Part 17
“In half an hour the hole was large enough. Had it not been, I could not have enlarged it without a saw. The sides of this hole bristled with points, liable to tear the clothes and lacerate the flesh. It was five feet from the ground. Placing two chairs together under it we mounted on them, and I pushed the monk through. Then I handed him our bundles, and placing another chair on these two, I scrambled through the hole, the monk dragging me, tearing my side and legs till the blood flowed in streams. Going down two staircases, I opened a door at the bottom and entered the passage, where the great gate of the royal staircase is situate, and beside the door of the cabinet of the Savio alla Scrittura. The great gate was fastened, and I saw at a glance I could not force it.
“Calm, resigned, and perfectly tranquil, I seated myself, telling the monk to do the same. ‘My work is finished.’ said I; ‘the rest is now in the hands of God and fortune.’
“‘Abbia chi regge il ciel cura del resto, O la fortuna se non tocca a lui.’
“‘I don’t know whether the palace sweepers will come here either to-day, All Saints’ Day, or to-morrow, All Souls Day. Should any one come I shall save myself as soon as the door is opened, and do you follow me. But if no one comes, here I remain, were I to die of hunger.’
“At this the poor man became furious: he called me mad, desperado, a seducer, traitor, liar. Six o’clock struck. It was only an hour since I awoke in the garret.
“What chiefly occupied my thoughts was, how to get a change of clothes. Father Balbi was dressed as a peasant, and his clothes were intact; while I could inspire only horror and pity, for I was covered with blood, and my dress was in rags. Tearing up my handkerchief, I staunched my wounds. I gathered my hair into my purse, drew on white stockings, a lace shirt, and put on my fine coat. I then resembled a man who had been at a ball and passed the night at a tavern and got disordered there.
“Thus decked out, my fine hat, with Spanish lace and black plume on my head, I opened a window. Some idlers in the court, not understanding how one so dressed could be in such a place so early, ran to inform those who were in charge. The doorkeeper immediately came and opened the door, supposing he had locked somebody in the previous evening. Hearing him coming, I told the monk to be silent, and placed close by the door.
“When the man opened it he was stupefied at my appearance. Profiting by his confusion I passed out without saying a word. Without appearing to fly, I took the magnificent staircase called the ‘Giants’, and passed on without heeding the monk, who kept calling to enter the church. He knew as well as I did that churches were no longer sanctuaries in Venice, but in his terror he forgot the fact.
“I made my way at once for the frontier. I hastened straight to the royal gate of the ducal palace, traversed the piazetta, and stepped with the monk, who had followed me, into the first gondola I met, telling the gondolier I wished to go to Fusine, and to call another rower.
“When we had passed the custom-house, I asked the gondolier if we could reach Mestre before eight.
“‘But, sir,’ said he, ‘you told me to go to Fusine.’
“I told him he was mistaken. The other gondolier insisted he was not, and the stupid monk joined them. I could have knocked his head off. But I laughed, said probably I was wrong, but that I wished to go to Mestre, and for Mestre we started.
“Arrived at Mestre I hired a carriage. I mounted; and as we were starting I turned to make a remark to Father Balbi: he was not at my side. I sent a stable-boy for him, but he was not to be found. I looked into a tavern, and found him taking a cup of chocolate. Repressing my indignation, I got him out, and we were getting into the carriage again, when a man came up who knew me, and who had the reputation of being a familiar of the inquisition of the republic. He saluted me, said he was happy to see me, and asked how I had escaped.
“‘I have not escaped, sir; I have been discharged.’
“‘Impossible, sir; for only yesterday I was at Signor Grimani’s, and I should have heard it there.’
“Descending from the carriage, I asked him to step aside with me behind the house. There I seized him, and raised my crowbar to strike; but he broke from me and ran away. When he had got at a safe distance he kissed hands, in token that he wished me a happy voyage, and I thanked God I had not taken his life.
“Arrived at Trevisa, I ordered a post carriage for ten o’clock; but I had no intention of using it, for I had not the means to pay for it; and I feared, hungry as I was, I did not even dare to break my fast.
“Passing out of the gate of the city I took to the fields, determined not to get on the road again while in the territories of the republic. For safety sake, to avoid any ambuscades that might lie in wait for me on the shortest route, I everywhere took the longest way. After three hours’ walking I threw myself on the ground exhausted, and sent the monk to a neighbouring farmer’s house for food, and a good dinner was soon sent me by a girl. After walking for four hours more we sat down, and I told the monk we must separate to pass the frontiers, but that we should meet again at Borgo di Val Sugana, and I directed him how to go, making him a present of my cloak. Giving him all the money that remained to me, I appointed finally a place for meeting in two days. He refused to leave me, reminding me of the promise I had made when inducing him to help my escape--that I would never separate from him. I rose with much effort, took his measure, and began to dig a hole, without answering his questions. After a quarter of an hour’s work I told him to prepare his soul, for I was going to bury him, if he drove me to it by his obstinacy. He still refused to go; but at length, either from fear or reflection, he consented, and we embraced one another. When he had gone, I approached a shepherd, asked the name of the village and the owners of several houses, and decided to apply for a night’s lodging at the house of the chief of the sbirri, inquiring from a child playing in the yard where her father was.”
