Chapter XI (2)

Though his flageolet and his animal companions made his lonely hours somewhat less burthensome, and at moments drew his attention wholly from maddening thoughts, the longing for liberty would perpetually recur, and he racked his mind for plans to shake off his chains. The thought occurred to him, that if he could be fortunate enough to suggest some plan which would benefit the state, it might be repaid by the gift of freedom. At that time the non-commissioned military officers were armed only with halberts, which could be of no use but in close engagement; Latude proposed to substitute muskets for the halberts, and thus make effective at least 20,000 men. But how was he to communicate his idea to the king and the ministers? he had neither pen, ink, nor paper, and strict orders had been given that he should be debarred from the use of them. This obstacle, however, he got over. For paper, he moulded thin tablets of bread, six inches square; for pens he used the triangular bones out of a carp’s belly; for ink his blood was substituted—to obtain it he tied round a finger some threads from his shirt, and punctured the end. As only a few drops could be procured in this way, and as they dried up rapidly, he was compelled to repeat the operation so often, that his fingers were covered with wounds, and enormously swelled. The necessity of frequent punctures he ultimately obviated, by diluting the blood with water.

When the memorial was finished, there was yet another difficulty to be surmounted; it must be copied. In this emergency, Latude clamorously demanded to see the Major of the Bastile. To that officer he declared that, being convinced he had not long to live, he wished to prepare for his end, by receiving religious assistance. The confessor of the prison was in consequence sent to him, was astonished and delighted by the memorial, became interested in his favour, and obtained an order that he should be supplied with materials for writing. The memorial was accordingly transcribed, and presented to the king.

The suggestion was adopted by the government; the unfortunate prisoner was, however, left to languish unnoticed in his dungeon. Again he tasked his faculties for a project which might benefit at once his country and himself. At this period no provision was made in France for the widows of those who fell in battle. The king of Prussia had recently set the example of granting pensions; and Latude deemed it worthy of being imitated. But, knowing that an empty treasury would be pleaded in bar, he proposed a trifling addition to the postage of letters, which he calculated would raise an ample fund. His memorial and the data on which it was founded, were forwarded to the monarch and the ministers. The tax was soon after imposed, and nominally for the purpose pointed out by Latude; but the widows, nevertheless, continued to be destitute, and the projector unpitied.

Foiled in all his efforts, the firmness of Latude gave way. He had been pent for three years and five months in a loathsome dungeon, suffering more than pen can describe. Exposed in his horrible fireless and windowless abode to all the blasts of heaven, three winters, one of which was peculiarly severe, had sorely tortured his frame. The cold, the keen winds, and a continual defluxion from his nostrils, had split his upper lip, and destroyed his front teeth; his eyes were endangered from the same causes, and from frequent weeping; his head was often suddenly affected by a sort of apoplectic stroke; and his limbs were racked by cramp and rheumatism. Hope was extinct; intense agony of mind and body rendered existence insufferable; and the unhappy victim resolved to throw off a burthen which he could no longer bear. No instrument of destruction being within reach, he tried to effect his purpose by starving himself; and for a hundred and thirty-three hours he obstinately persisted in refusing all food. At last, his jailers wrenched open his mouth, and frustrated his design. Still bent on dying, he contrived to obtain and secrete a fragment of broken glass, with which he opened four of the large veins. During the night he bled till life was all but extinct. Once more, however, he was snatched from the grave, and he now sullenly resigned himself to await his appointed time.

After he had been confined a considerable time longer, a fortunate overflowing of the Seine occasioned his removal. The turnkey complained heavily that he was obliged to walk through the water to the prisoner, and Latude was in consequence removed to an apartment in the tower of La Comté. It had no chimney, and was one of the worst rooms in the tower, but it was a paradise when compared with the pestiferous hole from which he had emerged. Yet, so strong is the yearning for society, that, gladdened as he was by his removal, he could not help bitterly regretting the loss of his sociable rats. As a substitute for them, he tried to catch some of the pigeons which perched on the window; and, by means of a noose, formed from threads drawn out of his linen, he finally succeeded in snaring a male and a female. “I tried,” says he, “every means to console them for the loss of liberty. I assisted them to make their nest and to feed their young; my cares and attention equalled their own. They seemed sensible of this, and repaid me by every possible mark of affection. As soon as we had established this reciprocal understanding, I occupied myself entirely with them. How I watched their actions, and enjoyed their expressions of tenderness! I lost myself entirely while with them, and in my dreams continued the enjoyment.”

