CHAPTER VI.

LATUDE.

Few historical figures have taken a higher place in the popular

imagination than Masers de Latude. That celebrated prisoner seems to

have accumulated in his life of suffering all the wrongs that spring

from an arbitrary government. The novelists and playwrights of the

nineteenth century have made him a hero; the poets have draped his woes

in fine mourning robes, our greatest historians have burnt for him the

midnight oil; numerous editions of his _Memoirs_ have appeared in quick

succession down to our own days. Even by his contemporaries he was

regarded as a martyr, and posterity has not plucked the shining crown of

martyrdom from his head, hoary with the snows of long captivity. His

legend is the creature of his own unaided brain. When in 1790 he

dictated the story of his life, he made greater calls on his glowing

southern imagination than on his memory; but the documents relating to

his case in the archives of the Bastille have been preserved. At the

present time they are to be found dispersed among various libraries, at

the Arsenal, at Carnavalet, at St. Petersburg. Thanks to them it is

easy to establish the truth.

On March 23, 1725, at Montagnac in Languedoc, a poor girl named

Jeanneton Aubrespy gave birth to a male child who was baptized three

days later under the name of Jean Henri, given him by his god-parents,

Jean Bouhour and Jeanne Boudet. Surname the poor little creature had

none, for he was the illegitimate child of a father unknown. Jeanneton,

who had just passed her thirtieth year, was of respectable middle-class

family, and lived near the Lom gate in a little house which seems to

have been her own. Several cousins of hers held commissions in the army.

But from the day when she became a mother, her family had no more to do

with her, and she fell into want. Happily she was a woman of stout

heart, and by her spinning and sewing she supported her boy, who shot up

into a lad of keen intelligence and considerable ambition. She succeeded

in getting him some sort of education, and we find Jean Henri at the age

of seventeen acting as assistant surgeon in the army of Languedoc.

Surgeons, it is true, made no great figure in the eighteenth century;

they combined the duties of barber and dentist as well as leech. But the

situation was good enough. "Assistant surgeons in the army," wrote

Saint-Marc the detective, "who really worked at their trade, made a good

deal of money." At this time, being reluctant to bear his mother's name,

the young man ingeniously transformed his double forename into Jean

Danry, under which he is designated in a passport for Alsace, given him

on March 25, 1743, by the general commanding the royal forces in

Languedoc. In the same year 1743, Danry accompanied the army of Marshal

de Noailles in its operations on the Maine and the Rhine, receiving from

the Marshal, towards the end of the season, a certificate testifying to

his good and faithful service throughout the campaign.

Four years later we find Danry at Brussels, employed in the

field-hospital of the army in Flanders, at a salary of 500 livres a

month. He was present at the famous siege of Bergen-op-Zoom, the

impregnable fortress which the French so valiantly stormed under the

command of the Comte de Lowendal. But peace being concluded at

Aix-la-Chapelle, the armies were disbanded, and Danry went to Paris. He

had in his pocket a letter of recommendation to Descluzeaux, the surgeon

of Marshal de Noailles, and a certificate signed by Guignard de La

Garde, chief of the commissariat, testifying to the ability and good

conduct of "the aforesaid Jean Danry, assistant surgeon." These two

certificates formed the most substantial part of his fortune.

Danry arrived in Paris about the end of the year 1748. On any afternoon

he might have been seen strolling about the Tuileries in a grey frock

and red waistcoat, carrying his twenty-three years with a good grace. Of

middle height and somewhat spare figure, wearing his brown hair in a

silk net, having keen eyes and an expression of much intelligence, he

would probably have been thought a handsome fellow but for the marks

which smallpox had indelibly stamped on his face. His accent had a

decided Gascon tang, and it is obvious, from the spelling of his

letters, not only that he could not boast of a literary education, but

that his speech was that of a man of the people. Yet, what with his

brisk temperament, his professional skill, and his favour with his

superiors, he was in a fair way to attain an honourable position, which

would have enabled him at length to support his mother, then living in

solitary friendlessness at Montagnac, centring on him, in her forlorn

condition, all her affection and her dearest hopes.

Paris, with its gaiety and stir, dazzled the young man. Its brilliant

and luxurious life, its rustling silks and laces, set him dreaming. He

found the girls of Paris charming creatures, and opened his heart to

them without stint, and his purse too; and his heart was more opulent

than his purse. Ere long he had spent his modest savings and sunk into

want. He fell into bad company. His best friend, an apothecary's

assistant named Binguet, shared with him a mean garret in the Cul-de-sac

du Coq, in the house of one Charmeleux, who let furnished lodgings. Than

these two no greater rakes, wastrels, or thorough-paced rascals could

have been found in all Paris. Danry in particular very soon got a name

all over his neighbourhood for his riotous, threatening, and choleric

temper. Dying of hunger, threatened with being ejected neck-and-crop

from his lodging for nonpayment of rent, he was reduced at last to write

for money to his mother, who, poor thing, had barely enough for her own

modest wants.

As yet we are a long way from the "handsome officer of engineers" who

lives in our remembrance: we see little likeness to the brilliant

picture which Danry drew later of those youthful years during which he

received, "by the care of his father the Marquis de La Tude, the

education of a gentleman destined to serve his country and his king."

Having come now absolutely to the end of his resources, Danry took it

into his head that, at the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom, he had been stripped

by some soldiers of all his clothes but his shirt, and robbed of 678

livres into the bargain. This story he worked up in a letter addressed

to Moreau de Séchelles, commissary of the army in Flanders, hoping to

get it corroborated by Guignard de La Garde, the commissary under whom

he had himself served. In this letter he demanded compensation for the

losses he had suffered while devoting himself under fire to the care of

the wounded. But we read, in the _Memoirs_ he wrote later, that so far

from having been stripped and robbed, he had actually purchased at

Bergen-op-Zoom a considerable quantity of goods of all kinds when they

were sold off cheap after the sack of the town. However that may be, his

experiment was a failure. But Danry was a man of resource, and not many

days had passed before he had hit on another means of raising the wind.

[Illustration:

Cover of the explosive box sent by Danry to the Marquise de

Pompadour. The words almost obliterated are: "Je vous prie, Madame,

d'ouvrir le paquet en particulié." Below is the record and the date

of Danry's examination, with his signature, and that of Berryer,

the lieutenant of police.

]

At this time everybody was talking about the struggle between the

king's ministers and the Marquise de Pompadour, which had just ended in

a triumph for the lady. Maurepas was going into exile, but it was

generally believed that he was a man who would wreak vengeance on his

enemy, and the favourite herself openly declared that she went in fear

of poison. A light dawned on the young surgeon's mind as he heard such

gossip as this; he caught a sudden glimpse of himself--even he, the

ragged outcast--arrayed in cloth of gold and rolling in his carriage

along the Versailles road.

This was his plan. On April 27, 1749, in a shop under the arcade of the

Palais-Royal, hard by the grand staircase, he bought of a small

tradesman six of those little bottle-shaped toys, once called Prince

Rupert's Drops, out of which children used to get so much harmless

amusement. They were globules of molten glass, which, on being thrown

into cold water, had taken the shape of pears, and which, if the

tapering end was suddenly snapped, crumbled with a loud report into

dust. Four of these crackers Danry placed in a cardboard box, binding

the thin ends together with a thread which he fixed in the lid. Over

these he sprinkled some toilet powder, and this he covered with a layer

of powdered vitriol and alum. The whole packet he then enclosed in a

double wrapper, writing on the inner one, "I beg you, madam, to open the

packet in private," and on the outer one, "To Madame the Marquise de

Pompadour, at court."

At eight o'clock in the evening of the next day, Danry, having seen his

packet safely in the post, hurried off himself to Versailles. He had

hoped to gain admittance to the favourite herself, but being stopped by

Gourbillon, her principal valet, in a voice trembling with emotion he

related to him a frightful story. Happening to be at the Tuileries, he

said, he had observed two men seated in animated conversation, and on

going close to them heard them mouthing the most horrible threats

against Madame de Pompadour. When they rose he dogged their footsteps,

which led direct to the post office, where they consigned a packet to

the box. Who the men were, and what was the nature of the packet, were

natural questions to which Danry had no answer; all he could say was

that, devoted to the interests of the Marquise, he had instantly sped

off to reveal to her what he had seen.

To understand the impression produced by the young man's information, it

is necessary to bear in mind the feverish excitement then prevailing at

court. Maurepas, the witty and sprightly minister who had won Louis

XV.'s special affection because of the charm with which he endowed mere

business for "the man who was always bored"--Maurepas had just been

exiled to Bourges. "Pontchartrain," the king sent word to him, "is too

near." The struggle between the minister and the favourite had been one

of extraordinary violence. Maurepas was for ever dashing off satirical

verses on the girl who had reached the steps of the throne, and

incessantly pursuing her with the cruel and insolent shafts of his wit;

his muse indeed did not shrink from the most brutal insults. Nor was the

Marquise a whit more tender towards her foe: she openly dubbed him liar

and knave, and assured everybody that he was trying to get her poisoned.

A surgeon was actually required to be in constant attendance upon her,

and she always had an antidote within reach. At table she was careful

never to be the first to partake of any dish, and in her box at the

theatre she would drink no lemonade but what had been prepared by her

surgeon.

The packet which Danry had posted arrived at Versailles on April 29, and

Quesnay, the physician to the king and the Marquise, was requested to

open it. Having done so with infinite precaution, he recognized the

vitriol and alum and toilet powder, and declared at once that there was

not a pennyworth of danger in the whole contrivance. But since alum and

vitriol were substances capable of being turned to baneful uses, he

thought that possibly it was a case of a criminal design clumsily

executed.

There is not a shadow of doubt that Louis XV. and his mistress were

seriously alarmed. D'Argenson himself, who had upheld Maurepas against

the favourite, had the greatest possible interest in seeing the affair

cleared up as soon as possible. The first move was altogether in favour

of the informer. D'Argenson wrote to Berryer that Danry was deserving of

a reward.

No time was lost in instituting a search for the authors of the plot.

The lieutenant of police selected the most skilful and intelligent of

his officers, the detective Saint-Marc, who put himself in communication

with Danry. But he had not spent two days with the assistant surgeon

before he drew up a report demanding his arrest. "It is not unimportant

to note that Danry is a surgeon, and his best friend an apothecary. In

my opinion it is essential to apprehend both Danry and Binguet without

further delay, and without letting either know of the other's arrest,

and at the same time to search their rooms."

Accordingly Danry was conveyed to the Bastille on May 1, 1749, and

Binguet was secured the same day. Saint-Marc had taken the precaution to

ask the assistant surgeon for a written account of his adventure. This

document he put into the hands of an expert, who compared the

handwriting with the address on the packet sent to Versailles. Danry was

lost. Suspicion was but too well confirmed by the results of a search in

his room. Being shut up in the Bastille, Danry knew nothing of all these

proceedings, and when, on May 2, the lieutenant-general of police came

to question him, he replied only with lies.

