THE DUNGEON OF VINCENNES.
I.
Louis XI. strolled one day in the precincts of Vincennes, wrapped in his
threadbare surtout edged with rusty fur, and plucking at the queer
little peaked cap with the leaden image of the Virgin stuck in the band.
There was a smile on the sallow and saturnine face.
At his Majesty's right walked a thick-set, squab man of scurvy
countenance, wearing a close-fitting doublet, and armed like a hangman.
On the King's left went a showy person, vulgar and mean of face, whose
gait was a ridiculous strut.
Louis stopped against the dungeon and tapped the great wall with his
finger.
"What's just the thickness of this?" he asked.
"Six feet in places, sire, eight in others," answered the squab man,
Tristan, the executioner.
"Good!" said Louis. "But the place looks to me as if it were tumbling."
"It might, no doubt, be in better repair, sire," observed the showy
person, Oliver, the barber; "but as it is no longer used——"
"Ah! but suppose I thought of using it, gossip?"
"Then, sire, your Majesty would have it repaired."
"To be sure!" chuckled the King—"If I were to shut you up in there,
Oliver, you could get out, eh?"
"I think so, sire."
"But you, gossip," to his hangman, "you'd catch him and have him back to
me, _hein?_"
"Trust me, sire!" said Tristan.
"Then I'll have my dungeon mended," said Louis. "I'm going to have
company here, gossips."
"Sire!" exclaimed Oliver. "Prisoners so close to your Majesty's own
apartments! But you might hear their groans."
"Ha! They groan, Oliver? The prisoners groan, do they? But there's no
need why I should live in the château here. Hark you both, gossips, I'd
like my guests to groan and cry at their pleasure, without the fear of
inconveniencing their King."
And the King, and his hangman, and his barber fell a-laughing.
-------
From that day, in a word, Louis ceased to inhabit the château of
Vincennes, and the dungeon which appertained to it was made a terrible
fastness for his Majesty's prisoners of State. It was already a place of
some antiquity. The date of the original buildings is quite obscure. The
immense foundations of the dungeon itself were laid by Philippe de
Valois; his son, Jean le Bon, carried the fortress to its third story;
and Charles V. finished the work which his fathers had begun.
All prisons are not alike in their origin. In the beginnings of states,
force counts for more than legal prescripts, and ideas of vengeance go
above the worthier idea of the repression of crime. Such-and-such a
prison, renowned in history, is the expression in stone and mortar of
the power or the hatred of its builders. Thus and thus did they plan and
construct against their enemies. There was no mistaking, for example,
the purpose of the architect of the Bastille,—it must be a fortress
stout enough to resist the enemy outside, and a place fit and suitable
to hold and to torture him when he had been carried a prisoner within
its walls.
But Vincennes, in its origin, at all events, may be viewed under other
and softer aspects. Those prodigious towers, for all the frightful
menace of their frown, were not first reared to be a place of torment.
The name of Vincennes came indeed, in the end, to be not less dreadful
and only less abhorrent than that of the Bastille. A few revolutions of
the vicious wheel of despotism, and the King's château was transformed
into the King's prison, for the pain of the King's enemies, or of the
King's too valiant subjects. But the infancy and youth of Vincennes were
innocent enough, a reason, perhaps, why it was always less hated of the
people than the Bastille. Vincennes lived and passed scathless through
the terrors and hurtlings of the Revolution; and presently, from its
cincture of flowers and verdant forest, looked down upon that high
column of Liberty, which occupied the blood-stained site of the
vanquished and obliterated Bastille.
[Illustration: THE KEEP OR DUNGEON OF VINCENNES.]
King Louis lived no more in the château, and his masons made good the
breaches in the dungeon which neglect, rather than age, had occasioned.
When it stood again a solid mass of stone,—
"Gossip," said Louis to his executioner and torturer-in-chief, "if there
were some little executions to be done here quietly and secretly—as you
like to do them, Tristan—what place would you choose, _hein_?"
"I've chosen one, sire; a beautiful chamber on the first floor. The
walls are thick enough to stifle the cries of an army; and if you lift
the stones of the floor here and there, you find underneath the most
exquisite _oubliettes_! Ah! sire, they understood high politics before
your Majesty's time."
King Louis caressed his pointed chin, and laughed:
"I think it was Charles _the Wise_ who built that chamber."
"No, sire; it was John _the Good_!"
"Ah, so! Go on, gossip. My dungeon is quite ready, eh?"
"Quite ready, sire."
"To-morrow, then, good Tristan, you will go to Montlhéry. In the château
there you will find four guests of mine, masked, and very snug in one of
our cosy iron cages. You will bring them here."
"Very good, sire."
"You will take care that no one sees you—or them."
"Yes, sire."
"And you will be tender of them, gossip. You are not to kill them on the
way. When we have them here—we shall see. Start early to-morrow,
Tristan. As for friend Oliver here, he shall be my governor of the
dungeon of Vincennes, and devote himself to my prisoners. If a man of
them escapes, my Oliver, Tristan will hang you; because you are not a
nobleman, you know."
"Sire," murmured the barber, "you overwhelm me."
"Your Majesty owed that place to me, I think," said Tristan.
"Are you not my matchless hangman, gossip? No, no! Besides, I'm keeping
you to hang Oliver. Go to Montlhéry."
Thus was Vincennes advanced to be a State prison, in 1473, when Louis
XI. held the destinies of France. From that date to the beginning of the
century we live in, those black jaws had neither sleep nor rest. As fast
as they closed on one victim, they opened to receive another. At a
certain stage of all despotic governments, the small few in power live
mainly for two reasons—to amuse themselves and to revenge themselves.
One amuses oneself at Court, and a State prison-controlled from the
Court—is an ideal means of revenging oneself. The tedious machinery of
the law is dispensed with. There is no trouble of prosecuting, beating
up witnesses, or waiting in suspense for a verdict which may be given
for the other side. The _lettre de cachet_, which a Court historian
described as an ideal means of government, and which Mirabeau (in an
essay penned in Vincennes itself) tore once for all into shreds, saved a
world of tiresome procedure to the King, the King's favourites, and the
King's ministers. For generations and for centuries, absolutism,
persecution, party spirit, public and private hate used the _lettre de
cachet_ to fill and keep full the cells and dungeons of the Bastille and
Vincennes. It was, to be sure, a two-edged weapon, cutting either way.
He who used it one day might find it turned against him on another day.
But, by whomsoever employed, it was the great weapon of its time; the
most effective weapon ever forged by irresponsible authority, and the
most unscrupulously availed of. It was this instrument which, during
hundreds of years, consigned to captivity without a limit, in the
_oubliettes_ of all the State prisons of France, that "_immense et
déplorable contingent de prisonniers célèbres, de misères illustres_."