This pleasure was too great to be lasting. He had been placed in his present apartment because it was under the care of a brutal turnkey named Daragon, who had been punished for Latude’s former escape, and cherished a rankling feeling of revenge. It was Daragon who purchased the grain for the pigeons, and for this service the prisoner, besides the large profit which the turnkey made, gave him one out of the seven bottles of wine which was his weekly allowance. Daragon now insisted on having four bottles, without which he would purchase no more grain. It was to no purpose that Latude pleaded that the wine was indispensably necessary to restore his health; the turnkey was deaf to reason. Latude was provoked into asperity; Daragon rushed out in a rage; and in a short time he returned, pretending that he had an order from the governor to kill the pigeons. “My despair at this,” says Latude, “exceeded all bounds, and absolutely unsettled my reason; I could willingly have sacrificed my life to satisfy my just vengeance on this monster. I saw him make a motion towards the innocent victims of my misfortunes; I sprang forward to prevent him. I seized them, and, in my agony, I crushed them myself. This was perhaps the most miserable moment of my whole existence. I never recall the memory of it without the bitterest pangs. I remained several days without taking any nourishment; grief and indignation divided my soul; my sighs were imprecations, and I held all mankind in mortal horror.”

Fortunately, a humane and generous man, the Count de Jumilhac, was, soon after, appointed governor of the Bastile. He compassionated the sufferings of Latude, and exerted himself to relieve them. He obtained for him an interview with M. de Sartine, the minister of police, who gave him leave to walk for two hours daily on the platform of the Bastile, and promised to befriend him. That promise he soon broke. Hope revived in the breast of Latude, and he again set to work to form plans for the good of the country. Schemes for issuing a new species of currency, and for establishing public granaries in all the principal towns, were among the first fruits of his meditations. With respect to the latter project, he says, “nothing could be more simple than the mode I suggested of constructing and provisioning these magazines. It consisted in a slight duty upon marriage, which all rich people, or those who wished to appear so, would have paid with eagerness, as I had the address to found it upon their vanity.” This project pleased M. de Sartine so much, that he wished to have the merit of it to himself, and, by means of a third person, he sounded Latude, to know whether he would relinquish his claim to it, on having a small pension secured to him. Latude gave a brief but peremptory refusal, and M. de Sartine was thenceforth his enemy. All letters and messages to him remained unnoticed.

While he was one day walking on the platform, he learned the death of his father. The sentinel who guarded him had served under his father, but did not know that the prisoner was the son of his old officer. Latude was overwhelmed by this fatal intelligence, and he fainted on the spot. His mother still lived; but she, too, was sinking into the grave from grief. It was in vain that, in the most pathetic language, she repeatedly implored the harlot marchioness to have mercy on the captive. Her prayers might have moved a heart of flint, but they had no effect on Madame de Pompadour. But the horrors of imprisonment were not enough to be inflicted on him; he was made the victim of calumny, and a stain was fixed upon his character. To get rid of importunity in his behalf, the men in office replied to his advocates, “Beware how you solicit the pardon of that miscreant. You would shudder if you knew the crimes he has committed.”

Thus goaded almost to madness, it is not to be wondered at that he was eager to take vengeance on his persecutors. Since the heart of Madame de Pompadour was inaccessible to pity, he determined that it should at least feel the stings of mortification and rage. His plan was, to draw up a memorial, exposing her character, and to address it to La Beaumelle, who had himself tasted the rigours of the Bastile. “I had only,” says he, “to place in trusty hands the true history of her birth and infamous life, with all the particulars of which I was well acquainted; in depriving me of existence, she would dread my dying words, and even from the tomb I should still be an object of terror to her. There was nothing then to restrain the blow with which I had the power of crushing her. The faithful friends who were to become the depositaries of my vengeance, in apprising her of the danger, would merely give her a single moment to escape it by doing me justice.”