Berryer, the lieutenant of police, was a man of much firmness, but

honourable and kindly disposed. "He inspired one's confidence," wrote

Danry himself, "by his urbanity and kindness." This excellent man was

vexed at the attitude taken up by the prisoner, and pointing out the

danger he was incurring, he besought him to tell the truth. But at a

second examination Danry only persisted in his lies. Then all at once he

changed his tactics and refused to answer the questions put to him.

"Danry, here we do justice to every one," said Berryer to him, to give

him courage. But entreaties had no better success than threats. Danry

maintained his obstinate silence; and D'Argenson wrote to Berryer: "The

thorough elucidation of this affair is too important for you not to

follow up any clue which may point towards a solution."

By his falsehoods, and then by his silence, Danry had succeeded in

giving the appearance of a mysterious plot to what was really an

insignificant piece of knavery.

Not till June 15 did he make up his mind to offer a statement very near

the truth, which was written down and sent at once to the king, who read

it over several times and kept it in his pocket the whole day--a

circumstance which indicates to what importance the affair had now

swelled. Suspicions were not dispelled by the declaration of June 15.

Danry had misrepresented the truth in his former examinations, and there

was reason to believe that he was equally misrepresenting it in the

third. Thus he owed his ruin to his silence and his self-contradictory

depositions. Six months later, on October 7, 1749, when he was at

Vincennes, Dr. Quesnay, who had shown much interest in the young

surgeon, was sent to find out from him the name of the individual who

had instigated the crime. On his return the doctor wrote to Berryer,

"My journey has been utterly useless. I only saw a blockhead, who

persisted nevertheless in adhering to his former declarations." Two

years more had passed away when the lieutenant of police wrote to

Quesnay:--"February 25, 1751. Danry would be very glad if you would pay

him a visit, and your compliance might perhaps induce him to lay bare

his secret soul, and make a frank confession to you of what up to the

present he has obstinately concealed from me."

Quesnay at once repaired to the Bastille, bearing with him a conditional

promise of liberty. Working himself up into a frenzy, Danry swore that

"all his answers to the lieutenant of police had been strictly true."

When the doctor had taken his leave, Danry wrote to the minister: "M.

Quesnay, who has been several times to see me in my wretchedness, tells

me that your lordship is inclined to believe I had some accomplice in my

fault whom I will not reveal, and that it is for this reason your

lordship will not give me my liberty. I could wish, my lord, from the

bottom of my heart, that your belief were true, for it would be much to

my profit to put my guilt upon another, whether for having induced me to

commit my sin or for not having prevented me from committing it."

It was the opinion of the ministers that Danry had been the instrument

of a plot against the life of the Marquise de Pompadour directed by some

person of high rank, and that at the critical moment he had either

taken fright, or else had made a clean breast of the matter at

Versailles in the hope of reaping some advantage from both sides. These

facts must be kept in mind if we are to understand the real cause of his

confinement. Kept, then, in the Bastille, he was subjected to several

examinations, the reports of which were regularly drawn up and signed by

the lieutenant of police. Under the _ancien régime_, this officer was,

as we have seen, a regular magistrate, indeed he has no other

designation in the documents of the period; he pronounced sentence and

awarded punishments in accordance with that body of customs which then,

as to-day in England, constituted the law.

Binguet, the apothecary, had been set at liberty immediately after

Danry's declaration of June 15. In the Bastille, Danry was treated with

the utmost consideration, in accordance with the formal instructions of

Berryer. He was provided with books, tobacco, and a pipe; he was

permitted to play on the flute; and having declared that a solitary life

bored him, he was given two room mates. Every day he was visited by the

officers of the fortress, and on May 25 the governor came to tell him of

the magistrate's order: "That the utmost attention was to be shown him;

if he needed anything he was to be requested to say so, and was to be

allowed to want for nothing." No doubt the lieutenant of police hoped,

by dint of kindness, to persuade him to disclose the authors of the

unfortunate plot which was the figment of his imagination.

Danry did not remain long in the prison of the Suburb Saint-Antoine; on

July 28 Saint-Marc transferred him to Vincennes, and we see from the

report drawn up by the detective with what astonishment the Marquis du

Châtelet, governor of the fortress, heard "that the court had resolved

to send him such a fellow." Vincennes, like the Bastille, was reserved

for prisoners of good position; our hero was sent there by special

favour, as he was told for his consolation by the surgeon who attended

him: "Only persons of noble birth or the highest distinction are sent to

Vincennes." Danry was indeed treated like a lord. The best apartment was

reserved for him, and he was able to enjoy the park, where he walked for

two hours every day. At the time of his admission to the Bastille, he

was suffering from some sort of indisposition which later on he ascribed

to his long confinement. At Vincennes he complained of the same illness,

with the same plea that his troubles had made him ill. He was attended

by a specialist as well as by the surgeon of the prison.

Meantime the lieutenant came again to see him, reiterating assurances of

his protection, and advising him to write direct to Madame de Pompadour.

Here is what Danry wrote:--

"VINCENNES, _November 4, 1749_.

"MADAM,--If wretchedness, goaded by famine, has driven me to commit

a fault against your dear person, it was with no design of doing

you any mischief. God is my witness. If the divine mercy would

assure you to-day, on my behalf, how my soul repents of its heinous

fault, and how for 188 days I have done nothing but weep at the

sight of my iron bars, you would have pity on me. Madam, for the

sake of God who is enlightening you, let your just wrath soften at

the spectacle of my repentance, my wretchedness, my tears. One day

God will recompense you for your humanity. You are all-powerful,

Madam; God has given you power with the greatest king on all the

earth, His well-beloved; he is merciful, he is not cruel, he is a

Christian. If the divine power moves your magnanimity to grant me

my freedom, I would rather die, or sustain my life on nothing but

roots, than jeopardize it a second time. I have staked all my hopes

on your Christian charity. Lend a sympathetic ear to my prayer, do

not abandon me to my unhappy fate. I hope in you, Madam, and God

will vouchsafe an abundant answer to my prayers that your dear

person may obtain your heart's desires.

"I have the honour to be, with a repentance worthy of pardon,

Madam, your very humble and very obedient servant,

"DANRY."

A letter which it is a pleasure to quote, for it shows to great

advantage beside the letters written later by the prisoner. It was only

the truth that he had no evil design on the favourite's life; but soon

becoming more audacious, he wrote to Madame de Pompadour saying that if

he had addressed the box to her at Versailles, it was out of pure

devotion to her, to put her on her guard against the machinations of her

enemies, in short, to save her life.

Danry's letter was duly forwarded to the Marquise, but remained without

effect. Losing patience, he resolved to win for himself the freedom

denied him: on June 15, 1750, he escaped.

* * * * *

In his _Memoirs_ Danry has related the story of this first escape in a

manner as lively as imaginative. He really eluded his jailers in the

simplest way in the world. Having descended to the garden at the usual

hour for his walk, he found there a black spaniel frisking about. The

dog happened to rear itself against the gate, and to push it with its

paws. The gate fell open. Danry passed out and ran straight ahead,

"till, towards four o'clock in the afternoon, he fell to the ground with

fatigue, in the neighbourhood of Saint-Denis."

There he remained until nine o'clock in the evening. Then he struck into

the road to Paris, passing the night beside the aqueduct near the

Saint-Denis gate. At daybreak he entered the city.

We know what importance was attached at court to the safe custody of the

prisoner: there was still hope that he would make up his mind to speak

of the grave conspiracy of which he held the secret. D'Argenson wrote at

once to Berryer: "Nothing is more important or more urgent than to set

on foot at once all conceivable means of recapturing the prisoner."

Accordingly all the police were engaged in the search; the description

of the prisoner was printed, a large number of copies being distributed

by Inspector Rulhière among the mounted police.

Danry took up his lodging with one Cocardon, at the sign of the Golden

Sun; but he did not venture to remain for more than two days in the same

inn. He expected his old chum Binguet to come to his assistance, but

Binguet was not going to have anything more to do with the Bastille. It

was a pretty girl, Annette Benoist, whom Danry had known when he was

lodging with Charmeleux, that devoted herself heart and soul to him. She

knew she herself was running the risk of imprisonment, and already

strangers of forbidding appearance had come asking at the Golden Sun who

she was. Little she cared; she found assistance among her companions:

the girls carried Danry's letters and undertook the search for a safe

lodging. Meanwhile, Danry went to pass the night under the aqueducts; in

the morning he shut himself in the lodging the girls had chosen for him,

and there he remained for two days without leaving the house, Annette

coming there to keep him company. Unluckily the young man had no money:

how was he to pay his score? "What was to be done, what was to become of

me?" he said later. "I was sure to be discovered if I showed myself; if

I fled I ran no less risk." He wrote to Dr. Quesnay, who had shown him

so much kindness at Vincennes; but the police got wind of the letter,

and Saint-Marc arrived and seized the fugitive in the inn where he lay

concealed. The unlucky wretch was haled back to the Bastille. Annette

was arrested at the Golden Sun at the moment when she was asking for

Danry's letters; she too was shut up in the Bastille. The warders and

sentinels who were on duty at Vincennes on the day of the escape had

been thrown into the cells.

By his escape from Vincennes, Danry had doubled the gravity of his

offence. The regulations demanded that he should be sent down into the

cells reserved for insubordinate prisoners. "M. Berryer came again to

lighten my woes; outside the prison he demanded justice and mercy for

me, inside he sought to calm my grief, which seemed less poignant when

he assured me that he shared it." The lieutenant of police ordered the

prisoner to be fed as well as formerly, and to be allowed his books,

papers, knick-knacks, and the privilege of the two hours' walk he had

enjoyed at Vincennes. In return for these kindnesses, the assistant

surgeon sent to the magistrate "a remedy for the gout." He asked at the

same time to be allowed to breed little birds, whose chirping and lively

movements would divert him. The request was granted. But instead of

bearing his lot with patience, Danry grew more and more irritable every

day. He gave free rein to his violent temper, raised a hubbub, shrieked,

tore up and down his room, so that they came perforce to believe that he

was going mad. On the books of the Bastille library, which circulated

from room to room, he wrote ribald verses against the Marquise de

Pompadour. In this way he prolonged his sojourn in the cells. Gradually

his letters changed their tone. "It is a little hard to be left for

fourteen months in prison, a whole year of the time, ending to-day, in

one cell where I still am."

Then Berryer put him back into a good room, about the end of the year

1751. At the same time he gave him, at the king's expense, a servant to

wait on him.