Vincennes and the Bastille have been contrasted. They were worthy the
one of the other; and at several points their histories touch. In both
prisons the discipline (which was much an affair of the governor's whim)
followed pretty nearly the same lines, and owed nothing in either place
to any central, preconceived and ordered scheme of management. Prisoners
might be transferred from Vincennes to the Bastille, and from the
Bastille again to Vincennes. For the governor, Vincennes was generally
the stepping-stone to the Bastille. At Vincennes he served his
apprenticeship in the three branches of his calling—turnkey, torturer,
and hangman. Like the callow barber-surgeon of the age, he bled at
random, and used the knife at will; and his savage novitiate counted as
so much zealous service to the State.
But Vincennes wears a greater colour than the Bastille. It stood to the
larger and more famous fortress as the _noblesse_ to the _bourgeoisie_.
Vincennes was the great prison, and the prison of the great. Talent or
genius might lodge itself in the Bastille, and often so did, very
easily; nobility, with courage enough to face its sovereign on a
grievance, or with power enough to be reckoned a thought too near the
throne, tasted the honours of Vincennes. To be a wit, and polish an
epigram against a minister or a madam of the Court; to be a rhymester,
and turn a couplet against the Government; to be a philosopher, and
hazard a new social theory, was to knock for admission at the wicket of
the Bastille. But to be a stalwart noble, and look royalty in the eye,
sword in hand; to be brother to the King, and chafe under the royal
behest; to be a cardinal of the Church, and dare to jingle your breviary
in the ranks of the Fronde; to be leader of a sect or party, or the head
of some school of enterprise, this was to give with your own hand the
signal to lower the drawbridge of Vincennes.
At seasons prisoners of all degrees jostled one another in both prisons;
but in general the unwritten rule obtained that philosophy and unguarded
wit went to the Bastille; whilst for strength of will that might prove
troublesome to the Crown ... _voilà le donjon de Vincennes!_
Yes, Vincennes was the _State_ prison, the prison for audacity in high
places, for genius that could lead the general mind into paths of danger
to the throne. The fetters fashioned there were for a Prince de Condé to
wear, a Henri de Navarre, a Maréchal de Montmorency, a Bassompierre or a
Cardinal de Retz, a Duc de Longueville or a Prince Charles Edward, a La
Môle and a Coconas, a Rantzau or a Prince Casimir, a Fouquet or a Duc de
Lauzun, a Louis-Joseph de Vendôme, a Diderot or a Mirabeau, a d'Enghien.
History, says a French historian, shews itself never at the Bastille but
with manacles in one hand and headsman's axe in the other. At Vincennes,
ever and anon, it appears in the rustling silks of a king's favourite,
who finds within the circle of those cruel walls soft bosky nooks and
bowers, for feasting and for love. Sometimes from the bosom of those
perfumed solitudes, a death-cry escapes, and the flowers are spotted
with blood: Messalina has dispensed with a _lettre de cachet_. At one
epoch it is Isabeau de Bavière, it is Catherine de Médicis at another;
what need to exhaust or to extend the list? Catherine made no sparing
use of the towers of Vincennes. It was a spectacle of royal splendours
on this side and of royal tyrannies on that; banquets and executions;
the songs of her troubadours mingling with the sighs of her captives.
Often some enemy of Catherine, quitting the dance at her pavilion of
Vincennes, fell straightway into a cell of the dungeon, to die that
night by stiletto, or twenty years later as nature willed. Yes, indeed,
Vincennes and the Bastille were worthy of each other.
-------
Two mysterious echoes of history still reach the ear from what were once
the vaulted dungeons of Vincennes. The note of the first is gay and
mocking, a cry with more of victory in it than of defeat, and one
remembers the captivity of the Prince de Condé. The other is like the
sudden detonation of musketry, and one recalls the bloody death of the
young Duc d'Enghien, the last notable representative of the house of
Condé.
The Prince de Condé's affair is of the seventeenth century. It was Anne
of Austria, inspired by Mazarin, who had him arrested, along with his
brother the Prince de Conti and their brother-in-law the Duc de
Longueville. A lighter-hearted gallant than Condé never set foot on the
drawbridge of Vincennes. On the night of his arrival with De Conti and
the duke, no room had been prepared for his reception. He called for
new-laid eggs for supper, and slept on a bundle of straw. De Conti
cried, and De Longueville asked for a work on theology. The next day,
and every day, Condé played tennis and shuttle-cock with his keepers;
sang and began to learn music. He quizzed the governor perpetually, and
laid out a garden in the grounds of the prison which became the talk of
Paris. "He fasted three times a week and planted pinks," says a
chronicler. "He studied strategy and sang the psalms," says another.
When the governor threatened him for breaches of the rules, the Prince
offered to strangle him. But not even Vincennes could hold a Condé for
long, and he was liberated.
Briefer still was the sojourn of the Duc d'Enghien—one of the strangest,
darkest, and most tragical events of history. In 1790, at the age of
nineteen, he had quitted France with the chiefs of the royalist party.
Twelve years later, in 1802, he was living quietly at the little town of
Ettenheim, not far from Strasbourg; in touch with the forces of Condé,
but not, as it seems, taking active part in the movement which was
preparing against Napoleon. A mere police report lost him with the First
Consul. He was denounced as having an understanding with the officers of
Condé's army, and as holding himself in readiness to unite with them on
the receipt of instructions from England. Napoleon issued orders for his
arrest, and he was seized in his little German retreat on March 15,
1804. Five days later he was lodged in the dungeon of Vincennes.
Here the prison drama, one of the saddest enacted on the stage of
history, commences. "_Tout est mystérieux dans cette tragédie, dont le
prologue même commence par un secret._" (Everything is mysterious in
this tragedy, the very prologue of which begins with a secret.)
The Duke had married secretly the Princess Charlotte de Rohan, who, by
her husband's wish, continued to occupy her own house. The daily visits
of the constant husband were a cause of suspicion to the agents of
Napoleon. They said that he was framing plots; he was simply enjoying
the society of his wife. He was engaged, they said, in a conspiracy with
Georges and others against the life of Napoleon; he was but turning love
phrases in the boudoir of the Princess.
The mystery accompanied the unfortunate prisoner from Ettenheim to
Strasbourg, from Strasbourg to Paris, and went before him to Vincennes.
Governor Harel was instructed to receive "an individual whose name is on
no account to be disclosed. The orders of the Government are that the
strictest secrecy is to be preserved respecting him. He is not to be
questioned either as to his name or as to the cause of his detention.
You yourself will remain ignorant of his identity."
As he was driven into Paris at five o'clock on the evening of March
20th, the Duke said with a fine assurance:
"If I may be permitted to see the First Consul, it will be settled in a
moment."
That request never reached Napoleon, and the prisoner was hurried to
Vincennes. His only thought on reaching the château was to ask that he
might have leave to hunt next day in the forest. But the next day was
not yet come.