The child called its mother, who mistook Cassanova for Signor Vitturi, who had promised to become godfather to her child. She told him her husband had been summoned to search for two prisoners who had escaped from the leads, and that she did not expect him back for two or three days. He explained that he had received his hurts in a fall from his horse, and the mother of his hostess eagerly dressed them. He was served an excellent supper, and after twelve hours’ refreshing sleep, set out again at five in the morning. After five hours’ travelling he heard a bell, and remembering it was All Souls’ Day, he entered the church, and met there one he had thought his friend. This friend was very eager to hear the story of his escape, but refused him any assistance. At an isolated farmhouse, however, he was well entertained, and again at a Capuchin convent. At the house of another friend he was refused even a drink of water; but,
crowbar in hand, he extorted six sequins. He passed the night at a farmhouse. In the morning he bought some old clothes and an ass, and on its back he passed the frontier, without being even asked his name. He arrived early at Borgo, where he found the monk, who told him, by way of welcome, that he had not expected him.
_LATUDE._
1750-1784.
Masers de Latude was born in 1725, at the castle of Craiseih, near Montagnac, in Languedoc. His father, the Marquis de Latude, was an officer in high rank, and the young Latude was destined for the military profession. While, however, he was studying at Paris, in 1749, he unfortunately conceived the idea of having recourse to subterfuge, in order to attract the notice of Madame de Pompadour, and to obtain her protection. He accordingly placed a small cardboard box in the post containing a harmless powder, and addressed to the marchioness, and then went straight to Versailles with the information that two individuals wished to poison the royal favourite, and that he had discovered their secret. The marchioness at first thanked him in the warmest terms; but he had scarcely left her presence when she began to suspect that she had been the victim of a shameful fraud. She obtained a few lines in his own handwriting from her pretended preserver; and comparing them with the address on the box, had her suspicions confirmed. Some few days after that, Latude found himself in the Bastille.
When he had remained there four months, he was taken to the castle of Vincennes, and he had every reason to fear that his imprisonment was to last for life, for the enraged woman proved inexorable to every appeal in his favour.
“I kept up my courage,” he says in his “Memoirs,” “with the hope that I should one day obtain my liberty, and that I should owe it to my own exertions alone, not to the favour of my gaolers. I was constantly forming plans. Among my fellow-prisoners I noticed an aged ecclesiastic, who appeared at a particular time every day in the garden of the chateau. He had been deprived of his liberty a long while on account of Jansenism. He was frequently visited by the abbé of St. Sauveur, and he devoted a great deal of his leisure to teaching the children of the officers to read and write. He was allowed to go almost wherever he pleased when in the company of his little pupils. He usually took his walk at about the time when I was led into a small garden adjoining the one I have spoken of--an indulgence granted me through the kindness of M. Berryer, the lieutenant of police. Two turnkeys used to accompany me on my leaving the cell, and on my return; but sometimes the elder of the two would wait for me in the garden, while the younger came up alone to let me out. I gradually accustomed the latter to see me run down the stairs in advance of him, and join his comrade in the garden, so that he always moved in the most leisurely manner when he came to fetch me.
“On a certain day I had resolved, at any price, to make an effort for liberty. As soon, therefore, as he came into my cell I ran downstairs with inconceivable swiftness, and hastily bolting the door on the outside, left him a prisoner within. There were then four sentinels to deal with. The first was on the other side of a door which led from the donjon, and which was always closed. I knocked; the door was opened. ‘Where is the abbé of St. Sauveur?’ I asked, hurriedly. ‘Our priest has been waiting for him in the garden over two hours, and I have been looking for him everywhere.’ I ran forward, as I spoke, till I came to a second sentinel, to whom I put the same question, and who allowed me to pass in the same way; and to a third, posted on the other side of the drawbridge, with whom I was equally fortunate. The fourth sentinel did not for a moment suspect I was a prisoner, seeing I had passed the others. I crossed the threshold of the outermost gate; I ran forward and was lost to view: I was free.
“I made my way across the fields, avoiding the high road as much as possible, and at length I came to Paris, where I took furnished lodgings, and tasted to the full the joys of liberty, with an appetite sharpened by fourteen months of captivity.”