It was while he was walking on the platform of the Bastile that he formed this chimerical project, for chimerical it was, there being scarcely a probability that any one would have courage enough to second his attack on the potent and vindictive marchioness. Having calculated the distance between the top of the tower and the street of St. Anthony, on which he looked down, he perceived that it was possible to fling a packet into the street. Nothing of this kind could, however, be done while he was closely watched by Falconet the aid-major, and a serjeant, both of whom always attended him in his walk. Falconet was insufferably garrulous, particularly on his own exploits, and Latude hoped to disgust him by perpetual sarcasm and contradiction. He succeeded in silencing him, but Falconet still clung to him like his shadow. To tire him out, Latude adopted the plan of almost running during the whole of the time that he was on the platform. The aid-major remonstrated, but the prisoner answered, that rapid motion was indispensably necessary to him, in order to excite perspiration. At last, Falconet suffered him to move about as he pleased, and fell into gossiping with the serjeant, in which they both engaged so deeply that Latude was left unnoticed.

The next step of Latude was to gaze into the windows of the opposite houses, and scrutinise the faces of the persons whom he saw, till he could see some one whose countenance seemed indicative of humane feelings. It was on the female sex, as having more sensibility than the male, that he mainly relied for pity and succour; and his attention was finally fixed on two young women, who were sitting by themselves at work in a chamber, and whose looks appeared to betoken that they were of kind dispositions. Having caught the eye of one of them, he respectfully saluted her by a motion of his hand; the sign was answered by both of them in a similar manner. After this dumb intercourse had continued for some days, he showed them a packet, and they motioned to him to fling it; but he gave them to understand that it was not yet ready.

The means of conveyance for his intended work were now secured, but, as he no longer had materials for writing, he had still much to contrive. But he was not of a nature to be discouraged even by serious obstacles. He had fortunately been allowed to purchase some books, and he resolved to write between the lines and on the margins of the pages. As a pen made of a carp bone would not write a sufficiently small hand for interlineations, he beat a halfpenny as thin as paper, and succeeded in shaping it into a tolerable pen. Ink was yet to be provided, and this was the worst task of all to accomplish. Having on the former occasion narrowly escaped gangrene in his fingers, he was afraid to use blood, and was therefore compelled to find a substitute. To make his ink of lampblack was the mode which occurred to him; but as he was allowed neither fire nor candle, how was the black to be obtained? By a series of stratagems he managed to surmount the difficulty. Under pretence of severe tooth-ache, he borrowed from the serjeant, who attended him on the platform, a pipe and the articles for lighting it, and he secreted a piece of the tinder. By a simulated fit of colic, he got some oil from the doctor. This he put into a pomatum pot, and made a wick from threads drawn out of the sheets. He then made a bow and peg, like a drill, and with this and the piece of tinder, by dint of rapid friction, he ignited two small bits of dry wood, and lighted his lamp. The first view of the light threw him, he says, into a delirium of joy. The condensed smoke he collected on the bottom of a plate, and in six hours he had sufficient for his purpose. But here he was stopped short, and all his trouble seemed likely to be thrown away; for the light and oily black floated on the water instead of mixing with it. He got over this by affecting to have a violent cold. The prison apothecary sent him some syrup, and Latude employed it to render the lamp black miscible with water.

Thus provided with materials for writing, Latude sat down to compose his work. “My whole heart and soul were in it,” says he, “and I steeped my pen in the gall with which they were overflowing.” Having completed the history of his persecutor, he wrote a letter of instructions to La Beaumelle, another to a friend, the Chevalier de Mehegan, in case of La Beaumelle being absent, and a third to his two female friends, in which he directed them how to proceed, and entreated them to exert themselves in his behalf. The whole of the papers he packed up in a leathern bag, which he formed out of the lining of a pair of breeches. As the packet was rather bulky, and the carrying of it about his person was dangerous, he was anxious to get rid of it as soon as possible. Some time, however, elapsed before he could catch sight of his friendly neighbours. At length one of them saw his signal, descended into the street, and caught the packet. Three months and a half passed away, during which he frequently saw them, and they seemed to be pleased with something that related to him, but he was unable to comprehend their signs. At last, on the 18th of April, 1764, they approached the window, and displayed a roll of paper, on which was written in large characters, “The Marchioness of Pompadour died yesterday.”