The mystery does not cease. The military commission sent hot-foot from
Paris to try the case were "_dans l'ignorance la plus complète_" both as
to the name and the quality of the accused. An aide-de-camp of Murat
gave the Duke's name to them as they gathered at the table in an
ante-chamber of the prison to inquire what cause had summoned them.
D'Enghien was abed and asleep.
"Bring in the prisoner," and Governor Harel fetched d'Enghien from his
bed. He stood before his judges with a grave composure, and not a
question shook him.
"Interrogated as to plots against the Emperor's life, taxed with
projects of assassination, he answered quietly that insinuations such as
these were insults to his birth, his character, and his rank."[4]
Footnote 4:
_Histoire du Donjon de Vincennes._
The inquiry finished, the Duke demanded with insistence to see the First
Consul. Savary, Napoleon's aide-de-camp, whispered the council that the
Emperor wished no delay in the affair,[5] and the prisoner was
withdrawn.
Footnote 5:
It is moderately certain at this day that everyone representing
Napoleon in this miserable affair of d'Enghien _mis_-represented him
from first to last.
Some twenty minutes later a gardener of the château, Bontemps by name,
was turned out of bed in a hurry to dig a grave in the trenches against
the Pavilion de la Reine; and the officer commanding the guard had
orders to furnish a file of soldiers.
D'Enghien sat composedly in his room against the council-chamber,
writing up his diary for his wife, and wondering whether leave would be
given him to hunt on the morrow. Enters, once more, Governor Harel, a
lantern in his hand. It was on the stroke of midnight.
"Would monsieur le duc have the kindness to follow?" It is still on
record that the governor was pale, looked troubled, and spoke with much
concern.
He led the way that conducted to the Devil's Tower. The stairs from that
tower descended straight into the trenches. At the head of the
staircase, looking into the blackness beyond, the Duke turned and said
to his conductor: "Are you taking me to an _oubliette_? I should prefer,
_mon ami_, to be shot."
"Monsieur," said Harel, "you must follow me,—and God grant you courage!"
"It is a prayer I never yet needed to put up," responded d'Enghien
calmly, and he followed to the foot of the stairs.
"Shoulder arms!"
A lantern glimmering at either end of the file of soldiers shewed
d'Enghien his fate. As the sentence of death was read, he wrote in
pencil a message to his wife, folded and gave it to the officer in
command of the file, and asked for a priest. There was no priest in
residence at the château, he was told.
"And time presses!" said the Duke. He prayed a moment, covering his face
with his hands. As he raised his head, the officer gave the word to
fire.
Volumes have been written upon this tragedy, but to this day no one
knows by whose precise word the blood of the last Condé was spilled in
the trenches of Vincennes. That d'Enghien was assassinated seems beyond
question—but by whom? Years after the event, General Hullin, president
of the commission, asserted in writing that no order of death was ever
signed; and that the members of the commission, still sitting at the
council-table, heard with amazement the volley that made an end of the
debate. Napoleon bore and still bears the opprobrium, but the proof
lacks. Yet who, under the Consulate, dared shoot a d'Enghien, failing
the Consul's word? The stones of Vincennes, wherein the mystery is
locked, have kept their counsel.
-------
Let the curtain be drawn for a moment on the last scene in the tragedy
of La Môle and Coconas. It is a lurid picture of the manners of the
time—the last quarter of the sixteenth century, Charles IX. on the
throne. The tale, which space forbids to tell at length, is one of love
and jealousy, with the wiles of a _soi-disant_ magician in the
background. The prime plotter in the affair was the Queen-Mother,
Catherine de Médicis. La Môle was the lover of Marguerite de Navarre;
Coconas, the lover of the Queen's friend, the Duchesse de Nevers.
Arrested on a dull and senseless charge of conspiring by witchcraft
against the life of the King, the two courtiers were thrown into
Vincennes. The first stage of the trial yielding nothing, the accused
were carried to the torture chamber, and there underwent all the
torments of the Question. After that, being innocent of the charge, they
were declared guilty, and sentenced to the axe.
"Justice" was done upon them in the presence of all Paris, wondering
dumbly at the iniquity of the punishment.
Night had fallen, and the executioner was at supper with his family in
his house in the tower of the pillory. All good citizens shunned that
accursed dwelling, and those who had to pass the headsman's door after
dark crossed themselves as they did so. All at once there was a knocking
at the door.
On his dreadful days of office the "Red Man" sometimes received the
stealthy visit of a friend, brother, wife, or sister, come to beg or
purchase a lock of hair, a garment, or a jewel.
"There's money coming to us," said the headsman to his wife. He opened
the door, and on the threshold stood a man, armed, and two women.
"These ladies would speak with you," said the man; and as the headsman
stood aside, the two ladies, enveloped in enormous hoods, entered the
house, their companion remaining without.
"You are the executioner?" said an imperious voice from behind an
impenetrable veil.
"Yes, madame."
"You have here ... the bodies of two gentlemen."
The headsman hesitated. The lady drew out a purse, which she laid upon
the table. "It is full of gold," she said.
"Madame," exclaimed the "Red Man," "what do you wish? I am at your
service."
"Shew me the bodies," said the lady.
"Ah! madame, but consider. It is terrible!" said the headsman, not
altogether unmoved. "You would scarcely support the sight."
"Shew them to me," said the lady.
Taking a lighted torch, the headsman pointed to a door in a corner of
the room, dark and humid.
"In there!" he said.
The lady who had not yet spoken broke into an hysterical sob. "I dare
not! I dare not! I am terrified!" she cried.
"Who loves should love unto death ... and in death," said she of the
imperious voice.
The headsman pushed open the door of a cellar-like apartment, held the
torch above his head, and from the black doorway the two ladies gazed in
silent horror upon the mutilated spoils of the scaffold. In the red ooze
upon the bare stone floor the bodies of La Môle and Coconas lay side by
side. The severed heads were almost in their places, a circular black
line dividing them from the white shoulders. The first of the two
ladies, with heaving bosom, stooped over La Môle, and raised the pale
right hand to her lips.
"Poor La Môle! Poor La Môle! I will avenge you!" she murmured.
Then to the executioner: "Give me the head! Here is the double of your
gold."
"Ah! madame, I cannot. I dare not! Suppose the Provost——"
"If the Provost demands this head of you, tell him to whom you gave it!"
and the lady swept the veil from her face.
The headsman bent to the earth: "Madame the Queen of Navarre!"
"And the head of Coconas to me, maître," said the Duchesse de Nevers.[6]
Footnote 6:
In effect, Margaret of Navarre bore away the head of La Môle, and the
Duchesse de Nevers that of Coconas. It is said that La Môle on the
scaffold bequeathed his head to the Queen.
-------
Amongst Louis XV.'s State prisoners, a long and picturesque array, may
be singled out for the present Prince Charles Edward, son of the
Pretender. Under the wind of adversity, after Culloden, Prince Charles
was blown at length upon French soil. Louis was gracious in his offer of
an asylum, and courtly France was enthusiastic over the exploits and
fantastic wanderings of the young hero. All went gaily with him in Paris
until the signatures had been placed to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.
