perceived that a disclosure
might be prejudicial to the kind females, and, with equal firmness and
honour, he refused to make it. “The avowal,” said Sartine, “is the price
of your liberty.” The captive, however, again declared that he would
rather perish than purchase the blessing at such a cost. Finding him
inflexible, the baffled lieutenant of police retired in anger. Irritated
by repeated letters, petitions, and remonstrances being neglected, and
having been led to fear that he was to be perpetually imprisoned, to
prevent him from suing Pompadour’s heirs, Latude in an evil hour lost all
command over himself, and wrote a violent epistle to Sartine, avowedly
for the purpose of enraging him. This act of insane passion was punished
by instant removal to one of the worst dungeons, where his fare was bread
and water.
After Latude had been for eighteen days in the dungeon, M. de Sartine
obtained an order to transfer him to Vincennes, and immure him in an
oubliette. Before he removed the prisoner, he circulated a report “that
he meant to deliver him, but that, to accustom him by degrees to a change
of air, he was going to place him for a few months in a convent of
monks.” On the night of the 14th of August, 1764, an officer of police,
with two assistants, came to convey him to his new prison. “My keepers,”
says he, “fastened an iron chain round my neck, the end of which they
placed under the bend of my knees; one of them placed one hand upon my
mouth, and the other behind my head, whilst his companion pulled the
chain with all his might, and completely bent me double. The pain I
suffered was so intense, that I thought my loins and spine were crushed;
I have no doubt it equalled that endured by the wretch who is broken on
the wheel. In this state I was conveyed from the Bastile to Vincennes.”
At Vincennes he was placed in a cell. His mind and body were now both
overpowered by the severity of his fate, dangerous illness came on,
and he every day grew weaker. Fortunately for Latude, M. Guyonnet, the
governor of the fortress, had nothing of “the steeled jailer” about him;
he was a generous, humane man, of amiable manners. He listened to the
mournful tale of the captive, wept for his misfortunes, took on himself
the responsibility of giving him a good apartment, and obtained for him
the privilege of walking daily for two hours in the garden.
Despairing, as well he might, of being ever released by his inflexible
enemies, Latude meditated incessantly on the means of escaping. Fifteen
months elapsed before an opportunity occurred, and then it was brought
about by chance. He was walking in the garden, on a November afternoon,
when a thick fog suddenly came on. The idea of turning it to account
rushed into his mind. He was guarded by two sentries and a serjeant, who
never quitted his side for an instant; but he determined to make a bold
attempt. By a violent push of his elbows he threw off the sentries, then
pushed down the serjeant, and darted past a third sentry, who did not
perceive him till he was gone by. All four set up the cry of “Seize him!”
and Latude joined in it still more loudly, pointing with his finger, to
mislead the pursuers. There remained only one sentry to elude, but he
was on the alert, and unfortunately knew him. Presenting his bayonet, he
threatened to kill the prisoner if he did not stop. “My dear Chenu,”
said I to him, “you are incapable of such an action; your orders are
to arrest, and not to kill me. I had slackened my pace, and came up to
him slowly; as soon as I was close to him, I sprang upon his musket, I
wrenched it from him with such violence, that he was thrown down in the
struggle; I jumped over his body, flinging the musket to a distance of
ten paces, lest he should fire it after me, and once more I achieved my
liberty.”
Favoured by the fog, Latude contrived to hide himself in the park till
night, when he scaled the wall, and proceeded, by by-ways, to Paris.
He sought a refuge with the two kind females to whom he had entrusted
his packet. They were the daughters of a hair-dresser, named Lebrun.
The asylum for which he asked was granted in the kindest manner. They
procured for him some linen, and an apartment in the house, gave him
fifteen livres which they had saved, and supplied him with food from all
their own meals. The papers confided to them they had endeavoured, but in
vain, to deliver to the persons for whom they were intended: two of those
persons were absent from France; the third was recently married, and his
wife, on hearing that the packet was from the Bastile, would not suffer
her husband to receive it.