“I thought I saw the heavens open before me!” exclaimed Latude. His oppressor was gone, and he felt an undoubting confidence that his liberation would immediately follow as a necessary consequence. He was soon cruelly undeceived. After some days had passed over, he wrote to the lieutenant of police, and claimed his freedom. Sartine had given strict orders to all the officers of the Bastile to conceal the death of the marchioness, and he instantly hurried to the prison, to discover how the news had reached Latude. He summoned the prisoner into his presence, and harshly questioned him on the subject. Latude perceived that a disclosure might be prejudicial to the kind females, and, with equal firmness and honour, he refused to make it. “The avowal,” said Sartine, “is the price of your liberty.” The captive, however, again declared that he would rather perish than purchase the blessing at such a cost. Finding him inflexible, the baffled lieutenant of police retired in anger. Irritated by repeated letters, petitions, and remonstrances being neglected, and having been led to fear that he was to be perpetually imprisoned, to prevent him from suing Pompadour’s heirs, Latude in an evil hour lost all command over himself, and wrote a violent epistle to Sartine, avowedly for the purpose of enraging him. This act of insane passion was punished by instant removal to one of the worst dungeons, where his fare was bread and water.

After Latude had been for eighteen days in the dungeon, M. de Sartine obtained an order to transfer him to Vincennes, and immure him in an oubliette. Before he removed the prisoner, he circulated a report “that he meant to deliver him, but that, to accustom him by degrees to a change of air, he was going to place him for a few months in a convent of monks.” On the night of the 14th of August, 1764, an officer of police, with two assistants, came to convey him to his new prison. “My keepers,” says he, “fastened an iron chain round my neck, the end of which they placed under the bend of my knees; one of them placed one hand upon my mouth, and the other behind my head, whilst his companion pulled the chain with all his might, and completely bent me double. The pain I suffered was so intense, that I thought my loins and spine were crushed; I have no doubt it equalled that endured by the wretch who is broken on the wheel. In this state I was conveyed from the Bastile to Vincennes.”

At Vincennes he was placed in a cell. His mind and body were now both overpowered by the severity of his fate, dangerous illness came on, and he every day grew weaker. Fortunately for Latude, M. Guyonnet, the governor of the fortress, had nothing of “the steeled jailer” about him; he was a generous, humane man, of amiable manners. He listened to the mournful tale of the captive, wept for his misfortunes, took on himself the responsibility of giving him a good apartment, and obtained for him the privilege of walking daily for two hours in the garden.

Despairing, as well he might, of being ever released by his inflexible enemies, Latude meditated incessantly on the means of escaping. Fifteen months elapsed before an opportunity occurred, and then it was brought about by chance. He was walking in the garden, on a November afternoon, when a thick fog suddenly came on. The idea of turning it to account rushed into his mind. He was guarded by two sentries and a serjeant, who never quitted his side for an instant; but he determined to make a bold attempt. By a violent push of his elbows he threw off the sentries, then pushed down the serjeant, and darted past a third sentry, who did not perceive him till he was gone by. All four set up the cry of “Seize him!” and Latude joined in it still more loudly, pointing with his finger, to mislead the pursuers. There remained only one sentry to elude, but he was on the alert, and unfortunately knew him. Presenting his bayonet, he threatened to kill the prisoner if he did not stop. “My dear Chenu,” said I to him, “you are incapable of such an action; your orders are to arrest, and not to kill me. I had slackened my pace, and came up to him slowly; as soon as I was close to him, I sprang upon his musket, I wrenched it from him with such violence, that he was thrown down in the struggle; I jumped over his body, flinging the musket to a distance of ten paces, lest he should fire it after me, and once more I achieved my liberty.”