Then the wind began to blow from the east again.
One morning the visit was announced of MM. de Maurepas and the Duc de
Gèvres.
"Gentlemen," said Prince Charles to his friends, "I know what this visit
bodes. His Majesty proposes to withdraw his hospitality. We are to be
driven out of France."
His handful of followers were stupefied, but the Prince was right. M. de
Maurepas announced himself as commanded by the King to request Prince
Charles Edward's immediate departure from France.
"Sir," returned the Prince, "your King has given me shelter, and the
title of brother."
"Monseigneur," said M. de Maurepas, "circumstances have changed——"
"To my advantage, sir! For over and above the rights which Louis XV. has
acknowledged in me, I have those more sacred ones of misfortune and
persecution."
"His Majesty, monseigneur, is beyond doubt deeply touched by your
misfortunes, but the treaty he has just signed for the welfare of his
people compels him now to deny you his succour."
"Does your King indeed break his word and oath so lightly?" said Prince
Charles. "Is the blood of a proscribed and exiled prince, to whom he has
but just given his hand, so trifling a matter to him?"
"Monseigneur," said de Maurepas, "I am not here to sustain an argument
with you. I am only the bearer of his Majesty's commands."
"Then tell the King from me that I shall yield only to his force."
This was on December 10, 1748.
When Louis's emissaries had retired, Prince Charles announced his
intention of going to the Opera in the evening. His followers feared
some public scandal, and did their utmost to dissuade him.
"The more public the better!" cried the Prince in a passion.
In effect, he drove to the Opera after dinner. De Maurepas had
surrounded the building with twelve hundred soldiers, and as the
Prince's carriage drew up at the steps, a troop of horse encircled it,
and he himself was met with a brusque request for his sword.
"Come and take it!" said young Hotspur, flourishing the weapon.
In a moment he was seized from behind, his hands and arms bound, and the
soldiers lifted him into another carriage, which was forthwith driven
off at a gallop.
"Where are you taking me?" asked the Prince.
"Monseigneur, to the dungeon of Vincennes."
"Ah, indeed! Pray thank your King for having chosen for me the prison
which was honoured by the great Condé. You may add that, whilst Condé
was the subject of Louis XIV., I am only the guest of Louis XV."
M. du Châtelet, governor of Vincennes at that epoch, had received orders
to make the Prince's imprisonment a rigorous one, and fifty men were
specially appointed to watch him. But du Châtelet, a friend and admirer
of the young hero, took his part, and counselled him to abandon a
resistance which must be worse than futile, "You have had triumph
enough," said the prudent du Châtelet, "in exposing the feebleness and
cowardice of the King."
Prince Charlie's detention lasted but six days. He was liberated on
December 16th, and left Paris in the keeping of an officer of musketeers
to join his father in Rome.
-------
Absolutism, _l'arbitraire_, all through this period was making hay while
the sun shone, and playing rare tricks with the liberties of the
subject. Vincennes was a witness of strange things done in the name of
the King's justice. Take the curious case of the Abbé Prieur. The Abbé
had invented a kind of shorthand, which he thought should be of some use
to the ministry. But the ministry would none of it, and the Abbé made
known his little invention to the King of Prussia, a patron of such
profitable things. But one of his letters was opened at the post-office
by the _Cabinet Noir_, and the next morning Monsieur l'Abbé Prieur awoke
in the dungeon of Vincennes. He inquired the reason, and in the course
of months his letter to the King of Prussia was shewn to him.
"But I can explain that in a moment," said the Abbé. "Look, here is the
translation."
The hieroglyphs, in short, were as innocent as a verse of the Psalms,
but the Abbé Prieur never quitted his dungeon.
A venerable and worthy nobleman, M. Pompignan de Mirabelle, was
imprudent enough to repeat at a supper party some satirical verses he
had heard touching Madame de Pompadour and De Sartines, the chief of
police. Warned that De Sartines had filled in his name on a _lettre de
cachet_, M. de Mirabelle called at the police office, and asked to what
prison he should betake himself. "To Vincennes," said De Sartines.
"To Vincennes," repeated M. de Mirabelle to his coachman, and he arrived
at the dungeon before the order for his detention.
Once a year, De Sartines made a formal visit to Vincennes, and once a
year punctually he demanded of M. de Mirabelle the name of the author of
the verses. "If I knew it I should not tell you," was the invariable
reply; "but as a matter of fact I never heard it in my life." M. de
Mirabelle died in Vincennes, a very old man.
A Swiss, by name Thoring, in the service of Madame de Foncemargue, told
a dream in which his mistress had appeared to him with this message:
"You must assassinate the King, and I will save you. You will be deaf
and dumb until the deed is accomplished."
The man was clearly of unsound mind, but weak intellects were not
allowed to murder kings in their sleep, and he was cast into Vincennes.
Twenty years later he was seen chained by the middle to the wall of his
cell, half naked and wholly mad.
But we may leave the prisoners for a while, and throw a glance upon the
great castellany itself. It is best viewed, perhaps, as it stood at the
commencement of the eighteenth century. Nine gigantic towers composed
the fortress. A tenth out-topped them—the tower of the dungeon,
distinguished as the royal manor. Two drawbridges gave access to the
prison proper, the one small and very narrow, the other of an imposing
size, to admit vehicles. Once beneath the wicket, the prisoner saw
himself surrounded on every side by walls of prodigious elevation and
thickness. He stood now immediately at the foot of the dungeon, which
reared its vast height above him. Before beginning the ascent, three
heavy doors must be opened for him, and that which communicated directly
with the dungeon could be unfastened only by the joint action of the
turnkey from within and the sergeant of the guard from without. Straight
from this inner door rose the steep staircase which led to the dungeon
towers. There were four of these towers, one at each angle, and
communication between them was by means of immense halls or chambers,
each defended by its own iron-ribbed doors.
To each of the four towers, four stories; and at each story a hall
thirty feet long, and from fifteen to eighteen feet wide. At the four
corners of the hall, four dismal chambers—the prisoners' cells. These
cells were like miniature fortresses. A solid outer door being opened, a
second one presented itself. Beyond the second was a third; and the
third, iron-plated on both sides, and armed with two locks and three
bolts, was the door of the cell. The three doors acted upon one another
in such a manner that, unless their secret were known, the second barred
the first, and the third barred the second. Light entered the cells
through four loopholes, of which the inner orifices were a foot and a
half in width, and the outer only six inches.
In the great halls on which the cells opened, prisoners were exercised
for a limited time (never more than an hour) on rainy days, or when the
orders of the governor forbade them to descend to the walled garden of
the dungeon.