Having had the imprudence to write to the king to excuse his fault, and to urge that he had already made sufficient expiation for it, Latude was again arrested and taken to the Bastille, where he was confined in a very strong cell. After remaining there eighteen months, however, he was removed, by M. Berryer’s orders, to a tolerably comfortable room, which he occupied jointly with a young man of his own age, named Alègre, whose crime was also that of having given offence to Madame de Pompadour.
“Under such circumstances, young men could come to but one resolution--to escape, or perish in the attempt. But every one able to form the slightest idea of the Bastille will conceive that this project had in it a touch of the wildness of delirium. In adopting it, however, I knew what I was about, and I hope I shall be credited with a soul a little above the common for having invented, formed, and carried it out.
“It was now no longer of any use to think of escaping from the Bastille by the gates. Every physical impossibility tended to render that idea impracticable. The ground being thus denied me, there was but one other way--to mount into the air. There was in our room a chimney running to the top of the tower; but, like every other in the place, it was so fortified with bars of iron as scarcely to leave a free passage to the smoke; and any one making his way to the top of the tower would find himself cut off from all communication with surrounding buildings, and with a ditch, commanded by a high wall some two hundred feet beneath him. Yet all these obstacles, all these dangers, could not daunt me. I communicated my ideas to my companion, but his timorous soul at first shrunk from the possible sufferings they involved. He chose to regard me as a madman, and for a time I thought and worked alone.
“There were many things to provide for, and to do: to climb to the top of the chimney, in spite of the iron bars; to make a ladder long enough to reach to the foot of the tower, and a second one (of wood) for mounting the ditch on the other side. In order to do all this I should have to procure tools and materials, and to use them in secret, yet, as it were, under the gaoler’s eyes.
“My first care was to find out a place in which I could hide my implements and the other things as soon as I should obtain them. Through thinking earnestly about it, I at length hit on a happy idea. I had been in several rooms in the Bastille, and I had always been able to ascertain whether the one below or above me happened to be occupied, by the noise the prisoner made. On this occasion I heard sounds from above, but none from below, and yet I knew that some one was in the room beneath me. This led me to believe that there was a double thickness of boards between us; and I took the following means to test the correctness of my conclusion:--
“There was a chapel in the Bastille, where mass was said once a day during the week, and three times on Sunday. Permission to be present on these occasions was a favour very rarely granted, and obtained with no little difficulty. Both myself and my companion, however, with the prisoner in the room beneath us, were allowed to attend the service.
“I resolved to seek the opportunity of our leaving the chapel together, to obtain a hasty glimpse of this prisoner’s room, and I told Alègre how he could help me. He was to let his knife case fall down stairs, as though by accident, in drawing out his pocket-handkerchief, so that one of the turnkeys would be obliged to run back to pick it up. All this was managed to perfection. The turnkey went down to find the case; and I, in the meantime, hurried away to our fellow-prisoner’s room. The ceiling was a very low one, and measuring it and the height of the entire storey with my eye, I judged that there was an unoccupied space of about five feet between the two chambers. ‘My friend,’ said I to Alègre on my return, ‘we are saved; we have hiding-place enough for a whole workshop full of things.’ ‘But how are we to get them?’ he asked impatiently. ‘Well, as for materials, this trunk of mine will supply us with more rope than we are likely to want.’ ‘Trunk! rope! why, the thing does not contain a single yard of rope!’ ‘What! have I not a quantity of linen--several dozens of shirts, and a number of napkins, stockings, and other things? We have only to tear them up into strips to make a ladder of any length we please.’
“There was a folding table in our room with a good deal of iron work about it; and, by cutting away part of this iron work with our pocket knives, we soon obtained a kind of rough chisel for loosening the bars of the chimney. As soon as our guards had left us for the night, we prized up a portion of the flooring with this implement, and we then began to pick a hole in the brickwork beneath. After we had worked in this way for some six hours, I found that my hasty calculation had not deceived me. There was a clear space of four feet between our floor and the ceiling below. This was work enough for one day; so we carefully swept all the rubbish into the hole, and replaced the piece of flooring that had been torn up.
“Our next operation was to unstitch two of my shirts--carefully preserving the thread--and by cutting them in pieces, and tying or stitching them together, we made a ladder some twenty feet long, which enabled us to move from place to place in the chimney while we were removing the bars. This part of the undertaking was of the most painful and trying character, and its execution cost us six months of an agony which even now I shudder to think of. We were obliged to work in the most uncomfortable and torturing positions, and we had scarcely struck a dozen strokes before our hands were covered with blood. The bars were fixed in an extremely hard cement, on which we could make no impression with our tools till we had moistened it with water, and the water had to be carried up in our mouths. Our progress was so slow that we were well satisfied when we removed a single square inch of the cement in the course of a night. As soon as we had loosened one bar we left it in its place, not daring to remove it until the very last moment, for fear the chimney should be examined in the meantime.