Favoured by the fog, Latude contrived to hide himself in the park till night, when he scaled the wall, and proceeded, by by-ways, to Paris. He sought a refuge with the two kind females to whom he had entrusted his packet. They were the daughters of a hair-dresser, named Lebrun. The asylum for which he asked was granted in the kindest manner. They procured for him some linen, and an apartment in the house, gave him fifteen livres which they had saved, and supplied him with food from all their own meals. The papers confided to them they had endeavoured, but in vain, to deliver to the persons for whom they were intended: two of those persons were absent from France; the third was recently married, and his wife, on hearing that the packet was from the Bastile, would not suffer her husband to receive it.

Latude was out of prison, but he was not out of danger. He was convinced that, to whatever quarter he might bend his steps, it would be next to impossible to elude M. de Sartine, who, by means of his spies, was omnipresent. In this emergency, he deemed it prudent to conciliate his persecutor; and he accordingly wrote a letter to him, entreating forgiveness for insults offered in a moment of madness, promising future silence and submission, and pathetically imploring him to become his protector. This overture had no result. He tried the influence of various persons, among whom was the prince of Conti, but everywhere he was met by the prejudice which Sartine had raised against him; and, to add to his alarm and vexation, he learned that a strict search was making for him, and that a reward of a thousand crowns was offered for his apprehension.

As a last resource, he determined to make a personal appeal to the duke of Choiseul, the first minister, who was then with the court at Fontainebleau. It was mid-December when he set out, the ground was covered with ice and snow, and the cold was intense. A morsel of bread was his whole stock of provisions, he had no money, and he dared not approach a house, proceed on the high road, or travel by day, lest he should be intercepted. In his nightly circuitous journey, of more than forty miles, he often fell into ditches, or tore himself in scrambling through the hedges. “I hid myself in a field,” says he, “during the whole of the 16th; and, after walking for two successive nights, I arrived on the morning of the 17th at Fontainebleau, worn out by fatigue, hunger, grief, and despair.”

Latude was too soon convinced that there was no chance of escaping from the vengeance of M. de Sartine. As soon as he had announced his arrival to the duke, two officers of the police came to convey him, as they said, to the minister; but their mask was speedily thrown off, and he found that they were to escort him back to Vincennes. They told him that every road had been beset, and every vehicle watched, to discover him, and they expressed their wonder at his having been able to reach Fontainebleau undetected. “I now learned,” says he, “for the first time, that there was no crime so great, or so severely punished, as a complaint against a minister. These exempts quoted to me the case of some deputies from the provinces, who, having been sent a short time before to denounce to the king the exactions of certain intendants, had been arrested, and punished as dangerous incendiaries!”

On his reaching Vincennes, he was thrown into a horrible dungeon, barely six feet by six and a half in diameter, which was secured by four iron-plated, treble-bolted doors, distant a foot from each other. To aggravate his misery, he was told that he deserved a thousand times worse treatment; for that he had been the cause of the serjeant who guarded him being hanged. This appalling news entirely overwhelmed him; he gave himself up to frantic despair, and incessantly accused himself as the murderer of the unfortunate man. In the course of a few days, however, a compassionate sentinel, who was moved by his cries and groans, relieved his heart, by informing him that the serjeant was well, and had only been imprisoned.

The kind-hearted governor sometimes visited Latude, but the information which he brought was not consolatory. He had tried to move M. de Sartine, and had found him inflexible. Sartine, however, sent to offer the prisoner his liberty, on condition that he would name the person who held his papers, and he pledged his honour that no harm should come to that person. Latude knew him too well to trust him. He resolutely answered, “I entered my dungeon an honest man, and I will die rather than leave it a dastard and a knave.”