As to Annette Benoist, she had been set at liberty after a fortnight's

detention. Danry's servant fell sick; as there was no desire to deprive

the prisoner of society, he was given a companion. This was a certain

Antoine Allègre, who had been there since May 29, 1750. The

circumstances which had led to his imprisonment were almost identical

with those to which Danry owed his confinement. Allègre was keeping a

school at Marseilles when he learnt that the enemies of the Marquise de

Pompadour were seeking to destroy her. He fabricated a story of a

conspiracy in which he involved Maurepas, the Archbishop of Albi, and

the Bishop of Lodève; he sent a denunciation of this plot to Versailles,

and, to give it some semblance of truth, addressed to the favourite's

valet a letter in disguised handwriting, beginning with these words: "On

the word of a gentleman, there are 100,000 crowns for you if you poison

your mistress." He hoped by this means to obtain a good situation, or

the success of a business project he had in hand.

Intelligent, with some education, and venturesome, Danry and Allègre

were just the men to get on well together, so much the better that the

schoolmaster dominated the comrade to whom he was so much superior. The

years that Danry spent in company with Allègre exercised so great an

influence on his whole life that the lieutenant of police, Lenoir, could

say one day: "Danry is the second volume of Allègre." The letters of the

latter, a large number of which have been preserved, bear witness to the

originality and energy of his mind: their style is fine and fluent, of

the purest French; the ideas expressed have distinction and are

sometimes remarkable without eccentricity. He worked untiringly, and was

at first annoyed at the presence of a companion: "Give me, I beg you, a

room to myself," he wrote to Berryer, "even without a fire: I like being

alone, I am sufficient for myself, because I can find things to do, and

seed to sow for the future." His temperament was naturally mystical, but

of that cold and acrid mysticism which we sometimes find in men of

science, and mathematicians in particular. For Allègre's principal

studies were mathematics, mechanics, and engineering. The lieutenant of

police procured for him works on fortification, architecture, mechanics,

hydraulics. The prisoner used them to compile essays on the most diverse

questions, which he sent to the lieutenant of police in the hope of

their procuring his liberation. Those essays which we possess show the

extent of his intelligence and his education. Danry followed his example

by-and-by, in this as in everything else, but clumsily. Allègre was

also very clever with his fingers, and could make, so the officials of

the château declared, whatever he pleased.

Allègre was a dangerous man: the warders were afraid of him. Some time

after his entrance into the Bastille he fell ill, and a man was set to

look after him; the two men did not agree at all. Allègre sent complaint

after complaint to the lieutenant of police. An inquiry was made which

turned out not unfavourable to the keeper, and he was left with the

prisoner. One morning--September 8, 1751--the officers of the Bastille

heard cries and clamour in the "Well" tower. Hastily ascending, they

found Allègre in the act of stabbing his companion, who lay on the floor

held down by the throat, wallowing in the blood that streamed from a

gash in the stomach. If Allègre had not been in the Bastille, the

Parlement would have had him broken on the wheel in the Place de Grève:

the Bastille was his safety, though he could no longer hope for a speedy

liberation.

Danry, in his turn, wore out the patience of his guardians. Major

Chevalier, who was kindness itself, wrote to the lieutenant of police:

"He is no better than Allègre, but though more turbulent and choleric,

he is much less to be feared in every respect." The physician of the

Bastille, Dr. Boyer, a member of the Academy, wrote likewise: "I have

good reason to distrust the man." The temper of Danry became embittered.

He began to revile the warders. One morning they were obliged to take

from him a knife and other sharp instruments he had concealed. He used

the paper they gave him to open communications with other prisoners and

with people outside. Paper was withheld: he then wrote with his blood on

a handkerchief; he was forbidden by the lieutenant of police to write to

him with his blood, so he wrote on tablets made of bread crumbs, which

he passed out secretly between two plates.

The use of paper was then restored to him, which did not prevent him

from writing to Berryer: "My lord, I am writing to you with my blood on

linen, because the officers refuse me ink and paper; it is now more than

six times that I have asked in vain to speak to them. What are you

about, my lord? Do not drive me to extremities. At least, do not force

me to be my own executioner. Send a sentry to break my head for me; that

is the very least favour you can do me." Berryer, astonished at this

missive, remarked on it to the major, who replied: "I have not refused

paper to Danry."

[Illustration:

Beginning of a letter written with blood on linen by Danry (Latude)

while a prisoner at Vincennes, to Rougemont, the king's lieutenant.

]

So the prisoner forced them more and more to the conclusion that he was

a madman. On October 13, 1753, he wrote to Dr. Quesnay to tell him that

he wished him well, but that being too poor to give him anything else,

he was making him a present of his body, which was on the point of

perishing, for him to make a skeleton of. To the paper on which he

wrote, Danry had sewn a little square of cloth, adding: "God has given

the garments of martyrs the virtue of healing all manner of diseases. It

is now fifty-seven months since I have been suffering an enforced

martyrdom. So there is no doubt that to-day the cloth of my coat will

work miracles; here is a bit for you." This letter was returned to the

lieutenant of police in December, and on it we find a marginal note in

Berryer's hand: "A letter worth keeping, as it reveals the prisoner's

mind." We know in what fashion madmen were wont to be treated in the

eighteenth century.

But suddenly, to the great astonishment of the officers of the château,

our two friends amended their character and their conduct. No more

noises were heard in their room, and they answered politely anyone who

came to speak to them. But their behaviour was even more odd than ever.

Allègre used to walk up and down the room half naked, "to save his

toggery," he said, and he sent letter after letter to his brother and

the lieutenant of police, asking them to send him things, particularly

shirts and handkerchiefs. Danry followed suit. "This prisoner," wrote

Chevalier to the lieutenant of police, "is asking for linen. I shall not

make a requisition, because he has seven very good shirts, four of them

new; he has shirts on the brain." But why decline to humour a prisoner's

whim? So the commissary of the Bastille had two dozen expensive shirts

made--every one cost twenty livres, more than thirty-three shillings of

our money--and some handkerchiefs of the finest cambric.

If the wardrobe-keeper of the Bastille had kept her eyes open, she would

have noticed that the serviettes and cloths which went into the room of

the two companions were of much smaller dimensions when they came out.

Our friends had established communication with their neighbours above

and below, begging twine and thread from them and giving tobacco in

exchange. They had succeeded in loosening the iron bars which prevented

climbing up the chimney; at night they used to mount to the platforms,

whence they conversed down the chimneys with prisoners in the other

towers. One of these hapless creatures believed himself to be a prophet

of God; he heard at night the sound of a voice descending upon his cold

hearth: he revealed the miracle to the officers, who only considered him

still more insane than before. On the terrace Allègre and Danry found

the tools left there in the evening by the masons and gardeners employed

at the Bastille. Thus they got possession of a mallet, an auger, two

sorts of pulleys, and some bits of iron taken from the gun-carriages.

All these they concealed in the hollow between the floor of their room

and the ceiling of the room below.

Allègre and Danry escaped from the Bastille on the night of February 25,

1756. They climbed up the chimney till they reached the platform, and

descended by means of their famous rope ladder, fastened to a

gun-carriage. A wall separated the Bastille moat from that of the

Arsenal. By the aid of an iron bar they succeeded in working out a large

stone, and they escaped through the hole thus made. Their rope ladder

was a work of long patience and amazing skill. When in after days

Allègre went mad, Danry appropriated the whole credit of this

enterprise which his friend had conceived and directed.

At the moment of leaving, Allègre had written on a scrap of paper, for

the officers of the Bastille, the following note, which is an excellent

indication of his character:--

"We have done no damage to the furniture of the governor, we have only

made use of a few rags of coverlets of no possible use; the others are

left just as they were. If some serviettes are missing, they will be

found at the bottom of the water in the great moat, whither we are

taking them to wipe our feet.

"_Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam!_

"_Scito cor nostrum et cognosce semitas nostras._"[46]

Our two companions had provided themselves with a portmanteau, and they

made haste to change their clothes as soon as they had cleared the

precincts of the fortress. A foreman of works whom Danry knew interested

himself in them, and conducted them to one Rouit, a tailor, who lodged

them for some little time. Rouit even lent Danry forty-eight livres,

which he promised to return as soon as he reached Brussels. At the end

of a month our two friends were across the frontier.

It is very difficult to follow Danry's proceedings from the time when he

left Rouit to the moment of his reincarceration in the Bastille. He has

left, it is true, two accounts of his sojourn in Flanders and Holland;

but these accounts are themselves inconsistent, and both differ from

some original documents which remain to us.

The two fugitives had considered it advisable not to set out together.

Allègre was the first to arrive at Brussels, whence he wrote an insolent

letter to Madame de Pompadour. This letter led to his discovery. On

reaching Brussels, Danry learnt that his friend had been arrested. He

lost no time in making for Holland, and at Amsterdam he took service

with one Paul Melenteau. From Rotterdam he had written to his mother,

and the poor creature, collecting her little savings, sent him 200

livres by post. But Saint-Marc had already struck on the track of the

fugitive. "The burgomaster of Amsterdam readily and gladly granted the

request made by Saint-Marc on behalf of the king, through the

ambassador, for the arrest and extradition of Danry." Louis XV. confined

himself to claiming him as one of his subjects. Saint-Marc, disguised as

an Armenian merchant, discovered him in his retreat. Danry was arrested

in Amsterdam on June 1, 1756, conducted to a cell belonging to the town

hall, and thence brought back to France and consigned to the Bastille on

June 9. Word came from Holland that Saint-Marc was there regarded as a

sorcerer.

By his second escape the unhappy man had succeeded in making his case

very serious. In the eighteenth century, escape from a state prison was

punishable with death. The English, great apostles of humanity as they

were, were no more lenient than the French; and everyone knows what

treatment was meted out by Frederick II. to Baron de Trenck. He was to

have remained in prison only one year; but after his second escape he

was chained up in a gloomy dungeon; at his feet was the grave in which

he was to be buried, and on it his name and a death's-head had been cut.

The government of Louis XV. did not punish with such rigour as this. The

fugitive was simply put in the cells for a time. At the Bastille the

cells were damp and chilly dungeons. Danry has left in his _Memoirs_ an

account of the forty months spent in this dismal place,--an account

which makes one's hair stand on end; but it is packed full of

exaggeration. He says that he spent three years with irons on his hands

and feet: in November, 1756, Berryer offered to remove the irons from

either hands or feet at his choice, and we see from a marginal note by

Major Chevalier that he chose the feet. Danry adds that he lay all

through the winter on straw without any coverlet: he was actually so

well supplied with coverlets that he applied to Berryer for some others.

To believe him you would think that when the Seine was in flood the

water rose as high as his waist: as a fact, when the water threatened to

invade the cell, the prisoner was removed. Again, he says that he passed

there forty months in absolute darkness: the light of his prison was

certainly not very brilliant, but it was sufficient to enable him to

read and write, and we learn from letters he sent to the lieutenant of

police that he saw from his cell all that went on in the courtyard of

the Bastille. Finally, he tells us of a variety of diseases he

contracted at the time, and cites in this connection the opinion of an

oculist who came to attend him. But this very report was forged by Danry

himself, and the rest he invented to match.