Latude was out of prison, but he was not out of danger. He was convinced
that, to whatever quarter he might bend his steps, it would be next
to impossible to elude M. de Sartine, who, by means of his spies, was
omnipresent. In this emergency, he deemed it prudent to conciliate
his persecutor; and he accordingly wrote a letter to him, entreating
forgiveness for insults offered in a moment of madness, promising future
silence and submission, and pathetically imploring him to become his
protector. This overture had no result. He tried the influence of various
persons, among whom was the prince of Conti, but everywhere he was met
by the prejudice which Sartine had raised against him; and, to add to his
alarm and vexation, he learned that a strict search was making for him,
and that a reward of a thousand crowns was offered for his apprehension.
As a last resource, he determined to make a personal appeal to the
duke of Choiseul, the first minister, who was then with the court at
Fontainebleau. It was mid-December when he set out, the ground was
covered with ice and snow, and the cold was intense. A morsel of bread
was his whole stock of provisions, he had no money, and he dared not
approach a house, proceed on the high road, or travel by day, lest he
should be intercepted. In his nightly circuitous journey, of more than
forty miles, he often fell into ditches, or tore himself in scrambling
through the hedges. “I hid myself in a field,” says he, “during the whole
of the 16th; and, after walking for two successive nights, I arrived on
the morning of the 17th at Fontainebleau, worn out by fatigue, hunger,
grief, and despair.”
Latude was too soon convinced that there was no chance of escaping from
the vengeance of M. de Sartine. As soon as he had announced his arrival
to the duke, two officers of the police came to convey him, as they said,
to the minister; but their mask was speedily thrown off, and he found
that they were to escort him back to Vincennes. They told him that every
road had been beset, and every vehicle watched, to discover him, and they
expressed their wonder at his having been able to reach Fontainebleau
undetected. “I now learned,” says he, “for the first time, that there
was no crime so great, or so severely punished, as a complaint against
a minister. These exempts quoted to me the case of some deputies from
the provinces, who, having been sent a short time before to denounce to
the king the exactions of certain intendants, had been arrested, and
punished as dangerous incendiaries!”
On his reaching Vincennes, he was thrown into a horrible dungeon, barely
six feet by six and a half in diameter, which was secured by four
iron-plated, treble-bolted doors, distant a foot from each other. To
aggravate his misery, he was told that he deserved a thousand times worse
treatment; for that he had been the cause of the serjeant who guarded
him being hanged. This appalling news entirely overwhelmed him; he gave
himself up to frantic despair, and incessantly accused himself as the
murderer of the unfortunate man. In the course of a few days, however, a
compassionate sentinel, who was moved by his cries and groans, relieved
his heart, by informing him that the serjeant was well, and had only been
imprisoned.
The kind-hearted governor sometimes visited Latude, but the information
which he brought was not consolatory. He had tried to move M. de Sartine,
and had found him inflexible. Sartine, however, sent to offer the
prisoner his liberty, on condition that he would name the person who held
his papers, and he pledged his honour that no harm should come to that
person. Latude knew him too well to trust him. He resolutely answered, “I
entered my dungeon an honest man, and I will die rather than leave it a
dastard and a knave.”
Into the den, where he was as it were walled up, no ray of light entered;
the air was never changed but at the moment when the turnkey opened the
wicket; the straw on which he lay was always rotten with damp, and the
narrowness of the space scarcely allowed him room to move. His health
of course rapidly declined, and his body swelled enormously, retaining
in every part of it, when touched, the impression of the finger. Such
were his agonies that he implored his keepers, as an act of mercy, to
terminate his existence. At last, after having endured months of intense
suffering, he was removed to a habitable apartment, where his strength
gradually returned.
Though his situation was improved, he was still entirely secluded from
society. Hopeless of escape, he pondered on the means of at least opening
an intercourse with his fellow-prisoners. On the outer side of his
chamber was the garden, in which each of the prisoners, Latude alone
being excluded, was daily allowed to walk by himself for a certain time.
This wall was five feet thick; so that to penetrate it seemed almost as
difficult as to escape. But what cannot time and perseverance accomplish!
His only instruments were a broken piece of a sword and an iron hoop of
a bucket, which he had contrived to secrete; yet with these, by dint of
twenty-six months’ labour, he managed to perforate the mass of stone.
The hole was made in a dark corner of the chimney, and he stopped the
interior opening with a plug, formed of sand and plaster. A long wooden
peg, rather shorter than the hole, was inserted into it, that, in case of
the external opening being noticed and sounded, it might seem to be not
more than three inches in depth.