The hall of the first floor, celebrated in the annals of barbarism, was
called the _Salle de la Question_, or torture chamber. It had its stone
benches, on which, the miserable creatures were placed to wait and watch
the preparations for their torment; and great iron hoops or rings
attached to the walls, to compress their limbs when the Question was to
be put. Hard by this frightful chamber—which was fitted with every
contrivance for the infliction of bodily suffering—were certain
diminutive cells, deprived of light and air, and furnished with plank
beds, on which prisoners were chained for a moment of repose between the
first and second applications of the torture.[7]
Footnote 7:
Up to the reign of Louis XVI., every prison in Paris and the principal
courts of justice had a torture chamber, and precise rules existed as
to the various kinds of torture that might be resorted to, the mode in
which each was to be applied, the persons who were to be present
during the Question, the preliminary examination of the prisoner by a
surgeon, the manner of binding, stretching, etc., together with the
minutest details respecting the several forms of the Question, and the
means to be employed to restore the sufferer for a second application.
On the ground floor of the dungeon were the dark cells. These were in no
way connected with the _Salle de la Question_, but served as the abodes
for months, or even for years, of those unhappy prisoners against whom
absolutism had a special grudge, or whom the governor took a pleasure in
reducing to the last extremity of misery. Here was a bed hollowed in the
stone wall, and littered with mouldy straw; and rings in the wall and
floor for waist-chains and leg-irons. Such a dwelling as this might
receive the unfortunate whose _lettre de cachet_ bore the appalling
legend: _Pour être oublié!_—(_To be forgotten!_).
But there were darker profundities yet in this Tartarus of the Kings of
France. Almost as far as its towers rose above the ground, the dungeon
plunged downwards in subterranean abysses, deep below deep. How many
victims sank in those secure abysses, and were silently extinguished!
In a place which witnessed so many last earthly moments, a chapel was a
necessity. Hasty absolution was often given for the crimes real or
imaginary which were so rudely expiated within the royal manor; and
sometimes prisoners were carried in a dying state from the _Salle de la
Question_ to receive the last rites of the Church in one of the three
small chapel cells with double doors. Here, on the very threshold of
death, one lay in semi-darkness to hear the mass which was pronounced on
the other side of the wall. Over the chaplain's apartment was the
singular inscription, _Carcer sacerdotis_ (_Prison of the Priest_),
which allows the inference that the chaplain, whilst in the exercise of
his functions, was not allowed to communicate with the outer world.
A narrow stone staircase of two hundred and sixty-five high steps,
obstructed at frequent intervals by sealed doors, conducted to a small
and well made terrace at the very top of the dungeon. It is probable
that this terrace is still in existence.[8] It was little used—perhaps
because it was the pleasantest place in the prison,—but tradition has
represented Mirabeau as taking an occasional airing on that superb
summit. The little lantern-shaped tower placed here contained the chapel
which was once the oratory of the Kings of France. Some nerve must have
been needed for Majesty to pray at ease, whilst crushing with its knees
that mass of human wretchedness!
Footnote 8:
Vincennes is now a fort and artillery barracks, and may neither be
sketched nor photographed.
The great court below was parcelled into little close gardens, where,
under rigid surveillance, favoured prisoners took their dreary exercise.
Few prisons the like of Vincennes have been erected. Those tremendous
towers, those almost impenetrable walls, those double and triple doors
garnished with iron, the trenches forty feet in depth, those wide outer
galleries to give the sentries command at every point—what more could
genius and industry invent to combat the prisoner's passion for liberty?
There were, indeed, few escapes from Vincennes. The prisoner who broke
prison from the Bastille, and won his way into the trenches, nearly
always made good his flight; but in the trenches of Vincennes, if he
ever reached them, he was more helpless than a rat in a bucket. The
architect of Vincennes was up some half-hour earlier than the architect
of the Bastille.
Twice every hour of the twenty-four the patrol made a complete tour of
the dungeon; and night and morning, before the closing and opening of
the doors, the trenches (which were forbidden to the turnkeys except by
express order) were surveyed from end to end, that no letters might be
thrown there by prisoners upon whom the State had set a seal like that
of the _Masque de Fer_.
Over and above all these _précautions barbares_, the sentries had orders
to turn the eyes of every passerby from the dungeon towers. No one might
stand or draw bridle in the shadow of Vincennes. It might be a relative
or friend seeking to learn in what exact cell the captive was lodged!
From light to dusk, the sentry reiterated his changeless formula:
_Passez votre chemin!_
We have yet to see what life the prisoners led.
II.
The hour, the manner, and the circumstances of his reception at
Vincennes were little adapted to lessen the apprehensions of a prisoner
regarding the fate that awaited him. It was generally at night that the
arrest was effected, and the dismal ceremony of admission lost nothing
amid the general gloom of the scene, streaked here and there by the thin
light of the warders' lanterns. It would have been distressing enough to
pass into that black keep as the King's prisoner, after a fair trial in
open court, and with full knowledge of the term of one's captivity; how
much more so to find oneself thrust in there on some vague or fabulous
charge, a victim not of offended laws but of some cold caprice of
vengeance, to stay the pleasure of an enemy who might forget his
prisoner before he forgot his wrath. At Vincennes as in the Bastille,
prisoners lived on, hopelessly forgotten, years after the death of their
accusers.
On arrival at the dungeon the prisoner was searched from head to foot,
and all papers, money, or other valuables were taken from him. This was
done under the eyes of the governor, who then, preceded by two turnkeys,
led his charge up that steep, narrow and winding staircase which has
been described. One vast hall after another was slowly traversed, with
frequent halts for the unbarring of doors which creaked on their rusty
hinges. The flicker of the lanterns amid that sea of shadows brought
into dim evidence huge locks and padlocks, loopholes and casements,
garnished with twisted iron bars; and every footfall found an echo in
the vaulted ceilings.
At the end of this oppressive journey, the prisoner came to his den, a
miserable place containing a wooden stump bedstead, a couple of rush
chairs, and a table stained with the dishes of every previous occupant.
If it were past the hour at which prisoners were served with supper, he
would probably be denied a morsel of food; and the governor left him,
after bestowing his first injunction: "I would have you remember,
monsieur, that this is the house of silence."
The prisoner had now to keep himself in patience until the governor
decided on his lot—that is to say, on the life that he should lead.
There was no ordered system such as regulates the existence of an army
of convicts undergoing sentence of penal servitude in these days. The
power of the governor was all but autocratic, and though he made
constant reference to "the rules," he interpreted those shadowy
prescriptions entirely as it pleased him. "It is the rule," said the
governor, when enforcing some petty tyranny. "It is not the rule," he
said, when denying some petty favour. Sometimes the prisoner was
forbidden by superior order the use of books and writing materials, but
more frequently such an order issued from the lips of the governor
himself. If permission to read and write were accorded, new difficulties
arose. There was no special library attached to the dungeon, and as the
governor's tastes were seldom literary, his store of books was scanty,
and the volumes were usually in the keeping of those few prisoners whom
he favoured. As for writing materials, little books of note-paper were
sparsely doled, each sheet numbered and to be accounted for; and no
letter could leave the prison without the governor's scrutiny.