Into the den, where he was as it were walled up, no ray of light entered; the air was never changed but at the moment when the turnkey opened the wicket; the straw on which he lay was always rotten with damp, and the narrowness of the space scarcely allowed him room to move. His health of course rapidly declined, and his body swelled enormously, retaining in every part of it, when touched, the impression of the finger. Such were his agonies that he implored his keepers, as an act of mercy, to terminate his existence. At last, after having endured months of intense suffering, he was removed to a habitable apartment, where his strength gradually returned.

Though his situation was improved, he was still entirely secluded from society. Hopeless of escape, he pondered on the means of at least opening an intercourse with his fellow-prisoners. On the outer side of his chamber was the garden, in which each of the prisoners, Latude alone being excluded, was daily allowed to walk by himself for a certain time. This wall was five feet thick; so that to penetrate it seemed almost as difficult as to escape. But what cannot time and perseverance accomplish! His only instruments were a broken piece of a sword and an iron hoop of a bucket, which he had contrived to secrete; yet with these, by dint of twenty-six months’ labour, he managed to perforate the mass of stone. The hole was made in a dark corner of the chimney, and he stopped the interior opening with a plug, formed of sand and plaster. A long wooden peg, rather shorter than the hole, was inserted into it, that, in case of the external opening being noticed and sounded, it might seem to be not more than three inches in depth.

For a signal to the prisoner walking in the garden, he tied several pieces of wood so as to form a stick about six feet long, at the end of which hung a bit of riband. The twine with which it was tied was made from threads drawn out of his linen. He thrust the stick through the hole, and succeeded in attracting the attention of a fellow-captive, the Baron de Venac, who had been nineteen years confined for having presumed to give advice to Madame de Pompadour. He successively became acquainted with several others, two of whom were also the victims of the marchioness; one of them had been seventeen years in prison, on suspicion of having spoken ill of her; the other had been twenty-three years, because he was suspected of having written against her a pamphlet, which he had never even seen. The prisoners contrived to convey ink and paper to Latude through the hole; he opened a correspondence with them, encouraged them to write to each other, and became the medium through which they transmitted their letters. The burthen of captivity was much lightened to him by this new occupation.

An unfortunate change for the prisoners now took place. The benevolent and amiable-mannered Guyonnet was succeeded by Rougemont, a man who was a contrast to him in every respect; he was avaricious, flinty-hearted, brutal, and a devoted tool of M. de Sartine. The diet which he provided for the captives was of the worst kind; and their scanty comforts were as much as possible abridged. That he might not be thwarted in the exercise of his tyranny, he dismissed such of the prison attendants as he suspected of being humane, and replaced them by men whose dispositions harmonised with his own. How utterly devoid of feeling were the beings whom he selected, may be judged by the language of his cook. This libel on the human race is known to have said, “If the prisoners were ordered to be fed upon straw, I would give them stable-litter;” and, on other occasions, he declared, “If I thought there was a single drop of juice in the meat of the prisoners, I would trample it under my foot to squeeze it out.” Such a wretch would not have scrupled to put poison into the food, had not his master had an interest in keeping the captives alive. When any one complained of the provisions, he was insultingly answered, “It is but too good for prisoners;” when he applied for the use of an article, however insignificant, the reply was, “It is contrary to the rules.” So horrible was the despotism of the governor that, within three months, four of the prisoners strangled themselves in despair. “The Inquisition itself,” says Latude, “might envy his proficiency in torture!”

Latude was one of the first to suffer from the brutality of Rougemont. The apartment in which Guyonnet had placed him commanded a fine view. The enjoyment of a prospect was thought to be too great a luxury for a prisoner, and, accordingly, Rougemont set about depriving him of it. He partly built up the windows, filled the interstices of the bars with close iron net-work; and then, lest a blade of grass should still be visible, blockaded the outside with a blind like a mill-hopper, so that nothing could be perceived but a narrow slip of sky. But his situation was soon made far worse. In a fit of anger, caused by his being refused the means of writing to the lieutenant of police, he imprudently chanced to wish himself in his former cell again. He was taken at his word. On the following morning, when he had forgotten his unguarded speech, he was led back to his dark and noisome dungeon. “Few will believe,” says he, “that such inhuman jests could be practised in a civilised country.”