For a signal to the prisoner walking in the garden, he tied several
pieces of wood so as to form a stick about six feet long, at the end of
which hung a bit of riband. The twine with which it was tied was made
from threads drawn out of his linen. He thrust the stick through the
hole, and succeeded in attracting the attention of a fellow-captive,
the Baron de Venac, who had been nineteen years confined for having
presumed to give advice to Madame de Pompadour. He successively became
acquainted with several others, two of whom were also the victims of
the marchioness; one of them had been seventeen years in prison, on
suspicion of having spoken ill of her; the other had been twenty-three
years, because he was suspected of having written against her a pamphlet,
which he had never even seen. The prisoners contrived to convey ink and
paper to Latude through the hole; he opened a correspondence with them,
encouraged them to write to each other, and became the medium through
which they transmitted their letters. The burthen of captivity was much
lightened to him by this new occupation.
An unfortunate change for the prisoners now took place. The benevolent
and amiable-mannered Guyonnet was succeeded by Rougemont, a man who was
a contrast to him in every respect; he was avaricious, flinty-hearted,
brutal, and a devoted tool of M. de Sartine. The diet which he provided
for the captives was of the worst kind; and their scanty comforts were
as much as possible abridged. That he might not be thwarted in the
exercise of his tyranny, he dismissed such of the prison attendants as he
suspected of being humane, and replaced them by men whose dispositions
harmonised with his own. How utterly devoid of feeling were the beings
whom he selected, may be judged by the language of his cook. This libel
on the human race is known to have said, “If the prisoners were ordered
to be fed upon straw, I would give them stable-litter;” and, on other
occasions, he declared, “If I thought there was a single drop of juice in
the meat of the prisoners, I would trample it under my foot to squeeze it
out.” Such a wretch would not have scrupled to put poison into the food,
had not his master had an interest in keeping the captives alive. When
any one complained of the provisions, he was insultingly answered, “It is
but too good for prisoners;” when he applied for the use of an article,
however insignificant, the reply was, “It is contrary to the rules.” So
horrible was the despotism of the governor that, within three months,
four of the prisoners strangled themselves in despair. “The Inquisition
itself,” says Latude, “might envy his proficiency in torture!”
Latude was one of the first to suffer from the brutality of Rougemont.
The apartment in which Guyonnet had placed him commanded a fine view.
The enjoyment of a prospect was thought to be too great a luxury for a
prisoner, and, accordingly, Rougemont set about depriving him of it. He
partly built up the windows, filled the interstices of the bars with
close iron net-work; and then, lest a blade of grass should still be
visible, blockaded the outside with a blind like a mill-hopper, so that
nothing could be perceived but a narrow slip of sky. But his situation
was soon made far worse. In a fit of anger, caused by his being refused
the means of writing to the lieutenant of police, he imprudently chanced
to wish himself in his former cell again. He was taken at his word. On
the following morning, when he had forgotten his unguarded speech, he was
led back to his dark and noisome dungeon. “Few will believe,” says he,
“that such inhuman jests could be practised in a civilised country.”
M. de Sartine, being now appointed minister of the marine, was replaced
by M. Le Noir. It was some time before Latude knew of this change, and
he derived no benefit from it, the new head of the police being the
friend of Sartine. He wished to address the minister, but the means were
refused, and he again tasked his skill to remove the obstacle. The only
light he enjoyed was when his food was brought to him. The turnkey then
set down the lamp at the entrance of the wicket, and went away to attend
to other business. Of the turnkey’s short absence Latude availed himself
to write a letter; it was written on a piece of his shirt, with a straw
dipped in blood. His appeal was disregarded; and, to prevent him from
repeating it in the same manner, the governor ordered a socket for the
candle to be fixed on the outside of the wicket, so that only a few
feeble rays might penetrate into the dungeon. But the captive was not
to be easily discouraged; and, besides, he took a delight in baffling
his persecutors. He had remaining in a pomatum pot some oil, sent by the
surgeon to alleviate the colic pains which were caused by the dampness
of his abode. Cotton drawn from his stockings supplied him with a wick.