In this cell, where he professes to have been treated in so barbarous a

manner, Danry, however, proved difficult enough to deal with, as we

judge from the reports of Chevalier. "Danry has a thoroughly nasty

temper; he sends for us at eight o'clock in the morning, and asks us to

send warders to the market to buy him fish, saying that he never eats

eggs, artichokes, or spinach, and that he insists on eating fish; and

when we refuse, he flies into a furious passion." That was on fast days;

on ordinary days it was the same. "Danry swore like a trooper, that is,

in his usual way, and after the performance said to me: 'Major, when you

give me a fowl, at least let it be stuffed!'" He was not one of the

vulgar herd, he said, "one of those fellows you send to Bicêtre." And he

demanded to be treated in a manner befitting his condition.

It was just the same with regard to clothes. One is amazed at the sight

of the lists of things the lieutenant of police got made for him. To

give him satisfaction, the administration did not stick at the most

unreasonable expense, and it was by selling these clothes that Danry, at

his various escapes, procured a part of the money he was so much in

need of. He suffered from rheumatism, so they provided him with

dressing-gowns lined with rabbit-skin, vests lined with silk plush,

gloves and fur hats, and first-rate leather breeches. In his _Memoirs_

Danry lumps all these as "half-rotten rags." Rochebrune, the commissary

charged with the prisoners' supplies, was quite unable to satisfy him.

"You instructed me," he wrote to the major, "to get a dressing-gown made

for the Sieur Danry, who asks for a calamanco with red stripes on a blue

ground. I have made inquiries for such stuff of a dozen tradesmen, who

have no such thing, and indeed would be precious careful not to have it,

for there is no sale for that kind of calamanco. I don't see why I

should satisfy the fantastic tastes of a prisoner who ought to be very

well pleased at having a dressing-gown that is warm and well-fitting."

On another occasion, the major writes: "This man Danry has never up to

the present consented to accept the breeches that M. de Rochebrune got

made for him, though they are excellent, lined with good leather, with

silk garters, and in the best style." And Danry had his own pretty way

of complaining. "I beg you," he wrote to the governor, "to have the

goodness to tell M. de Sartine in plain terms that the four

handkerchiefs he sent me are not fit to give to a galley-slave, and I

will not have them on any account; but that I request him kindly to give

me six print handkerchiefs, blue, and large, and two muslin cravats." He

adds, "If there is no money in the treasury, go and ask Madame de

Pompadour for some."

One day Danry declared that something was wrong with his eyes.

Grandjean, the king's oculist, came more than once to see him, ordered

aromatic fumigations for him, gave him ointments and eye-salve; but it

was soon seen that all that was wrong was that Danry desired to get a

spy-glass, and to smuggle out, with the doctor's assistance, memoirs and

letters.

On September 1, 1759, Danry was removed from the cells and placed in a

more airy chamber. He wrote at once to Bertin to thank him, and to tell

him that he was sending him two doves. "You delight in doing good, and I

shall have no less delight, my lord, if you favour me by accepting this

slight mark of my great gratitude.

"Tamerlaine allowed himself to be disarmed by a basket of figs presented

to him by the inhabitants of a town he was proceeding to besiege. The

Marquise de Pompadour is a Christian lady; I beg you to allow me to send

her also a pair: perhaps she will allow her heart to be touched by these

two innocent pigeons. I append a copy of the letter which will accompany

them:--

"'MADAM,--Two pigeons used to come every day to pick grains out of

my straw; I kept them, and they gave me young ones. I venture to

take the liberty of presenting you with this pair as a mark of my

respect and affection. I beseech you in mercy to be good enough to

accept them, with as much pleasure as I have in offering them to

you. I have the honour to be, with the profoundest respect, Madam,

your very humble and obedient servant,

"'DANRY, for eleven years at the Bastille.'"

Why did not Danry always make so charming a use of the permission

accorded him to write to the minister, the lieutenant of police, Madame

de Pompadour, Dr. Quesnay, and his mother? He wrote incessantly, and we

have letters of his in hundreds, widely differing one from another. Some

are suppliant and pathetic: "My body is wasting away every day in tears

and blood, I am worn out." He writes to Madame de Pompadour:--"Madam,--I

have never wished you anything but well; be then sensible to the voice

of tears, of my innocence, and of a poor despairing mother of sixty-six

years. Madam, you are well aware of my martyrdom. I beg you in God's

name to grant me my precious liberty; I am spent, I am dying, my blood

is all on fire by reason of my groaning; twenty times in the night I am

obliged to moisten my mouth and nostrils to get my breath." Everyone

knows the famous letter beginning with the words, "I have been suffering

now for 100,000 hours." He writes to Quesnay: "I present myself to you

with a live coal upon my head, indicating my pressing necessity." The

images he uses are not always so happy: "Listen," he says to Berryer,

"to the voice of the just bowels with which you are arrayed"!

In other letters the prisoner alters his tone; to plaints succeed cries

of rage and fury, "he steeps his pen in the gall with which his soul is

saturated." He no longer supplicates, he threatens. There is nothing to

praise in the style of these epistles: it is incorrect and vulgar,

though at times vigorous and coloured with vivid imagery. To the

lieutenant of police he writes: "When a man is to be punished in this

accursed prison, the air is full of it, the punishments fall quicker

than the thunderbolt; but when it is a case of succouring a man who is

unfortunate, I see nothing but crabs;" and he addresses to him these

lines of Voltaire:--

"Perish those villains born, whose hearts of steel

No touch of ruth for others' woes can feel."

He predicts terrible retribution for the ministers, the magistrates, and

Madame de Pompadour. To her he writes: "You will see yourself one day

like that owl in the park of Versailles; all the birds cast water upon

him to choke him, to drown him; if the king chanced to die, before two

hours were past someone would set five or six persons at your heels, and

you would yourself pack to the Bastille." The accused by degrees becomes

transformed into the accuser; he writes to Sartine: "I am neither a dog

nor a criminal, but a man like yourself." And the lieutenant of police,

taking pity on him, writes on one of these letters sent to the minister

of Paris: "When Danry writes thus, it is not that he is mad, but frantic

from long imprisonment." The magistrate counsels the prisoner "to keep

out of his letters all bitterness, which can only do him harm." Bertin

corrected with his own hand the petitions Danry sent to the Marquise de

Pompadour; in the margin of one of them we read, "I should think I was

prejudicing him and his interests if I sent on to Madame de Pompadour a

letter in which he ventures to reproach her with having _abused his good

faith and confidence_." Having amended the letter, the lieutenant of

police himself carried it to Versailles.

The years of captivity, far from humbling the prisoner and abasing his

pride, only made him the more arrogant; his audacity grew from day to

day, and he was not afraid of speaking to the lieutenants of police

themselves, who knew his history, about his fortune which had been

ruined, his brilliant career which had been cut short, his whole family

plunged into despair. At first the magistrate would shrug his shoulders;

insensibly he would be won over by these unwavering assertions, by this

accent of conviction; and he ends actually by believing in this high

birth, this fortune, this genius, in all which Danry had perhaps come to

believe himself. Then Danry takes a still higher tone: he claims not

only his freedom, but compensation, large sums of money, honours. But

one must not think that this sprang from a sordid sentiment unworthy of

him: "If I propose compensation, my lord, it is not for the sake of

getting money, it is only so that I may smooth away all the obstacles

which may delay the end of my long suffering."

In return, he is very ready to give the lieutenant of police some good

advice--to indicate the means of advancement in his career, to show him

how to set about getting appointed secretary of state, to compose for

him the speech he is to make to the king at his first audience. He adds:

"This very time is extremely favourable to you; it is the auspicious

hour: profit by it. Before they take horse on the day of rejoicing for

the conclusion of peace, you ought to be a counsellor of state."

He is very ready also to send to the king schemes conceived in his

prison for the welfare of the realm. Now it is a suggestion to give

sergeants and officers on the battlefield muskets instead of spontoons

and pikes, by which the French arms would be strengthened by 25,000 good

fusiliers. Now it is a suggestion for increasing postal facilities,

which would augment the resources of the Treasury by several millions

every year. He recommends the erection of public granaries in the

principal towns, and draws up plans of battle for giving unheard-of

strength to a column of men three deep. We might mention other and

better suggestions. These notions were drowned in a flood of words, an

unimaginable wealth of verbiage, with parallels drawn from the history

of all periods and every country. His manuscripts were illustrated with

pen and ink sketches. Danry copied and recopied them incessantly, sent

them to all and sundry in all sorts of forms, persuaded the sentinels

that these lofty conceptions intimately concerned the safety of the

state and would win him an immense fortune. Thus he induced these good

fellows to compromise their situation by carrying the papers secretly to

ministers, members of the Parlement, marshals of France; he threw them

from the windows of his room, and, wrapped in snowballs, from the top of

the towers. These memoirs are the work of a man whose open and active

mind, of incredible activity indeed, plans, constructs, invents without

cessation or repose.

Among these bundles of papers we have discovered a very touching letter

from the prisoner's mother, Jeanneton Aubrespy, who wrote to her son

from Montagnac on June 14, 1759:--

"Do not do me the injustice of thinking that I have forgotten you,

my dear son, my loving son. Could I shut you out of my thoughts,

you whom I bear always in my heart? I have always had a great

longing to see you again, but to-day I long more than ever, I am

constantly concerned for you, I think of nothing but you, I am

wholly filled with you. Do not worry, my dear son; that is the only

favour I ask of you. Your misfortunes will come to an end, and

perhaps it is not far off. I hope that Madame de Pompadour will

pardon you; for that I am trying to win heaven and earth over to

your cause. The Lord is putting my submission and yours to a long

test, so as to make us better realize the worth of His favour. Do

not distress yourself, my son. I hope to have the happiness of

receiving you again, and of embracing you more tenderly than ever.

Adieu, my son, my dear son, my loving son, I love you, and I shall

love you dearly to the grave. I beg you to give me news of your

health. I am, and always shall be, your good mother,

DAUBRESPI, _widow_."

Is not this letter charming in its artless pathos? The son's reply is

equally touching; but on reading it again one feels that it was to pass

under the eyes of the lieutenant of police; on examining it closely, one

sees the sentiments grimacing between the lines.

No one knew better than Danry how to play on the souls of others, to

awake in them, at his will, pity or tenderness, astonishment or

admiration. No one has surpassed him in the art, difficult in very

truth, of posing as a hero, a genius, and a martyr, a part that we shall

see him sustain for twenty years without faltering.