“When this odious labour was at length completed, we set to work upon the wooden ladder, by means of which we were to make our way into the governor’s garden that lay beyond the ditch. It had to be from twenty to twenty-five feet in length; and to make it, we set aside the pieces of wood sent up as firing, using part of an old chandelier, notched with our pocket knives for a saw. With this and another rude tool, made from the ironwork of the table, we cut our logs of wood into smaller pieces, which we fastened together with small bits of metal and bolts of wood, that served as hinges and screws. Through the single pole thus made we placed the rounds of the ladder, which projected some six inches on either side. The whole thing could be taken to pieces easily, and therefore we had no difficulty in hiding it beneath the flooring of our room.
“Our little subterranean workshop (as I may call it) was now quite nicely furnished, and its contents were known to none but ourselves. We had contrived to avoid detection in a most wonderful manner, but there was one danger which still gave us particular uneasiness. It was the custom with the officers of the Bastille, not only to make irregular and unexpected visits to the cells, but even to set spies upon the prisoners’ most secret hours. We had to take care therefore to do all our work by night, and not to leave the faintest trace of it behind us. But guards have ears as well as eyes. We were, of course, talking over our projects incessantly; and since we could not avoid the necessity for doing this, we had to invent a language intelligible only to ourselves. This was easily done; the saw was called _faun_; a hook, _Tubal Cain_; the hole in the floor, _Polyphemus_; the wooden ladder, _Jacob_; and the rounds, _sprigs_; the ropes, _doves_ (from their whiteness); the pocket knife, _puppy_, and so forth. We were constantly on our guard, however, in using even this gibberish, and we succeeded perfectly in keeping our guards in the dark.
“When the operations already spoken of were completed, we began to think about our great ladder. We calculated that it would have to be at least one hundred and eighty feet in length; and to find material for it we had to sacrifice shirts, napkins, stockings, flannels--in short, nearly the whole of our underclothing. As soon as we had made a hank, or twist, out of the shreds, we hid it away in ‘Polyphemus.’ When we had a sufficient number of these, we spent the whole night in binding them together; and I would defy any ropemaker to produce a stouter cable (of its size) than the one we then possessed.
“At the summit of all the towers of the Bastille a ledge projected some four or five feet beyond the wall. This we knew would cause any one using our ladder to swing about in the air, and in all probability to lose his hold from giddiness, and fall to the ground. We were obliged, there fore, to invent an apparatus for steadying the ladder, which was far too complicated to describe here. Suffice it to say, that it involved the use of another rope, some three hundred and sixty feet long; and this we actually made, together with shorter ropes for tying our ladder to a cannon, and for other necessities of the moment.
“When all these ropes were ready we measured them, and found they were fourteen hundred feet in length. Our ladders, all taken together, had two hundred and eight rounds.
“There was one other danger to be dreaded--the noise likely to be made by the friction of our ladders against the wall. We endeavoured to avoid this by carefully binding up the ladders with pieces of our dressing-gowns, etc., at the places where they were likely to touch the stonework.
“We had been employed some eighteen months in these preparations, and yet our work was not done. We had found a means of reaching the top of the tower, and for dropping into the ditch; but now other operations would be needed to enable us to leave the place. The first was to mount the parapet of the governor’s wall, which looks into the ditch of the Porte St. Antoine. But this parapet was always guarded by sentinels. We might choose a very rainy and dark night for our attempt; but then it might rain while we were leaving the chimney, and yet be perfectly fine by the time we reached the parapet and the sentinels. And, besides, there were not only the sentinels, but the guard going the grand rounds. To be seen by the latter was to be hopelessly lost.
“The second operation promised to be less of a danger than a difficulty. It consisted of making a passage through the wall separating the ditch of the Bastille from the Porte St. Antoine. It would necessitate the use of a couple of crowbars, and these we could easily obtain from our chimney.
“We fixed on Monday, the 25th of February, 1756, for our flight. The river had overflowed its banks, and there was water to the depth of four feet in the ditches of the Bastille. We judged it prudent, therefore, to pack up a change of clothes in a portmanteau, so that we might not run the risk of perishing of cold if we happened to be fortunate enough to escape from the prison.
“Immediately after our dinner hour, on the appointed day, we took our rope-ladder from its hiding-place beneath the floor, and having seen that all the rounds were in order, put it away again in a more convenient place for instant use. At the same time we tied the three pieces of the wooden ladder together, bound our crowbars in rags, to prevent the metal from coming in contact with the wall, and furnished ourselves with a small bottle of brandy for our sustenance during the nine hours we were to pass up to our necks in water in the ditch. This done, we waited impatiently for the hour of supper. It came at length, and our gaolers left us for the night.