He then twisted some of his straw into a rope, which he coiled up, and
fastened, in the shape of a bee-hive. With another portion of straw he
made a sort of stick, five feet long, with a bit of linen at the end of
it. The turnkey was always obliged to bring his food at twice; and, while
he was fetching the second portion, Latude thrust out the stick, obtained
a light from the candle, lighted his taper, and then closely covered it
over with the bee-hive basket. When he was left by himself he unhooded
the lamp, and wrote a second letter with his own blood. The only result
was, to make his jailers believe that he was aided by the prince of
darkness.
It was not till Latude was again at death’s-door that he was removed
from his dungeon; on being taken out he fainted, and remained for a long
while insensible. When he came to himself his mind wandered, and for
some time he imagined that he had passed into the other world. Medical
aid was granted to him, and he slowly recovered his health. The turnkeys
now occasionally dropped obscure hints of some beneficial change, which
he was at a loss to understand. The mystery was at length explained.
The benevolent M. de Malesherbes had lately been appointed a cabinet
minister, and one of his first acts was to inspect the state prisons.
He saw Latude, listened to his mournful story, was indignant at his
six-and-twenty years’ captivity, and promised redress.
Latude had been more than eleven years at Vincennes, when the order
arrived for his release. His heart beat high with exultation; but he was
doomed to suffer severe disappointment. At the moment when he imagined
that he was free, an officer informed him, that the minister thought
it expedient to accustom him gradually to a purer air, and that he was
therefore directed to convey him to a convent, where he was to remain for
a few months. These were the very same words which had been spoken to
him when he was sent from the Bastile to Vincennes; and, knowing their
meaning but too well, they almost palsied his faculties. His enemies
had been busily at work; by gross misrepresentations, and by forging in
his name an extravagant memorial to the king, they had induced M. de
Malesherbes to believe that the prisoner’s intellects were disordered,
and that he could not be immediately released without peril.
It was to the hospital of Charenton, the Parisian bedlam, that the
officers were removing Latude. When he was about to quit Vincennes,
he heard the brutal Rougemont describe him to them as a dangerous and
hardened criminal, who could not be too rigorously confined. It was also
hinted, that the prisoner was gifted with magical powers, by virtue of
which he had thrice escaped in an extraordinary manner. When he was
turned over to the monks, called the Brothers of Charity, who had the
management of Charenton, these particulars were faithfully reported to
them, and he was introduced under the name of Danger, in order to excite
an idea of his formidable character.
Unacquainted with the nature of Charenton, Latude, on seeing the monks,
had supposed that he was in a monastery. On finding that he was in a
mad-house, he dropped lifeless to the ground. He was conducted to a cell,
which was over the vault where the furious lunatics were chained, and
their shrieks and groans were horrible. In the night he heard the sound
of voices, and discovered that two prisoners, one in the adjoining
room, and the other in that above, were talking about him, out of their
windows. They were both of them state prisoners, the hospital being
occasionally converted into a jail by the ministers; one was named St.
Magloire, the other the Baron de Prilles. Latude introduced himself to
them, and they promised him all the services in their power. De Prilles
possessed considerable influence with the officers of the establishment,
and he exerted it so effectually, that he obtained permission for Latude
to be visited by his fellow-captives. He had, however, enjoyed this
comfort only for a short time, when Rougemont came and gave orders for
his being placed in close and solitary confinement.
Latude remained in seclusion for a considerable time; but, at length, by
dint of incessant remonstrances, De Prilles induced the superiors of the
hospital to allow his new friend to take his meals in the apartment of
St. Bernard, one of his fellow-captives. Another favour was soon after
granted; he was permitted to take some exercise in the smaller court,
when all the inmates of the place had been shut up for the night. It was
then winter; and, at eight o’clock, the keeper led him to the court; and,
when he was not disposed to walk with him, he placed his lantern on a
stone, and watched him through some holes purposely bored in the door.
Trifling as were these indulgences, the worthy monks had disobeyed
positive orders in allowing them. But they did not stop here. The head of
the hospital, Father Facio, was so deeply moved by the injustice done to
the captive, that he waited on M. de Malesherbes to intercede for him.
On his assuring the minister that the prisoner was submissive, docile,
and perfectly sane, his hearer, who had been told that Latude was a
furious madman, was astonished and indignant at having been deceived. He
promised that he would speedily release him, and desired that he might,
in the meanwhile, enjoy as much liberty as the hospital regulations would
allow. Unfortunately, however, for Latude, Malesherbes very shortly after
ceased to be one of the ministers.