In 1759 there entered upon the office of lieutenant of police a man who

was henceforth to occupy Danry's mind almost exclusively--Gabriel de

Sartine. He was a fine sceptic, of amiable character and pleasing

manners. He was loved by the people of Paris, who boasted of his

administrative abilities and his spirit of justice. He exerted himself

in his turn to render the years of captivity less cruel to Danry. "He

allowed me," writes the latter, "what no other State prisoner has ever

obtained, the privilege of walking along the top of the towers, in the

open air, to preserve my health." He cheered the prisoner with genial

words, and urged him to behave well and no longer to fill his letters

with insults. "Your fate," he told him, "is in your own hands." He

looked into Danry's scheme for the construction of public granaries, and

when he had read it said, "Really, there are excellent things, most

excellent things in it." He visited Danry in prison and promised to do

his utmost to obtain his liberation. He himself put into the hands of

Madame de Pompadour the _Grand Mémoire_ which Danry had drawn up for

her. In this memorial the prisoner told the favourite that in return for

a service he had rendered her in sending her a "hieroglyphic symbol" to

put her on her guard against the machinations of her enemies, she had

caused him to suffer unjustly for twelve years. Moreover, he would now

only accept his freedom along with an indemnity of 60,000 livres. He

added: "Be on your guard! When your prisoners get out and publish your

cruelties abroad, they will make you hateful to heaven and the whole

earth!" It is not surprising that this _Grand Mémoire_ had practically

no result. Sartine promised that he would renew his efforts on his

behalf. "If, unhappily, you should meet with some resistance to the

entreaties you are about to make for me," wrote Danry, "I take the

precaution of sending you a copy of the scheme I sent to the king."

(This was the memorial suggesting that muskets should be given to the

officers and sergeants.) "Now the king has been putting my scheme in

operation for five years or more, and he will continue to avail himself

of it every time we are at war." Sartine proceeded to Versailles, this

marvellous scheme in his pocket. He showed it to the ministers and

pleaded on behalf of this protégé of his who, from the depths of his

dungeon, was doing his country service. But on his return he wrote to

the major of the Bastille a note in regard to Danry, in which we read:

"They have not made use, as he believes, of his military scheme."

Danry had asked several times to be sent to the colonies. In 1763 the

government was largely occupied with the colonization of La Désirade. We

find a letter of June 23, 1763, in which Sartine proposes to send Danry

to La Désirade "with an introduction to the commanding officer." But

nothing came of these proposals.

* * * * *

All his life, Danry sought to compass his ends by the aid of women. He

was well aware of all the tenderness and devotion there is in these

light heads; he knew that sentiment is always stronger in them than

reason: "I was always looking out for women, and wished to find young

women, for their gentle and loving soul is more susceptible of pity;

misfortune moves them, stirs in them a more lively interest; their

impressionability is less quickly dulled, and so they are capable of

greater efforts."

While taking his walk on the towers of the Bastille in the fresh morning

air, he tried by means of gestures and signals to open relations with

the people of the neighbourhood. "One day I noticed two young persons

working alone in a room, whose countenances struck me as pretty and

gentle. I was not deceived. One of them having glanced in my direction,

I wafted her with my hand a salutation which I endeavoured to make

respectful and becoming, whereupon she told her sister, who instantly

looked at me too. I then saluted them both in the same manner, and they

replied to me with an appearance of interest and kindliness. From that

moment we set up a sort of correspondence between us." The girls were

two good-looking laundresses named Lebrun, the daughters of a wigmaker.

And our rogue, the better to stimulate the little fools to enthusiastic

service in his behalf, knocked at the door of their young hearts,

willing enough to fly open. He spoke to them of youth, misfortune,

love--and also of his fortune, prodigious, he said, the half of which he

offered them. Glowing with ardour, the girls spared for him neither

time, nor trouble, nor what little money they had.

The prisoner had put them in possession of several of his schemes, among

others the military one, with letters for certain writers and persons of

importance, and in addition a "terrible" indictment of Madame de

Pompadour for the king, in which "her birth and her shame, all her

thefts and cruelties were laid bare." He begged the girls to have

several copies made, which they were then to send to the addresses

indicated. Soon large black crosses daubed on a neighbouring wall

informed the prisoner that his instructions had been carried out. Danry

seems no longer to have doubted that his woes were coming to an end,

that the gates of the Bastille were about to fly open before him, and

that he would triumphantly leave the prison only to enter a palace of

fortune: _Parta victoria!_[47] he exclaims in a burst of happiness.

And so we come to one of the most extraordinary episodes in this strange

life.

In December, 1763, the Marquise of Pompadour was taken seriously ill.

"An officer of the Bastille came up to my room and said to me: 'Sir,

write four words to the Marquise de Pompadour, and you may be sure that

in less than a week you will have recovered your freedom.' I replied to

the major that prayers and tears only hardened the heart of that cruel

woman, and that I would not write to her. However, he came back next day

with the same story, and I replied in the same terms as on the previous

day. Scarcely had he gone than Daragon, my warder, came into my room and

said: 'Believe the major when he tells you that within a week you will

be free: if he tells you so, depend upon it he is sure of it.' Next day

but one the officer came to me for the third time: 'Why are you so

obstinate?' I thanked him--it was Chevalier, major of the Bastille--for

the third time, telling him that I would sooner die than write again to

that implacable shrew.

"Six or eight days after, my two young ladies came and kissed their

hands to me, at the same time displaying a roll of paper on which were

written in large characters the words: 'Madame de Pompadour is dead!'

The Marquise de Pompadour died on April 19, 1764, and two months

afterwards, on June 19, M. de Sartine came to the Bastille and gave me

an audience; the first thing he said was that we would say no more about

the past, but that at the earliest moment he would go to Versailles and

demand of the minister the justice which was my due." And we find, in

truth, among the papers of the lieutenant of police, the following note,

dated June 18, 1764: "M. Duval (one of the lieutenant's secretaries)--to

propose at the first inspection that Danry be liberated and exiled to

his own part of the country."

Returning to his room, Danry reflected on these developments; for the

lieutenant of police to show so much anxiety for his liberation was

evidently a sign that he was afraid of him, and that his memorials had

reached their destination and achieved their end. But he would be a

great ass to be satisfied with a mere liberation: "100,000 livres" would

scarcely suffice to throw oblivion over the injustices with which he had

been overwhelmed.

He revolved these thoughts in his head for several days. To accept

freedom at the hands of his persecutors would be to pardon the past, a

mistake he would never fall into. The door opened, the major entered,

bearing in his hand a note written by de Sartine: "You will tell County

Number 4 that I am working for his effectual liberation." The officer

went out; Danry immediately sat down at his table and wrote to the

lieutenant of police a letter replete with threats, insults, and

obscenity. The original is lost, but we have an abstract made by Danry

himself. He concluded with leaving to Sartine a choice: "he was either a

mere lunatic, or else had allowed himself to be corrupted like a villain

by the gold of the Marquis de Marigny, the Marquise de Pompadour's

brother."

"When Sartine received my letter, he wrote an answer which the major

brought and read to me, in which these were his very words: that I was

wrong to impute to him the length of my imprisonment, that if he had had

his way I should long ago have been set free; and he ended by telling me

that there was Bedlam for the mad. On which I said to the major: 'We

shall see in a few days whether he will have the power to put me in

Bedlam.' He did not deprive me of my walk on the towers; nine days

after, he put me in the cells on bread and water." But Danry was not

easily put out. No doubt they were only meaning to put his assurance to

the test. He went down to his cell singing, and for several days

continued to manifest the most confident gaiety.

From that moment the prisoner made himself insufferable to his

guardians. It was yells and violence from morning to night. He filled

the whole Bastille with bursts of his "voice of thunder." Major

Chevalier wrote to Sartine: "This prisoner would wear out the patience

of the saintliest monk"; again: "He is full of gall and bitterness, he

is poison pure and simple"; once more: "This prisoner is raving mad."

The lieutenant of police suggested to Saint-Florentin, the minister, to

transfer Danry to the keep of Vincennes. He was conducted there on the

night of September 15, 1764. We are now entering on a new phase of his

life. We shall find him still more wretched than in the past, but

constantly swelling his demands and pretensions, and with reason, for he

is now, mark you, a nobleman! He had learnt from a sentinel of the

Bastille of the death of Henri Vissec de la Tude, lieutenant-colonel of

a dragoon regiment, who had died at Sedan on January 31, 1761. From that

day he determined that he was the son of that officer. And what were his

reasons? Vissec de la Tude was from his own part of the country, he was

a nobleman and rich, and he was dead. These arguments Danry considered

excellent. He was, however, in complete ignorance of all that concerned

his father and his new family; he did not know even the name "Vissec de

la Tude," of which he made "Masers de la Tude"; Masers was the name of

an estate belonging to Baron de Fontès, a relation of Henri de Vissec.

The latter was not a marquis, as Danry believed, but simply a chevalier;

he died leaving six sons, whilst Danry represents him as dying without

issue. It goes without saying that all that our hero relates about his

father in his _Memoirs_ is pure invention. The Chevalier de la Tude

never knew of the existence of the son of Jeanneton Aubrespy, and when

in later years Danry asked the children to recognize him as their

natural brother, his pretensions were rejected. Nevertheless our

gentleman will henceforth sign his letters and memoirs "Danry, or rather

Henri Masers d'Aubrespy," then "de Masers d'Aubrespy," then "de Masers

de la Tude." When Danry had once got an idea in his head, he never let

it go. He repeated it unceasingly until he had forced it upon the

conviction of all about him--pertinacity which cannot fail to excite our

admiration. In the patent of Danry's pension of 400 livres granted by

Louis XVI. in 1784, the king calls the son of poor Jeanneton "Vicomte

Masers de la Tude."

As may well be imagined, the Vicomte de la Tude could not accept his

liberty on the same terms as Danry. The latter would have been satisfied

with 60,000 livres: the viscount demands 150,000 and the cross of St.

Louis to boot. So he writes to the lieutenant of police. Sartine was too

sensible a man to be long obdurate to the prisoner on account of these

extravagances. "I was transferred to the keep of Vincennes on the night

of September 15, 1764. About nine hours after, the late M. de Guyonnet,

king's lieutenant, came and saw me in the presence of the major and the

three warders, and said: 'M. de Sartine has instructed me to inform you,

on his behalf, that provided you behave yourself quietly for a short

time, he will set you free. You have written him a very violent letter,

and you must apologize for it.'" Danry adds: "When all is said and done,

M. de Sartine did treat me well." He granted him for two hours every day

"the extraordinary promenade of the moats." "When a lieutenant of

police," says Danry, "granted this privilege to a prisoner, it was with

the object of promptly setting him free." On November 23, 1765, Danry

was walking thus, in company with a sentinel, outside the keep. The fog

was dense. Turning suddenly towards his keeper, Danry said, "What do you

think of this weather?" "It's very bad." "Well, it's just the weather to

escape in." He took five paces and was out of sight. "I escaped from

Vincennes," writes Danry, "without trickery; an ox would have managed it

as well." But in the speech he delivered later in the National Assembly,

the matter took a new complexion. "Think," he cried, "of the unfortunate

Latude, in his third escape, pursued by twenty soldiers, and yet

stopping and disarming under their very eyes the sentinel who had taken

aim at him!"