As the prisoner read and wrote, so also did he eat and drink, by favour
of the governor. An allowance sufficient for each prisoner's maintenance
was authorised and paid by the State, but most of the King's bounty
contributed to swell the governor's private fortune. The tariff allowed
and paid out of the royal treasury was:
For a prince of the blood, about £2 _per diem_.
For a marshal of France, about £1 10_s._
For a lieutenant-general, about £1.
For a member of Parliament, about 15_s._
For an ordinary judge, a priest, a captain in the army, or an official
of good standing, about 7_s._ 6_d._
For a barrister or a citizen of means, about 2_s._ 6_d._
For a small tradesman, about 1_s._ 6_d._
At such rates as these, all prisoners should have been well cared for in
those days; but the truth is that the governors who entered Vincennes
with small means left it rich men. Not only the moneys allotted for
food, but the allowances of wood, lights, etc., were shamelessly
pilfered; and prisoners who were unable or forbidden to supplement the
royal bounty from their own purses were often half-starved and
half-frozen in their cells. As for the quality of the food, warders and
kitchen-assistants sometimes tried to sell in Vincennes meat taken from
the prison kitchen, but it had an ill name amongst the peasants: "That
comes from the dungeon; it's rotten." On the other hand, wealthy
prisoners who enjoyed the governor's favour, or who could bring
influence to bear on him from without, were allowed to beguile the
tedium of captivity by unlimited feasting and drinking. The inmate of
one cell, lying in chains, dirt, and darkness, might be kept awake at
night by the tipsy strains of his neighbour in the cell adjoining.
Governors avaricious above the common generally had their dark cells
full, so as to be able to feed on bread and water the prisoners for whom
they received the regular daily tariff. Ordinarily, there were but two
meals a day, dinner at eleven in the morning and supper at five in the
evening; hence, if your second ration were insufficient, you must go
hungry for eighteen hours. A privileged few were allowed a valet at
their own charge, but the majority of the prisoners of both sexes were
served by the turnkeys.
The turnkeys visited the cells three times a day, rather as spies, it
seems, than as ministers to the needs of the prisoners. "They came like
heralds of misfortune," says one. "A face hard, expressionless, or
insolent; an imperturbable silence; a heart proof against the sufferings
of others. Useless to address a question to them; a curt negative was
the sole response. 'I know nothing about it,' was the turnkey's eternal
formula."
Some prisoners, but by no means all, were allowed to walk for an hour a
day in one of the confined gardens at the base of the tower; always in
company with a warder, who might neither speak nor be spoken to. As the
hour struck, the exercise ceased.
Such seems to have been the external routine of life at Vincennes.
Beneath the surface was the perpetual tyrannous oppression of the
governor and his subordinates on the one side, and on the other a weight
of suffering, extended to almost every detail of existence, endured by
the great majority of the prisoners; silently even unto death in some
instances, but in others not without desperate resistance, long
sustained against overwhelming odds.
The recital of Mirabeau's captivity throws into curious relief the inner
life of the dungeon. The governor was a certain De Rougemont, of most
unrighteous memory, whom Latude describes as having written his name in
blood on the walls of every cell. Elsewhere the same narrator says that
prisoners occasionally strangled themselves to escape the rage of De
Rougemont, who was seventeen years in charge of Vincennes.
The fiery, impetuous Mirabeau was ceaselessly at variance with this
"despotic ape," who delighted in trying to repress by the most
contemptible annoyances that irrepressible spirit. Complaint was a fault
in the eyes of De Rougemont, impatience a crime.
The future tribune,[9] whose head was always in the clouds, complained
incessantly and was impatience incarnate. Night or day he gave his
gaoler no peace. Mirabeau's lodging in the fortress was a small
tower-chamber between the second and third story, rarely visited by the
sun; it was in existence fifty years ago, and bore the number 28. De
Rougemont began by submitting him to all the rigours of "the rules."
Mirabeau demanded leave to write, it was refused; to read, it was
refused; to take a daily airing, it was refused. He could not get
scissors to cut his hair, nor a barber to dress it for him. He was four
months in altercation with De Rougemont before he could obtain the use
of a blunt table-knife. He could not get at his trunk to procure himself
a change of linen.
Footnote 9:
He was imprisoned mainly on the order of the Marquis de Mirabeau, his
father, whose lifelong jealousy of that brilliant son is matter of
history; a finished example of the domestic bully, and a matchless
humbug and hypocrite, whose every action gave the lie to his by-name
_Friend of Man_. In the course of his life, the Marquis procured no
fewer than fifty _lettres de cachet_ against members of his own
family.
[Illustration: MIRABEAU ON THE TERRACE OF VINCENNES.]
"Is it by 'the rules' that my trunk is kept from me?" he demanded of the
governor.
"What need have you of your trunk?"
"Need! I want clothes and linen. I am still wearing what I brought into
this rat-hole!"
"What does it matter? You see no company here."
"I am to go foul, then, because I see no company! Is that your rule?
Once more, let me have my trunk."
"We have not the key of it."
"Send for a locksmith,—an affair of an hour."
"Where am I to find the hour? Have I no one and nothing else to attend
to? Are you the only prisoner here?"
"That is no answer. You are here to take care of your prisoners. Give me
my trunk, I tell you!"
"_It is against the rules._ We shall see by-and-bye."
"As usual! 'We shall see.' In the meantime perhaps you will have the
goodness to send a barber to shave me and cut my hair."
"Ah! I must speak about that to the minister."
"What! The minister's permission to——"
"Yes. _It is the rule._"
"Indeed! The doctor said as much, but I refused to credit him."
"You were wrong, you see!"
"Now that I remember, he told me something else, that in the present
state of my health a bath, with as little delay as possible, was
indispensable. Perhaps he did not mention that to you?"
"I fancy he did say something about it."
"Oh, he did! But the King and the Government have not debated it yet, I
suppose? Well, sir, I want a bath and I'm going to have one."
"You have no right to give orders here, sir."
"Nor have you the right to withhold what the doctor prescribes for me."
"M. de Mirabeau, you are insolent. Do you forget that I represent the
King?"
"He could not be more grotesquely represented. The distance between you
and his Majesty is short, sir."