Though he failed to obtain his freedom, the situation of Latude was
much ameliorated; he might roam wherever he would, within the bounds
of the establishment. He derived additional comfort from several of
the state prisoners being now suffered to take their meals together,
instead of having them separately in their apartments. The party thus
formed admitted to their society several of the lunatics who had been
liberally educated, and were harmless. One of these unfortunate men
asserted himself to be the Divinity, another claimed to be a son of
Louis XV., a third took a higher flight, and was the reigning monarch.
These aspiring pretensions were strongly contrasted with the humility
of others. A barrister, whose intellect love had shaken, manifested his
insanity by throwing himself at every one’s feet and imploring pardon.
Another individual, who had been a hermit, obstinately persisted in
believing that Latude was a German elector, and, in spite of all attempts
to prevent it, would perform for him the meanest domestic offices. “If
I told him in the morning,” says Latude, “that a flea had disturbed my
rest, he would not leave my chamber till he had killed it: he would bring
it to me in the hollow of his hand, to show me what he had done. ‘My
lord,’ he would say, ‘it will bite no more, and will never again disturb
the sleep of your most serene highness.’”
A fellow prisoner who had recently been confined in a cell during a
furious paroxysm of insanity, now gave some information to Latude,
which deeply wounded his feelings. From him Latude learned that his
early friend D’Alegre was in the prison, a raving maniac, shut up in an
iron cage. His entreaties were so pressing, that the monks granted him
permission to visit this unfortunate being. He found him a lamentable
spectacle, shrunk to a skeleton, his hair matted, and his eyes sunken
and haggard. Latude rushed to embrace him, but was repelled with signs
of aversion by the maniac. In vain he strove to recall himself to the
maniac’s recollection; the lost being only looked fiercely at him, and
exclaimed, in a hollow tone, “I know you not!—begone!—I am God!” This
victim of despotism had been ten years at Charenton, and he continued
there, in the same melancholy state, during the remainder of his
existence, which was protracted till a very late period.
After Latude had been for nearly two years at Charenton, his friends
succeeded in obtaining an order for his release, on condition that he
should permanently fix his abode at Montagnac, his native place. He
quitted the prison without hat or coat; all his dress consisting of
a tattered pair of breeches and stockings, a pair of slippers, and a
great-coat thirty years old, which damp had reduced to rottenness. He
was penniless, too; “but,” says he, “I was regardless of all these
circumstances; it was enough that I was free!”
With some money, which he borrowed from a person who knew his family,
Latude procured decent clothing. He called on M. Le Noir, who received
him not unfavourably, and desired him to depart without delay for
Montagnac. Unfortunately, he did not follow this advice. He lingered in
Paris to draw up a memorial to the king, soliciting a recompense for his
plans; and he had an interview with the Prince de Beauveau, to whom he
related his woeful story. In his memorial, he mentioned M. de Sartine;
and, though he intimates that he said nothing offensive, we may doubt
whether he manifested much forbearance. The ministers now gave him
peremptory orders to quit Paris; it is obvious that they were acquainted
with his memorial, and were irritated by it beyond measure. He had
proceeded forty-three leagues on his journey to the south of France, when
he was overtaken by an officer of police, who carried him back a prisoner
to the capital.
Latude was now taught that hitherto he had not reached the lowest depth
of misery; he was doomed to experience “a bitter change, severer for
severe.” Till this time his companions in suffering had been men with
whom it was no disgrace to associate; but, in this instance, he was
tossed among a horde of the most abandoned ruffians on earth; he was
immured in the Bicêtre, in that part of the jail which was appropriated
to swindlers, thieves, murderers, and other atrocious criminals, the scum
and offscouring of France. On his arrival there, he was stripped, clad
in the coarse and degrading prison attire, thrust into a dungeon, and
supplied with a scanty portion of bread and water.