* * * * *

When Latude was at large, he found himself without resources, as at his

first escape. "I escaped with my feet in slippers and not a sou in my

pocket; I hadn't a thing to bless myself with." He took refuge with his

young friends, the Misses Lebrun.

In their keeping he found a part of his papers, plans and projects,

memorials and dissertations. He sent "a basketful" of these to Marshal

de Noailles, begging him to continue to honour him with his protection,

and imparting to him "four great discoveries he had just made; first,

the true cause of the tides; secondly, the true cause of mountains, but

for which the globe would be brought to a standstill and become

speedily vitrified; thirdly, the cause of the ceaseless turning of the

globe; fourthly, the cause of the saltness of sea-water." He wrote also

to the Duke de Choiseul, minister of war, in order to obtain a reward

for his military scheme; he wrote making overtures of peace to Sartine:

in return for an advance of 10,000 crowns of the 150,000 livres due to

him, he would overlook the past: "I was resolved," he says, "to stake

all on one cast." In reply, he received a letter naming a house where he

would find 1200 livres obtained for him by Dr. Quesnay. He proceeded to

the address indicated--and was there captured.

He was at once taken back to Vincennes. He declares that he was about to

be set at liberty at the moment of his escape: and now a new detention

was commencing. We shall not relate in detail the life he was now to

lead. Materially he continued to be well treated, but his mind became

affected, his rages became more and more violent, reaching at last

paroxysms of fury. Here are some extracts from letters and memorials

sent to Sartine: "By all the devils, this is coming it too strong. It is

true, sir, that I'd defy the blackest devils in all hell to teach you

anything in the way of cruelty; and that's but poor praise for you." He

writes on another occasion: "The crime of every one of us is to have

seen through your villainies: we are to perish, are we? how delighted

you would be if some one told you that we had all strangled ourselves in

our cells!" Danry reminds the lieutenant of police of the tortures of

Enguerrand de Marigni, adding: "Remember that more than a thousand

wretches have been broken in the Place de Grève who had not committed

the hundredth part of your crimes."... "Not a single person would be

astonished to see you flayed alive, your skin tanned, and your carcase

thrown into the gutters for the dogs to eat."... "But Monsieur laughs

at everything, Monsieur fears neither God, nor king, nor devil, Monsieur

swills down his crimes like buttermilk!"

In prison Latude wrote memoirs which he filled with calumnies on the

ministers and the court. These memoirs are composed in the most dramatic

style, with an inimitable accent of sincerity. It was known that the

prisoner found a thousand means of sending them outside the walls, and

it was feared that they might be circulated among the populace, whose

minds--the year is 1775--were beginning to ferment. Latude had just been

flung into a cell in consequence of a fresh outbreak against his

jailers. "On March 19, 1775, the king's lieutenant entered, accompanied

by the major and three warders, and said to me: 'I have obtained leave

to let you out of the cell, but on one condition: that you hand over

your papers.'

"'Hand over my papers! I tell you, sir, I'd rather be done to death in

this cell than show the white feather so!'

"'Your trunk is upstairs in your room: I've only to say the word and the

seals would be broken and your papers taken out.'

"I replied: 'Sir, justice has formalities to which you are bound to

conform, and you are not allowed to commit such outrages.'

"He took five or six steps out of the cell, and as I did not call him

back, he came back himself and said: 'Just hand them to me for ten days

to examine them, and I give you my word of honour that at the end of

that time I will have them returned to your room.'

"I replied: 'I will not let you have them for two hours even.'

"'All right,' he said; 'as you won't entrust them to me, you have only

to stay where you are.'"

Latude relates in his _Memoirs_ with great indignation the story of a

flute he had made, on which he used to play, his sole diversion during

the long hours of solitude; his jailers had the barbarity to take it

from him. The governor of the fortress, out of compassion, offered to

restore it. "But it will only be on condition that you play by day only,

and not at night." At this stipulation, writes Latude in his _Rêveries_,

"I could not refrain from bantering him, saying, 'Why, don't you know,

sir, that forbidding a thing is just the way to make me eager for it?'"

And so at Vincennes as at Paris they came to consider Danry as a madman.

Among the books given him for his amusement there were some dealing with

sorcery. These he read and re-read, and from that time onward he saw in

all the incidents of his life nothing but the perpetual intervention of

devils evoked by the witch Madame de Pompadour and her brother the

magician, the Marquis de Marigny.

Sartine came again to see the prisoner on November 8, 1772. Danry begged

him to send a police officer to make a copy of a memorial he had drawn

up for his own justification; to send also an advocate to assist him

with his advice, and a doctor, to examine the state of his health. The

police officer arrived on the 24th. On the 29th, he wrote to the

lieutenant of police: "I have the honour to report that in pursuance of

your orders I proceeded to the château of Vincennes on the 24th curt.,

to hear from Danry something which, he asserts, concerns the minister:

it is impossible to hear anything which concerns him less. He began by

saying that to write all he had to tell me I should have to remain for

three weeks with him. He was bound to tell me the story of 180

sorceries, and I was to copy the story, according to him, from a heap of

papers he drew from a bag, the writing of which is undecipherable."

We know from Danry himself what passed at the visit of the advocate. He

entered the prisoner's room about noon. Danry handed him two memorials

he had drawn up and explained their purport. "Instantly he cut me short,

saying, 'Sir, I have no belief whatever in witchcraft.' I did not give

in, but said, 'Sir, I cannot show you the devil in bodily shape, but I

am very certain I can convince you, by the contents of this memorial,

that the late Marquise de Pompadour was a witch, and that the Marquis de

Marigny, her brother, is at this very time still having dealings with

the devil.'

"The advocate had read but a few pages when he stopped dead, put the

manuscript on the table, and said, as though he had been wakened out of

a deep sleep, 'Would you not like to get out of prison?' I replied:

'There's no doubt of that.' 'And do you intend to remain in Paris, or to

go to your home?' 'When I am free, I shall go home.' 'But have you any

means?' Upon this I took his hand and said: 'My dear sir, I beg you not

to take offence at what I am going to say.' 'Speak on,' he said, 'say

whatever you like, I shall not be offended.' 'Well then, I see very

clearly that the devil has already got hold of you.'"

In the same year, Malesherbes made his celebrated inspection of the

prisons. "This virtuous minister came to see me at the beginning of

August, 1775, and listened to me with the most lively interest." The

historian who has the completest knowledge of everything relating to the

Bastille, François Ravaisson, believed that Malesherbes left the

wretched man in prison out of regard for his colleague Maurepas. "One

would have thought that Maurepas' first act on resuming office would

have been to release his old accomplice." This conjecture is destroyed

by a letter from Malesherbes to the governor of Vincennes: "I am busy,

sir, with the examination of the papers relating to your various

prisoners. Danry, Thorin, and Maréchal are quite mad, according to the

particulars furnished to me, and the two first gave indubitable marks

of madness in my presence."

In consequence, Danry was transferred to Charenton on September 27,

1775, "on account of mental derangement, in virtue of a royal order of

the 23rd of the said month, countersigned by Lamoignon. The king will

pay for his keep." On entering his new abode, Latude took the precaution

to change his name a third time, and signed the register "Danger."

In passing from the fortress of Vincennes to the hospital of Charenton,

Danry thought it was as well to rise still higher in dignity. So we see

him henceforth styling himself "engineer, geographer, and royal

pensioner at Charenton."

His situation was sensibly changed for the better. He speaks of the

kindnesses shown him by the Fathers of La Charité.[48] He had companions

whose society pleased him. Halls were set apart for billiards,

backgammon, and cards. He had company at his meals and in his walks. He

met Allègre, his old fellow-prisoner, whom he came upon among the

dangerous lunatics in the dungeons; Allègre had been removed in 1763

from the Bastille, where he was shattering and destroying everything.

His latest fancy was that he was God. As to Danry, he had taken so

kindly to his rôle as nobleman that to see his aristocratic and

well-to-do air, to hear his conversation, full of reminiscences of his

family and his early life, no one could have doubted that he actually

was the brilliant engineer officer he set up for, who had fallen in the

prime of life a victim to the intrigues of the favourite. He hobnobbed

with the aristocratic section of society at Charenton and struck up an

intimacy with one of his associates, the Chevalier de Moyria, son of a

lieutenant-colonel, and a knight of Saint-Louis.

Meanwhile the Parlement, which sent a commission every year to inspect

the Charenton asylum--a commission before which Danry appeared on two

separate occasions--did not decide that he ought to be set at liberty.

But one fine day in September, 1776, the prior of the Fathers, who took

a quite exceptional interest in the lot of his pensioner, meeting him in

the garden, said to him abruptly: "We are expecting a visit from the

lieutenant of police; get ready a short and taking address to say to

him." The lieutenant of police, Lenoir, saw Danry, and listened to him

attentively, and as the prior's account of him was entirely favourable,

the magistrate promised him his liberty. "Then Father Prudentius, my

confessor, who was behind me, drew me by the arm to get me away, fearing

lest, by some imprudent word, I might undo the good that had been

decided on"--a charming incident, much to the honour of Father

Prudentius.

But on consideration it appeared dangerous to fling so suddenly upon

society a man who would be at a loss how to live, having neither

relatives nor fortune, having no longer the means of gaining a

livelihood, and a man, moreover, whom there was only too much reason to

mistrust. Lenoir asked the prisoner if, once set at liberty, he would

find the wherewithal to assure his existence; if he had any property; if

he could give the names of any persons willing to go bail for him.

What did this mean--_if_ he had any property, _if_ he could find

sureties? He, Masers de Latude! Why, his whole family, when the Marquise

de Pompadour had him put in the Bastille, was occupying a brilliant

position! Why, his mother, of whose death he had had the agony to hear,

had left a house and considerable estates! Latude took his pen, and

without hesitation wrote to M. Caillet, royal notary at Montagnac: "My

dear friend, I would bet ten to one you believe me dead; see how

mistaken you are!... You have but to say the word and before the

carnival is over we shall eat a capital leveret together." And he speaks

to his friend the notary of the fortune left by his mother, and of his

family, who all of them cannot fail to be interested in him. Latude

himself was not greatly astonished at receiving no reply to this

epistle: but it must have passed under the eyes of the lieutenant of

police, and what more did he want?

Latude's new friend, the Chevalier de Moyria, had already been for some

time at liberty. The prisoner hastened to send him a copy of his letter

to the notary. "The reply is a long time coming, M. Caillet is dead,

doubtless." What is to become of him? These twenty-eight years of

captivity have endangered his fortune, have made him lose his friends;

how is he to find the remnant of his scattered family? Happily there

remains to him a friendship, a friendship still recent, but already

strong, in which he places his whole confidence. "Chevalier, it would

only need your intervention to deliver me, by inducing your good mother

to write to M. Lenoir." The Chevalier de Moyria sent an amiable reply.