M. de Sartine, being now appointed minister of the marine, was replaced by M. Le Noir. It was some time before Latude knew of this change, and he derived no benefit from it, the new head of the police being the friend of Sartine. He wished to address the minister, but the means were refused, and he again tasked his skill to remove the obstacle. The only light he enjoyed was when his food was brought to him. The turnkey then set down the lamp at the entrance of the wicket, and went away to attend to other business. Of the turnkey’s short absence Latude availed himself to write a letter; it was written on a piece of his shirt, with a straw dipped in blood. His appeal was disregarded; and, to prevent him from repeating it in the same manner, the governor ordered a socket for the candle to be fixed on the outside of the wicket, so that only a few feeble rays might penetrate into the dungeon. But the captive was not to be easily discouraged; and, besides, he took a delight in baffling his persecutors. He had remaining in a pomatum pot some oil, sent by the surgeon to alleviate the colic pains which were caused by the dampness of his abode. Cotton drawn from his stockings supplied him with a wick. He then twisted some of his straw into a rope, which he coiled up, and fastened, in the shape of a bee-hive. With another portion of straw he made a sort of stick, five feet long, with a bit of linen at the end of it. The turnkey was always obliged to bring his food at twice; and, while he was fetching the second portion, Latude thrust out the stick, obtained a light from the candle, lighted his taper, and then closely covered it over with the bee-hive basket. When he was left by himself he unhooded the lamp, and wrote a second letter with his own blood. The only result was, to make his jailers believe that he was aided by the prince of darkness.

It was not till Latude was again at death’s-door that he was removed from his dungeon; on being taken out he fainted, and remained for a long while insensible. When he came to himself his mind wandered, and for some time he imagined that he had passed into the other world. Medical aid was granted to him, and he slowly recovered his health. The turnkeys now occasionally dropped obscure hints of some beneficial change, which he was at a loss to understand. The mystery was at length explained. The benevolent M. de Malesherbes had lately been appointed a cabinet minister, and one of his first acts was to inspect the state prisons. He saw Latude, listened to his mournful story, was indignant at his six-and-twenty years’ captivity, and promised redress.

Latude had been more than eleven years at Vincennes, when the order arrived for his release. His heart beat high with exultation; but he was doomed to suffer severe disappointment. At the moment when he imagined that he was free, an officer informed him, that the minister thought it expedient to accustom him gradually to a purer air, and that he was therefore directed to convey him to a convent, where he was to remain for a few months. These were the very same words which had been spoken to him when he was sent from the Bastile to Vincennes; and, knowing their meaning but too well, they almost palsied his faculties. His enemies had been busily at work; by gross misrepresentations, and by forging in his name an extravagant memorial to the king, they had induced M. de Malesherbes to believe that the prisoner’s intellects were disordered, and that he could not be immediately released without peril.

It was to the hospital of Charenton, the Parisian bedlam, that the officers were removing Latude. When he was about to quit Vincennes, he heard the brutal Rougemont describe him to them as a dangerous and hardened criminal, who could not be too rigorously confined. It was also hinted, that the prisoner was gifted with magical powers, by virtue of which he had thrice escaped in an extraordinary manner. When he was turned over to the monks, called the Brothers of Charity, who had the management of Charenton, these particulars were faithfully reported to them, and he was introduced under the name of Danger, in order to excite an idea of his formidable character.

Unacquainted with the nature of Charenton, Latude, on seeing the monks, had supposed that he was in a monastery. On finding that he was in a mad-house, he dropped lifeless to the ground. He was conducted to a cell, which was over the vault where the furious lunatics were chained, and their shrieks and groans were horrible. In the night he heard the sound of voices, and discovered that two prisoners, one in the adjoining room, and the other in that above, were talking about him, out of their windows. They were both of them state prisoners, the hospital being occasionally converted into a jail by the ministers; one was named St. Magloire, the other the Baron de Prilles. Latude introduced himself to them, and they promised him all the services in their power. De Prilles possessed considerable influence with the officers of the establishment, and he exerted it so effectually, that he obtained permission for Latude to be visited by his fellow-captives. He had, however, enjoyed this comfort only for a short time, when Rougemont came and gave orders for his being placed in close and solitary confinement.