He was now in the midst of wretches, who tormented him with questions
as to what robberies and murders he had committed, boasted of their own
numerous crimes, and laughed at his pretending to innocence. “I was
condemned,” says he, “to endure their gross and disgusting language,
to listen to their unprincipled projects, in short to breathe the very
atmosphere of vice.” It was in vain that, to procure his liberation from
this den of infamy, he wrote to the friends who had rescued him from
Charenton; some of them were silenced by the old falsehood that he was
a dangerous madman, and others were alienated by being told that he had
broken into the house of a lady of rank, and by threats had terrified
her into giving him a large sum of money. This last calumny stung him
to the soul, and he wrote to M. de Sartine to demand a trial; but his
letter produced no other effect than the issuing of an order to take from
him the means of writing. Such accumulated injustice soured his mind,
and, brooding over the hope of revenge, he assumed the name of Jedor, in
allusion to a dog so called, the figure of which he had seen on the gate
of a citadel, with a bone between its paws, and underneath, as a motto,
“I gnaw my bone, expecting the day when I may bite him who has bitten me.”
While the money lasted which Latude had taken into the prison, he could
obtain a supply of food, bad indeed in quality, and villanously cooked,
but still capable of supporting nature. But the money was soon spent,
and he was then reduced to the prison allowance, which was scanty in
quantity, of the worst kind, and often polluted by an admixture of filth
and vermin. Latude was a large eater, and the portion of food allowed to
him was so trifling, that he was tortured by hunger. To such extremity
was he driven, that he was compelled to petition the sweepers to give him
some of the hard crusts which were thrown into the passages by the richer
prisoners, and which were collected every morning for the pigs.
Bad as the fare of Latude was, his lodging was far worse. His windowless
cell, only eight feet square, swarmed with fleas and rats to such a
degree that to sleep was all but impossible; fifty rats at a time were
under his coverlet. He had neither fire nor candle, his clothing was
insufficient, and the wind, rain, and snow beat furiously through the
iron grating, which barely admitted the light. In rainy weather, and
during thaws, the water ran in streams down the walls of the dungeon.
Eight-and-thirty months were spent in this infernal abode. Rheumatism,
that prevented him from quitting his pallet, was the first consequence
of his exposed situation. This brought with it an aggravation of another
evil; for when Latude was unable to approach the wicket, the keeper flung
in his bread, and gave him no soup. Scurvy of the most inveterate kind
at length attacked him, his limbs were swelled and blackened, his gums
became spongy, and his teeth loose, and he could no longer masticate the
bread. For three days he lay without sustenance, voiceless and moveless,
and he was just on the point of expiring, when he was conveyed to the
infirmary. The infirmary was a loathsome place, little better than a
charnel-house, but the medical aid which he obtained there restored him,
after a struggle of many months, to a tolerable state of health.
On his recovery he was placed in a decent apartment. He did not,
however, long enjoy it. Having attempted to present a petition to a
princess of the house of Bouillon, who came to see the Bicêtre, he was
punished by being thrust into a dungeon more horrible than that which
he had previously inhabited. His own words will best describe what he
underwent. “I was,” says he, “still enduring a physical torture which I
had experienced before, though never to so cruel and dangerous an extent.
After having triumphed over so many disasters, and vanquished so many
enemies by my unshaken constancy, I was on the point of yielding to the
intolerable pain occasioned by the vermin which infested my person. My
dungeon was totally dark, my eye-sight was nearly extinguished, and I
tried in vain to deliver myself from the myriads of these noxious animals
that assailed me at once; the dreadful irritation made me tear my flesh
with my teeth and nails, until my whole body became covered with ulcers;
insects generated in the wounds, and literally devoured me alive. It was
impossible to sleep: I was driven mad with agony, my sufferings were
drawing to a close, and death in its most horrid shape awaited me.”
Gloomy as appearances were, the dawn of a brighter day was at hand. A
providential occurrence, which seemed calculated to destroy his last
hope, was the cause of his redemption. In 1781, the President de Gourgue
visited the Bicêtre, heard the story of Latude, desired that the captive
would draw up a memorial, and promised to exert himself in his behalf.
Latude wrote the memorial, and intrusted it to a careless messenger, who
dropped it in the street. The packet was found by a young female, Madame
Legros, who carried on in a humble way the business of a mercer, and
whose husband was a private teacher. The envelope being torn by lying
in the wet, and the seal broken, she looked at the contents, which were
signed “Masers de Latude, a prisoner during thirty-two years, at the
Bastile, at Vincennes, and at the Bicêtre, where he is confined on bread
and water, in a dungeon ten feet under ground.”