Danry wrote another and more urgent letter, with such success that not

only the Chevalier's mother, but also an old friend of the Moyria

family, Mercier de Saint-Vigor, a colonel, and controller-general of the

queen's household, intervened, and made applications at Versailles. "On

June 5, 1777, King Louis XVI. restored to me my freedom; I have in my

pocket the warrant under his own hand!"

* * * * *

On leaving Charenton, Danry signed an undertaking to depart immediately

for Languedoc, an undertaking which he did not trouble to fulfil. Paris

was the only city in France where a man of his stamp could thrive. He

was now fifty-two years old, but was still youthful in appearance, full

of go and vigour; his hair, as abundant as it had been in youth, had not

become white. He soon found means of borrowing some money, and then we

see him opening a campaign, exerting himself to get in touch with the

ministers, gaining the protection of the Prince de Beauvau, distributing

memorials in which he claimed a reward for great services rendered, and

launched out into invectives against his oppressors, Sartine in

particular. Minister Amelot sent for him, and in tones of severity

notified him that he was to leave the city at once. Latude did not wait

for the command to be repeated. He had reached Saint-Bris, about a

hundred miles from the capital, when he was suddenly arrested by the

police officer Marais. Brought back to Paris, he was locked up in the

Châtelet on July 16, 1777, and on August 1 conducted to Bicêtre. The

first use he had made of his liberty was to introduce himself to a lady

of quality and extort money from her by menaces. The officer found a

considerable sum in his possession.

Bicêtre was not a state prison like the Bastille and Vincennes, or an

asylum like Charenton; it was the thieves' prison. On entering, Danry

took the precaution of changing his name a fourth time, calling himself

Jedor. He is, moreover, careful in his _Memoirs_ to give us the reason

of this fresh metamorphosis: "I would not sully my father's name by

inscribing it on the register of this infamous place." From this day

there begins for him a truly wretched existence; huddled with criminals,

put on bread and water, his lodging is a cell. But his long martyrdom is

nearing its end: the hour of his apotheosis is at hand!

Louis XVI. had now been on the throne for several years, and France had

become the most impressionable country in the world. Tears flowed at the

slightest provocation. Was it the sentimental literature, which Rousseau

made fashionable, that produced this moving result, or contrariwise, was

the literature successful because it hit the taste of the day? At all

events, the time was ripe for Latude. His recent unlucky experience was

not to dishearten him. On the contrary, it is with a greater energy, a

more poignant emotion, and cries still more heartrending, that he

resumes the story of his interminable sufferings. The victim of cruel

oppressors, of cowardly foes who have their own reasons for smothering

his voice, he will not bend his head under his abominable treatment; he

will remain proud, self-assured, erect before those who load him with

irons!

On the birth of the Dauphin, Louis XVI. resolved to admit his wretched

prisoners to a share of his joy and to pronounce a great number of

pardons. A special commission, composed of eight counsellors of the

Châtelet and presided over by Cardinal de Rohan, sat at Bicêtre. Danry

appeared before it on May 17, 1782. His new judges, as he testifies,

heard his story with interest. But the decision of the commission was

not favourable to him. He was not so much surprised at this as might be

supposed: "The impure breath of vice," he wrote to the Marquis de

Conflans, "has never tainted my heart, but there are magistrates who

would let off guilty men with free pardons rather than expose themselves

to the merited reproach of having committed injustice of the most

revolting kind in keeping innocence for thirty-three years in irons."

Giving rein to the marvellous activity of his brain, he composed at

Bicêtre new schemes, memorials, and accounts of his misfortunes. To the

Marquis de Conflans he sends a scheme for a hydraulic press, "the

homage of an unfortunate nobleman who has grown old in irons"; he

induces the turnkeys to carry memorials to all who may possibly interest

themselves in him. The first to take compassion on him was a priest, the

Abbé Legal, of the parish of St. Roch, and curate of Bicêtre. He visited

him, consoled him, gave him money, showed him attentions. Cardinal de

Rohan also took much interest in him, and sent him some assistance

through his secretary. We are coming at last to Madame Legros. This

wonderful story is so well known that we shall tell it briefly. A

drunken turnkey chanced to lose one of Latude's memorials at a corner of

the Rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois: it was picked up and

opened by a woman, a haberdasher in a small way. Her heart burned within

her as she read of these horrible sufferings, depicted in strokes of

fire. She inspired her husband with her own emotion; henceforth it was

to be the aim in life of these worthy people to effect the unhappy man's

deliverance, and Madame Legros devoted herself to the self-imposed task

with indefatigable ardour, courage, and devotion. "A grand sight," cries

Michelet, "to see this poor, ill-clad woman going from door to door,

paying court to footmen to win entrance into mansions, to plead her

cause before the great, to implore their support!" In many houses she

was well received. President de Gourgues, President de Lamoignon,

Cardinal de Rohan, aided her with their influence. Sartine himself took

steps on behalf of the unhappy man. Two advocates of the Parlement of

Paris, Lacroix and Comeyras, devoted themselves to his cause. Copies

were made of the prisoner's memorials and distributed in every

drawing-room; they penetrated even into the boudoir of the queen. All

hearts were stirred by the accents of this harrowing voice.

The Marquis de Villette, who had become celebrated through the

hospitality he showed to Voltaire when dying, conceived a passionate

enthusiasm for Danry. He sent his steward to Bicêtre to offer him a

pension of 600 livres on the sole condition of the prisoner's leaving

his case entirely in the Marquis's hands. Latude received this singular

proposal with becoming dignity. "For two years a poor woman has been

devoting herself to my cause. I should be an ungrateful wretch if I did

not leave my fate in her hands." He knew that this pension would not

escape him, and it was not for 600 livres that he would have consented

to rob his story of the touching and romantic features it was

increasingly assuming.

Further, the French Academy actually intervenes! D'Alembert is all fire

and flame. From this time a stream of visitors of the highest

distinction flows through the squalid prison. At length the king himself

is led to look into the affair. He has the documentary evidence brought

to him and examines it carefully. With what anxiety everyone awaits his

decision! But Louis XVI., now acquainted with the case, replies that

Latude will be released--_never_! At this decree, to all appearance

irrevocable, all the prisoner's friends lose heart, except Madame

Legros. The queen and Madame Necker are on her side. In 1783, Breteuil,

the queen's man, comes into power; on March 24, 1784, the release is

signed! The Vicomte de Latude receives a pension of 400 livres, but is

exiled to his own part of the country. New importunities, new

applications; at last they succeed: Latude is free to live in Paris!

This is the grandest period in the life of a great man! Latude is soon

in occupation of a modest but decent and well-ordered suite of rooms on

the fourth floor. He lives with his two benefactors, M. and Madame

Legros, petted, spoilt in a thousand ways. The Duchess of Beauvau has

obtained for Madame Legros from Calonne, out of funds intended for the

support of distressed gentlefolk, a pension of 600 livres: the Duchess

of Kingston[49] grants a pension of the same amount. In addition to the

royal pension, Latude receives 500 livres a year from President Dupaty

and 300 from the Duke d'Ayen. Moreover, a public subscription is opened,

and the list is filled with the greatest names in France. An agreeable

competency is assured to the Legros couple and their adopted son. At its

sitting on March 24, the French Academy solemnly awarded the Montyon

prize to the valiant little haberdasher. "The Dame Legros came to

receive the medal amid the acclamations of the whole assembly."

The name of Latude is on everyone's lips; he wins admiration and pity on

all sides. Ladies of the highest society are not above mounting to the

fourth story, accompanied by their daughters, to bring the poor man "aid

in money, with their tears." The hero has left a complacent description

of the throng: duchesses, marchionesses, grandees of Spain, wearers of

the cross of St. Louis, presidents of the Parlement, all these met at

his house. Sometimes there were six or eight persons in his room.

Everyone listened to his story and lavished on him marks of the most

affectionate compassion, and no one failed before going away "to leave a

mark of his sensibility." The wives of Marshals de Luxembourg and de

Beauvau, the Duchess de la Rochefoucauld, the Countess de Guimont, were

among the most zealous. "Indeed," says our hero, "it would be extremely

difficult for me to tell which of these countesses, marchionesses,

duchesses, and princesses had the most humane, the most compassionate

heart."

Thus Latude became one of the lions of Paris: strangers flocked to his

lodging, hostesses ran off with him. At table, when he spoke, all voices

were hushed with an air of deference and respect; in the drawing-room

you would find him seated in a gilt chair near the fireplace where great

logs were blazing, and surrounded by a thick cluster of bright, silky,

rustling robes. The Chevalier de Pougens, son of the Prince de Conti,

pressed him to come and stay at his house; Latude graciously consented.

The American ambassador, the illustrious Jefferson, invited him to

dinner.

Latude has himself described this enchanted life: "Since I left prison,

the greatest lords of France have done me the honour of inviting me to

eat with them, but I have not found a single house--except that of the

Comte d'Angevillier, where you could meet men of wit and learning in

scores, and receive all sorts of civilities on the part of the countess;

and that of M. Guillemot, keeper of the royal palaces, one of the most

charming families to be found in Paris--where you are more at your ease

than with the Marquis de Villette.

"When a man has felt, as I have felt, the rage of hunger, he always

begins by speaking of his food. The Marquis de Villette possesses a cook

who is a match for the most skilful in his art: in a word, his table is

first-rate. At the tables of the dukes and peers and marshals of France

there is eternal ceremony, and everyone speaks like a book, whereas at

that of the Marquis de Villette, men of wit and learning always form the

majority of the company. All the first-class musicians have a cover set

at his table, and on at least three days of the week he gives a little

concert."

On August 26, 1788, died one of the benefactresses of Latude, the

Duchess of Kingston, who did not fail to mention her protégé in her

will. We see him dutifully assisting at the sale of the lady's furniture

and effects. He even bought a few things, giving a _louis d' or_ in

payment. Next day, the sale being continued, the auctioneer handed the

coin back to Latude: it was bad. Bad! What! did they take the Vicomte de

Latude for a sharper? The coin bad! Who, he would like to know, had the

insolence to make "an accusation so derogatory to his honour and his

reputation?" Latude raised his voice, and the auctioneer threatened to

bundle him out of the room. The insolent dog! "Bundle out rogues, not

gentlemen!" But the auctioneer sent for the police, who put "the Sieur

de Latude ignominiously outside." He went off calmly, and the same day

summoned the auctioneer before the Châtelet tribunal, "in order to get a

reparation as authoritative as the defamation had been public."

In the following year (1789) Latude made a journey into England. He had

taken steps to sue Sartine, Lenoir, and the heirs of Madame de Pompadour

in the courts in order to obtain the damages due to him. In England, he

drew up a memorandum for Sartine, in which he informed the late

lieutenant of police of the conditions on which he would withdraw his

actions. "M. de Sartine, you will give me, as compensation for all the

harm and damage you have made me suffer unjustly, the sum of 900,000

livres; M. Lenoir, 600,000 livres; the heirs of the late Marquise de

Pompadour and Marquis de Menars, 100,000 crowns; in all, 1,800,000

livres;" that is to say, about £160,000 in English money of to-day.