The governor (to make the joke more apparent) was short and of a full
habit. He went out speechless, and Mirabeau would doubtless have felt
the effects of his rage had it not been for the interest of Lenoir,
Lieutenant-General of Police, who was always ready to stand between the
prisoner and the vengeful gaoler. Through Lenoir, who won for him the
intercession of the Princesse de Lamballe, Mirabeau got the use of books
and pen, and some other small indulgences. He wrote to his father: "Will
you not ease me of my chains? Let me have friends to see me; let me have
leave to walk. Let me exchange the dungeon for the château. There as
here I should be under the King's hand, and close enough to the prison,
if I should abuse that measure of liberty." The implacable _Friend of
Man_ vouchsafed no response to this entreaty. The prisoner buried
himself in the books that were given him, but they were for the most
part "_de mauvais auteurs_," who had nothing to teach him. He flung them
from him one by one, and as he paced his cell he began those brilliant
improvisations which were soon to electrify France, and which struck
absolutism at its root. In this way he worked out the scheme of the
_lettres de cachet_, that work of flaming eloquence in which the genius
of liberty approaches, seizes, and strangles the dragon of despotism.
Deprived of all but his pen, Mirabeau let fall from the height of his
dungeon on the head of royalty that thunderbolt of a treatise. Since De
Rougemont would never, for a hundred chiefs of police, have aided him
with materials for this purpose, he tore out of all the books he could
lay hands on the fly-leaves and blank spaces, and covered them with his
fine close writing. Each completed slip he concealed in the lining of
his coat, and in this manner did the tribune compose and preserve his
work, every page of which was a prophecy of the coming Revolution. When
inspiration lacked for a time, he prostrated himself on the flags of his
cell and wept for his absent mistress, or he renewed hostilities with De
Rougemont. The battle of the trunk was followed by the battle of the
looking-glass.
He could not go through his toilet without a looking-glass, he insisted;
and in a letter to the governor which must have filled several
manuscript pages he exhausted his logic and his sarcasm in enforcing
this modest request. He got his mirror in the end, and then renewed his
fruitless correspondence with his father, and made an eloquent attempt
to move the clemency of the King. "Deign, sire, to save me from my
persecutors," he wrote to Louis. "Look with pity on a man twenty-eight
years of age, who, buried in full life, sees and feels the slow approach
of brutish inertia, despair, and madness, darkening and paralysing the
noblest of his years." M. Lenoir himself placed this letter in the
King's hands, but nothing came of it for Mirabeau, who continued in the
pauses of astonishing literary labours his fight for liberty from behind
his prison bars. By clamours and entreaties he succeeded at length in
forcing his way through them.
-------
Amongst the prisoners of renown of the eighteenth century Latude must
not pass unnoticed. His sojourn in and escape from the Bastille have
been much more widely bruited than his captivity at Vincennes, where
also he did things wonderful and suffered pains and indignities
incredible. Needless to say that he gave his guards the slip, and
equally needless to add that he was recovered and brought back. His
second incarceration was in one of De Rougemont's _cachots_ (De
Rougemont always had a _cachot_ available), from, which, on the
surgeon's declaration that his life was in danger, he was removed to a
more habitable chamber. On his way thither he found and secreted one of
those handy tools which fortune seemed always to leave in the path of
Latude, and used it to establish a most ingenious means of communication
with his fellow-prisoners. No one ever yet performed such wonders in
prison as Masers de Latude. No one accomplished such unheard-of escapes.
No one, when retaken, paid with such cruel interest the penalty of his
daring. Was the man only a splendid fable, as some latter-day sceptics
have suggested? The question has been put, but no one will ever affirm
it with authority, and the weight of the evidence seems to lie with
Latude the man and not with Latude the legend.
No great distance separated the chamber of Latude from the _cachot_ of
the Prévôt de Beaumont. The Prévôt was a great criminal: he had had the
courage to denounce and expose that gigantic State fraud, the _pacte de
famine_, in which the De Sartines before named and other persons of
consequence were involved. Those were not the days for Prévôts de
Beaumont to meddle as critics with criminal ventures of this sort, and
the Prévôt had his name written on the customary form. He spent
twenty-two years in five of the State prisons of France, and fifteen of
them in the dungeon of Vincennes.
"There is not in the _Saints' Martyrology_," he wrote (in the record
which he gave to the people of the Revolution of his experiences in
the dungeon of the Monarchy), "such a tale of tribulations and
torments as were suffered by me on twelve separate occasions in the
fifteen years of my captivity at Vincennes. On one occasion I was
confined four months in the _cachot_, nine months on another
occasion, eighteen months on a third; of my fifteen years in the
dungeon, _seven years and eight months_ were passed in the black
hole. The cruel De Sartines never ceased to harry me; the monster De
Rougemont surpassed the orders of De Sartines. Yes, I have lain
almost naked and with fettered ankles for eighteen months together.
For eighteen months at a time, I have lived on a daily allowance of
two ounces of bread and a mug of water. I have more than once been
deprived of both for three successive days and nights."[10]
Footnote 10:
I have summarised here the extracts in the original from the pamphlet
of the Prévôt de Beaumont quoted at great length by the authors of the
_Histoire du Donjon de Vincennes_. As a curiosity of prison
literature, the Prévôt's pamphlet, if correctly cited, goes above the
little eighteenth-century work on Newgate by "B. L. of Twickenham."
The dramatic interest of the Prévôt's imprisonment culminates in an
assault upon him in his cell, renewed at four several ventures by the
whole strength of the prison staff "and the biggest dog that I have ever
seen." The Prévôt had devoted five years to the stealthy composition of
an essay on the _Art of True Government_, which was actually a history
of the _pacte de famine_. His attempts to get it printed were discovered
by the police, and the attack on his cell was designed to wrest from him
the manuscript. He sets out the affair in detail with the liveliest
touches—"First Round," "Second Round," etc.—shews himself levelling De
Rougemont with a brick in the stomach, the dog with a blow on the nose,
and blinding a brace of warders with the contents of his slop-bucket. At
last, faced by an order in the King's writing, he allowed himself to be
transferred from Vincennes to Charenton, on the express understanding
that his precious manuscript should be transferred with him. The Prévôt
himself arrived duly at Charenton, but he never again set eyes on the
essay on the _Art of True Government_. De Rougemont had arranged that it
should be stolen on the journey, and the manuscript was last seen in the
archives of the Bastille.
-------
Mirabeau was not the only polemic of genius who helped to sharpen
against the gratings of Vincennes the weapons of the dawning Revolution.
Was not Diderot of the _Encyclopedia_ there also? He paid by a month's
rigorous imprisonment in the dungeon, and a longer period of mild
captivity in the château, the publication of his _Letter on the Blind
for the Use of those who See_. This, at least, was the ostensible reason
of his detention; the true reason was never quite apparent. At the
château he was allowed the visits of his wife and friends, and amongst
the latter Jean Jacques Rousseau was frequently admitted. Literary
legend is more responsible than history for the statement that the first
idea of the _Social Contract_ was the outcome of Rousseau's talks with
Diderot and Grimm in the park of Vincennes.