The gentle heart of Madame Legros was shocked at the idea of the
protracted agony which the prisoner must have suffered. After she
had taken a copy of the memorial, her husband, who participated in
her feelings, carried it to the president. But the magistrate had
been deceived by the falsehood, that the captive was a dangerous
incurable lunatic, and he advised them to desist from efforts which
must be fruitless. Madame Legros, however, who had much good sense and
acuteness, would not believe that the captive was mad; she again read
the memorial attentively, and could perceive in it no indication of
disordered intellect. She was firmly convinced that he was the victim of
persecution, and she resolved to devote her time and her faculties to
his deliverance. Never, perhaps, was the sublime of benevolence so fully
displayed as by this glorious woman, whose image ought to have been
handed down to posterity by the painter’s and the sculptor’s hand. In
the course of her philanthropic struggles, she had to endure calumny and
severe privations, she was reduced to sell her ornaments and part of her
furniture, and to subsist on hard and scanty fare, yet she never paused
for a moment from the pursuit of her object, never uttered a sentence
of regret that she had engaged in it. Her husband, too, though less
personally active, has the merit of having entirely coincided with her in
opinion, and aided her as far as he had the power.
It is delightful to know that her noble labours were crowned with
success. Her toils, and the result of them, are thus summed up by Latude,
who has also narrated them at great length. “Being thoroughly convinced
of my innocence, she resolved to attempt my liberation; she succeeded,
after occupying three years in unparalleled efforts, and unwearied
perseverance. Every feeling heart will be deeply moved at the recital
of the means she employed, and the difficulties she surmounted. Without
relations, friends, fortune, or assistance, she undertook everything,
and shrank from no danger and no fatigue. She penetrated to the levées
of ministers, and forced her way to the presence of the great; she spoke
with the natural eloquence of truth, and falsehood fled before her words.
They excited her hopes and extinguished them, received her with kindness
and repulsed her rudely; she reiterated her petitions, and returned a
hundred times to the attack, emboldened by defeat itself. The friends
her virtues had created trembled for her liberty, even for her life.
She resisted all their entreaties, disregarded their remonstrances, and
continued to plead the cause of humanity. When seven months pregnant, she
went on foot to Versailles, in the midst of winter; she returned home
exhausted with fatigue and worn out with disappointment; she worked more
than half the night to obtain subsistence for the following day, and then
repaired again to Versailles. At the expiration of eighteen months, she
visited me in my dungeon, and communicated her efforts and her hopes.
For the first time I saw my generous protectress; I became acquainted
with her exertions, and I poured forth my gratitude in her presence.
She redoubled her anxiety, and resolved to brave everything. Often, on
the same day, she has gone to Montmartre to visit her infant, which was
placed there at nurse, and then came to the Bicêtre to console me and
inform me of her progress. At last, after three years, she triumphed, and
procured my liberty!”
In the first instance, the boon of liberty could not be said to be more
than half granted; Latude being ordered to fix his abode at Montagnac,
and not to leave the town without the permission of the police officer
of the district. As his fortune was entirely lost, a miserable pension
of four hundred livres (about £16) was assigned for his subsistence. By
the renewed exertions of Madame Legros, however, the decree of exile was
rescinded, and he was allowed to remain at Paris, on condition of his
never appearing in the coffee-houses, on the public walks, or in any
place of public amusement. The government might well be ashamed that such
a living proof of its injustice should be contemplated by the people.
It was on the 24th of March, 1784, that Latude emerged into the world,
from which he had for five-and-thirty years been secluded. He and his
noble-minded benefactress were, for a considerable time, objects of
general curiosity. Happily, that curiosity did not end in barren pity and
wonder, but proved beneficial to those who excited it. A subscription
was raised, by which two annuities, each of 300 livres, were purchased,
one for Latude, the other for his deliverer. Two other pensions, of 600
livres and 100 crowns, were soon after granted by individuals to Madame
Legros, and the Montyon gold medal, annually given as the prize of
virtue, was unanimously adjudged to her by the French Academy. The income
of Latude also obtained some increase; but it was not till 1793 that it
received any addition of importance; in that year he brought an action
against the heirs of the Marchioness de Pompadour, and heavy damages
were awarded to him. Notwithstanding the severe shocks his frame had
undergone, the existence of Latude was protracted till 1805, when he died
at the age of eighty.