[Illustration: LATUDE.

_From the Painting by Vestier (Hôtel Carnavalet)._]

The Revolution broke out. If the epoch of Louis XVI., with its mildness

and fellow-feeling, had been favourable to our hero, the Revolution

seems to have been ordained on purpose for him. The people rose against

the tyranny of kings: the towers of the Bastille were overthrown.

Latude, the victim of kings, the victim of the Bastille and arbitrary

warrants, was about to appear in all his glory.

He hastened to throw into the gutter his powdered peruque and viscount's

frock; listen to the revolutionist, fierce, inflexible, indomitable,

_uncompromising_: "Frenchmen, I have won the right to tell you the

truth, and if you are free, you cannot but love to hear it.

"For thirty-five years I meditated in dungeons on the audacity and

insolence of despots; with loud cries I was calling down vengeance, when

France in indignation rose up as one man in one sublime movement and

levelled despotism with the dust. The will to be free is what makes a

nation free; and you have proved it. But to preserve freedom a nation

must make itself worthy of it, and that is what remains for you to do!"

In the Salon of 1789 there were two portraits of Latude with the famous

ropeladder. Below one of these portraits, by Vestier, a member of the

Royal Academy, these lines were engraved:--

Instruit par ses malheurs et sa captivité

A vaincre des tyrans les efforts et la rage,

Il apprit aux Français comment le vrai courage

Peut conquérir la liberté.[50]

In 1787 the Marquis de Beaupoil-Saint-Aulaire had written, inspired by

Latude himself, the story of the martyr's captivity. Of this book two

editions appeared in the same year. In 1789 Latude published the

narrative of his escape from the Bastille, as well as his _Grand

Mémoire_ to the Marquise de Pompadour; finally, in 1790 appeared

_Despotism Unmasked, or the Memoirs of Henri Masers de Latude_, edited

by the advocate Thiéry. The book was dedicated to La Fayette. On the

first page we see a portrait of the hero, his face proud and energetic,

one hand on the ropeladder, the other extended towards the Bastille

which workmen are in the act of demolishing. "I swear," says the author

at the commencement, "that I will not relate one fact which is not

true." The work is a tissue of calumnies and lies; and what makes a most

painful impression on the reader is to see this man disowning his

mother, forgetting the privations she endured out of love for her son,

and ascribing the credit of what little the poor thing could do for her

child to a Marquis de la Tude, knight of St. Louis, and

lieutenant-colonel of the Orleans Dragoons!

But the book vibrates with an incomparable accent of sincerity and of

that profound emotion which Latude knew so well how to infuse into all

those with whom he had to do. In 1793, twenty editions had been

exhausted, the work had been translated into several languages; the

journals had no praise strong enough for the boldness and genius of the

author; the _Mercure de France_ proclaimed that henceforth it was a

parent's duty to teach his children to read in this sublime work; a copy

was sent to all the departments, accompanied by a model of the Bastille

by the architect Palloy. With good reason could Latude exclaim in the

National Assembly: "I have not a little contributed to the Revolution

and to its consolidation."

Latude was not the man to neglect opportunities so favourable. To begin

with, he sought to get his pension augmented, and presented to the

Constituent Assembly a petition backed by representative Bouche. But

Camus, "rugged Camus," president of the committee appointed to

investigate the matter, decided on rejection; and at the sitting of

March 13, 1791, deputy Voidel delivered a very spirited speech; his view

was that the nation had unhappy folk to succour more worthy of their

concern than a man whose life had begun with roguery and villainy. The

Assembly sided with him; not only was Latude's pension not increased,

but on consideration, the pension granted by Louis XVI. was altogether

withdrawn.

Horror and infamy! "What madness has seized on the minds of the

representatives of the most generous nation in the world!... To slay a

hapless wretch the mere sight of whom awakens pity and warms into life

the most sluggish sensibility ... for death is not so terrible as the

loss of honour!" The valiant Latude will not abide the stroke of such an

insult. Ere long he has brought Voidel to retract; in the heart of the

Assembly he gains an influential supporter in the Marshal de Broglie.

The Constituent Assembly is replaced by the Legislative, and Latude

returns to the charge. He is admitted to the bar of the House on January

26, 1792; the matter is re-committed and gone into a second time on

February 25. We should like to be able to quote at length the speech

which Latude himself composed for his advocate; here is a portion of the

peroration:--

"That a man, without any outside assistance, should have been able to

escape three times, once from the Bastille and twice from Vincennes,

yes, gentlemen, I venture to say he could not have succeeded except by a

miracle, or else that Latude has more than extraordinary genius. Cast

your eyes on this ladder of rope and wood, and on all the other

instruments which Latude constructed with a mere knife, which you see

here in the centre of this chamber. I resolved to bring before your own

eyes this interesting object, which will for ever win admiration from

men of intelligence. Not a single stranger comes to Paris without going

to see this masterpiece of intelligence and genius, as well as his

generous deliverer, Madame Legros. We have resolved to give you,

gentlemen, the pleasure of seeing this celebrated woman, who

unremittingly for forty months set despotism at defiance, and vanquished

it by dint of virtue. Behold her there at the bar with M. de Latude,

behold that incomparable woman, for ever to be the glory and the

ornament of her sex!"

It is not surprising that the Legislative Assembly was deeply moved by

this eloquent harangue and this exhibition of the lady, as touching as

unexpected. It unanimously voted Latude a pension of 2000 livres,

without prejudice to the pension of 400 livres previously awarded.

Henceforth Latude will be able to say: "The whole nation adopted me!"

However, the little mishap in the Constituent Assembly was to be the

only check that Latude suffered in the course of his glorious martyr's

career. Presented to the Society of "Friends of the Constitution," he

was elected a member by acclamation, and the Society sent a deputation

of twelve members to carry the civic crown to Madame Legros. The leader

of the deputation said, in a voice broken by emotion, "This day is the

grandest day of my life." A deputation from the principal theatres of

Paris offered Latude free admission to all performances, "so that he

might go often and forget the days of his mourning." He was surrounded

by the highest marks of consideration; pleaders begged him to support

their cases before the tribunals with the moral authority bestowed on

him by his virtue. He took advantage of this to bring definitively

before the courts his claims against the heirs of the Marquise de

Pompadour. Citizen Mony argued the case for the first time before the

court of the sixth arrondissement on July 16, 1793; on September 11 the

case came again before the magistrates: Citizens Chaumette, Laurent, and

Legrand had been designated by the Commune of Paris as counsel for the

defence, and the whole Commune was present at the hearing. Latude

obtained 60,000 livres, 10,000 of which were paid him in cash.

And now his life became more tranquil. Madame Legros continued to lavish

her care on him. The 50,000 livres remaining due to him from the heirs

of the Marquise were paid in good farm lands situated in La Beauce, the

profits of which he regularly drew.

Let us hasten to add that France did not find in Latude an ungrateful

child. The critical situation in which the nation was then struggling

pained him deeply. He sought the means of providing a remedy, and in

1799 brought out a "Scheme for the valuation of the eighty departments

of France to save the Republic in less than three months," and a "Memoir

on the means of re-establishing the public credit and order in the

finances of France."

When the estates of Madame de Pompadour were sequestrated, the farms

Latude had received were taken from him; but he induced the Directory to

restore them. He was less fortunate in his requisition for a licence for

a theatre and a gaming-house. But he found consolation. The subsidies he

went on extorting from right and left, the proceeds of his farms, the

sale of his books, and the money brought in by the exhibition of his

ropeladder, which was exhibited by a showman in the different towns of

France and England, provided him with a very comfortable income.

The Revolution became a thing of the past. Latude hailed the dawning

glory of Bonaparte, and when Bonaparte became Napoleon, Latude made his

bow to the emperor. We have a very curious letter in which he marks out

for Napoleon I. the line of conduct he should pursue to secure his own

welfare and the good of France. It begins as follows:--

"SIRE,--I have been five times buried alive, and am well acquainted with

misfortune. To have a heart more sympathetic than the common run of men

it is necessary to have suffered great ills.... At the time of the

Terror I had the delightful satisfaction of saving the lives of

twenty-two poor wretches.... To petition Fouquet d'Etinville on behalf

of the royalists was to persuade him that I was one myself. When I

braved death in order to save the lives of twenty-two citizens, judge,

great Emperor, if my heart can do ought but take great interest in you,

the saviour of my beloved country."

We are given some details of the last years of Latude's life in the

_Memoirs_ of his friend, the Chevalier de Pougens, and in the _Memoirs_

of the Duchess d'Abrantès. The Chevalier tells us that at the age of

seventy-five years he still enjoyed good health; he was "active and gay,

and appeared to enjoy to the full the delights of existence. Every day

he took long walks in Paris without experiencing the least fatigue.

People were amazed to find _no trace_ of the cruel sufferings he had

undergone in the cells during a captivity of thirty-five years." His

popularity suffered no diminution under the Empire. Junot awarded him a

pension from funds at his disposal. One day the general presented him

to his wife, along with Madame Legros, whose side Latude never left.

"When he arrived," says the Duchess d'Abrantès, "I went to greet him

with a respect and an emotion that must have been truly edifying. I took

him by the hand, conducted him to a chair, and put a cushion under his

feet; in fact, he might have been my grandfather, whom I could not have

treated better. At table I placed him on my right. But," adds the

Duchess, "my enchantment was of short duration. He talked of nothing but

his own adventures with appalling loquacity."

At the age of eighty, a few months before his death, Latude wrote in the

most familiar terms to his protector, the Chevalier de Pougens, a member

of the Institute: "Now I assure you in the clearest possible words, that

if within ten days of the present time, the 11th Messidor, you have not

turned up in Paris (the Chevalier was staying at his country estate), I

shall start the next day and come to you with the hunger of a giant and

the thirst of a cabby, and when I have emptied your cellar and eaten you

out of house and home you will see me play the second act of the comedy

of _Jocrisse_[51]; you will see me run off with your plates, and dishes,

and tankards, and bottles--empty, you may be sure--and fling all your

furniture out of the window!"

On July 20, 1804, Latude compiled one more circular, addressed to the

sovereigns of Europe: the kings of Prussia, Sweden, and Denmark, the

Archduke Charles, brother of the Emperor; and to the President of the

United States. To each of them he sent a copy of his _Memoirs_,

accompanied by the famous scheme for replacing with muskets the pikes

with which the sergeants were armed. He explained to each of the

sovereigns that as the country he ruled was profiting by this child of

his genius, it was only just that he should reap some benefit.

Jean Henri, surnamed Danry, alias Danger, alias Jedor, alias Masers

d'Aubrespy, alias De Masers de Latude, died of pneumonia at Paris, on

January 1, 1805, aged eighty years.