-------
Year after year, reign after reign, the picture rarely changes within
the four walls of the dungeon. Vincennes was perhaps fuller under Louis
XV. than in the reigns of preceding or succeeding sovereigns, but the
difference could not have been great. During the twenty years of
Cardinal Fleury's ministry under Louis XV., 40,000 _lettres de cachet_
were issued by him, mostly against the Jansenists. Madame de Pompadour
made a lavish use of the _lettres_ in favour of Vincennes; Madame
Dubarry bestowed her patronage chiefly on the Bastille. Richelieu at one
epoch, Mazarin at another, found occupants in plenty for the cells of
Vincennes. It was Richelieu who passed a dry word one day apropos of
certain mysterious deaths in the dungeon.
"It must be grief," said one.
"Or the purple fever," said the King.
"It is the air of Vincennes," observed Richelieu, "that marvellous air
which seems fatal to all who do not love his Majesty."
-------
Ministers themselves were apt to fall by the weapon of their own
employment. A minister of Louis XIV., who had chosen for his proud
device the motto, _Quò non ascendam?_—_What place too high for me?_—and
whom chroniclers have suspected of pretensions to the gallant crown of
Mademoiselle de la Vallière, fell one day from a too giddy pinnacle
plump into the dungeon of Vincennes. It was Fouquet the magnificent.
Up to a point, Fouquet was the best courtier in France. The King's
passion was for pomp and glitter; the minister cultivated a taste for
the dazzling. Louis was prodigal to extravagance; Fouquet became lavish
_jusqu'à la folie_. The King dipped both hands into the public moneys;
the minister plunged elbow-deep into the coffers of the State. The King
offered to his servitors fêtes the most sumptuous; the minister regaled
his friends with spectacles beyond compare. Then Louis wearied of this
too splendid emulation, and Fouquet the magnificent was attached. He all
but sacrificed his head to his lust of rivalry; but Louis relented, and
took from him only his goods and his freedom. Despoiled and dishonoured,
the ex-minister fared from prison to prison,—Vincennes, Angers, Amboise,
Moret, the Bastille, and Pignerol. _Quò non ascendam?_—_Whither may I
not mount?_ The unfortunate minister, who had thought to climb to the
sun of Louis XIV., sank to his death in a _cachot_.
-------
The contrasts presented by the diverse fates of certain prisoners are
sufficiently striking. Fouquet was preceded at Vincennes by Cardinal de
Retz, the last prisoner of distinction whom Anne of Austria sent to the
dungeon. The Cardinal's was a gilt-edged captivity. He lived _en prince_
at Vincennes; he had valets, money, and a good table; great ladies came
to distract him, friends to flatter him, and players to divert him.
Literature, politics, gallantry, and the theatre—the Cardinal found all
of these at Vincennes. When he chanced to remember his priestly quality,
he obtained leave to say mass in the chapel of the château, "carefully
concealing the end of his chain under the richest of vestments." But the
chain was there, and the lightest of fetters grows heavy in prison;—the
Cardinal resolved on flight.
It was a clever and most original plan. On a certain day, a party of the
Cardinal's friends, mounted as for a desperate ride, were to assemble
under the walls of the keep, and at a given signal were to whirl away in
their midst a man attired at all points like the Cardinal himself. A
rope hanging from a severed bar in the window of the cell was to give
his guards to suppose that the prisoner had escaped that way; but all
this while the Cardinal was to lie _perdu_ in a hole which he had
discovered on the upper terrace of the prison. When the excitement over
the imaginary flight had subsided, and the vigilance of the sentries was
relaxed, the Cardinal was to issue from his hiding-place, disguised as a
kitchen-man, and walk out of the dungeon. It might have succeeded, but
the elements played into the hands of Anne d'Autriche. A storm blew up
on the night that the Cardinal was to have quitted his chamber, and the
wind closed a heavy door on the staircase that led to the terrace. All
the Cardinal's efforts to wrest it open were unavailing, and he was
forced to return to his cell. He was removed to the château of Nantes,
and the imaginative daring of his flight from that place has ranked it
high in the annals of prison-breaking.
-------
One echo more shall reach us from these lugubrious caverns. Towards the
beginning of the eighteenth century, a young man, Du Puits by name
(victimised by an Italian Abbé into forging orders on the King's
treasury), received as cell-companion the Marquis de la Baldonnière, a
reputed or suspected alchemist. Du Puits, a laughing philosopher now on
the verge of tears, recovered his spirits when he learned the
new-comer's name.
"I heard all about you, sir, before I came here," he said. "I was
secretary to M. Chamillart, the minister, and you were often talked of
at the bureau. I told M. Chamillart that if you could turn iron into
gold, it was a pity you were not appointed manager of the iron mines.
But it is never too late to turn one's talents to account, monsieur le
marquis, and as a magician of the first water you shall effect our
escape."
The achievements of the noble wizard came short of this end, but they
were far from contemptible. He took surreptitious impressions in wax of
the keys dangling from the very belt of the warder who visited them, and
manufactured a choice set of false ones, which gave the two prisoners
the range of the dungeon. There was no night watch within the tower, and
when the warders had withdrawn after the prisoners' supper-hour, Du
Puits and the Marquis ran up and down the stairs, and from hall to hall,
called on the other prisoners in their cells, and made some agreeable
acquaintances, including that of a pretty and charming young sorceress.
Trying a new lock one night, they found themselves in the governor's
pantry—after this, some rollicking supper parties. The feasts were
organised nightly in one cell or another, Du Puits and the Marquis
furnishing the table from the ample larder of the governor. Healths were
being drunk one night, when the door was rudely opened, and the guests
found themselves covered by the muskets of the guard. An unamiable
prisoner whose company they had declined had exposed the gay conspiracy,
and there were no more supper parties.
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The last years of Vincennes as a State prison have little of the
interest either of romance or of tragedy. Its fate in this respect was
settled by Mirabeau's _lettres de cachet_. Vincennes was the only prison
of which he had directly exposed the callous and cruel régime, and the
ministry thought well to close it, as a small concession to the rising
wrath of the populace. In 1784, accordingly, Vincennes was struck off
the list of the State prisons of France. A singular and oddly ludicrous
fate came upon it in the following year, when it was transformed into a
sort of charitable bakery under the patronage of Louis XVI.! The
_cachot_ in which the Prévôt de Beaumont had lain hungry for eighteen
months, and for three days without food, was stored with cheap loaves
for the working people of Paris. A little later, the dungeon was a
manufactory of arms for the King's troops. After the destruction of the
Bastille, Vincennes was attacked by the mob, but Lafayette and his
troops saved it from their hands. Under the Republic it was used for a
time as a prison for women. The wretched fate of the Duc d'Enghien,
Napoleon's chief captive in this fortress, has been told; and there is
only to add that the last prisoners who passed within the walls of
Vincennes were MM. de Peyronnet, de Guernon Ranville, de Polignac, and
Chantelauze, the four ministers of Charles X. whose part in the
"Revolution of July" belongs to the history of our own times. Brave old
General Daumesnil, "Old Wooden-Leg," who died August 17, 1832, was the
last governor of the Dungeon of Vincennes.
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