Latude remained in seclusion for a considerable time; but, at length, by dint of incessant remonstrances, De Prilles induced the superiors of the hospital to allow his new friend to take his meals in the apartment of St. Bernard, one of his fellow-captives. Another favour was soon after granted; he was permitted to take some exercise in the smaller court, when all the inmates of the place had been shut up for the night. It was then winter; and, at eight o’clock, the keeper led him to the court; and, when he was not disposed to walk with him, he placed his lantern on a stone, and watched him through some holes purposely bored in the door.

Trifling as were these indulgences, the worthy monks had disobeyed positive orders in allowing them. But they did not stop here. The head of the hospital, Father Facio, was so deeply moved by the injustice done to the captive, that he waited on M. de Malesherbes to intercede for him. On his assuring the minister that the prisoner was submissive, docile, and perfectly sane, his hearer, who had been told that Latude was a furious madman, was astonished and indignant at having been deceived. He promised that he would speedily release him, and desired that he might, in the meanwhile, enjoy as much liberty as the hospital regulations would allow. Unfortunately, however, for Latude, Malesherbes very shortly after ceased to be one of the ministers.

Though he failed to obtain his freedom, the situation of Latude was much ameliorated; he might roam wherever he would, within the bounds of the establishment. He derived additional comfort from several of the state prisoners being now suffered to take their meals together, instead of having them separately in their apartments. The party thus formed admitted to their society several of the lunatics who had been liberally educated, and were harmless. One of these unfortunate men asserted himself to be the Divinity, another claimed to be a son of Louis XV., a third took a higher flight, and was the reigning monarch. These aspiring pretensions were strongly contrasted with the humility of others. A barrister, whose intellect love had shaken, manifested his insanity by throwing himself at every one’s feet and imploring pardon. Another individual, who had been a hermit, obstinately persisted in believing that Latude was a German elector, and, in spite of all attempts to prevent it, would perform for him the meanest domestic offices. “If I told him in the morning,” says Latude, “that a flea had disturbed my rest, he would not leave my chamber till he had killed it: he would bring it to me in the hollow of his hand, to show me what he had done. ‘My lord,’ he would say, ‘it will bite no more, and will never again disturb the sleep of your most serene highness.’”

A fellow prisoner who had recently been confined in a cell during a furious paroxysm of insanity, now gave some information to Latude, which deeply wounded his feelings. From him Latude learned that his early friend D’Alegre was in the prison, a raving maniac, shut up in an iron cage. His entreaties were so pressing, that the monks granted him permission to visit this unfortunate being. He found him a lamentable spectacle, shrunk to a skeleton, his hair matted, and his eyes sunken and haggard. Latude rushed to embrace him, but was repelled with signs of aversion by the maniac. In vain he strove to recall himself to the maniac’s recollection; the lost being only looked fiercely at him, and exclaimed, in a hollow tone, “I know you not!—begone!—I am God!” This victim of despotism had been ten years at Charenton, and he continued there, in the same melancholy state, during the remainder of his existence, which was protracted till a very late period.

After Latude had been for nearly two years at Charenton, his friends succeeded in obtaining an order for his release, on condition that he should permanently fix his abode at Montagnac, his native place. He quitted the prison without hat or coat; all his dress consisting of a tattered pair of breeches and stockings, a pair of slippers, and a great-coat thirty years old, which damp had reduced to rottenness. He was penniless, too; “but,” says he, “I was regardless of all these circumstances; it was enough that I was free!”

With some money, which he borrowed from a person who knew his family, Latude procured decent clothing. He called on M. Le Noir, who received him not unfavourably, and desired him to depart without delay for Montagnac. Unfortunately, he did not follow this advice. He lingered in Paris to draw up a memorial to the king, soliciting a recompense for his plans; and he had an interview with the Prince de Beauveau, to whom he related his woeful story. In his memorial, he mentioned M. de Sartine; and, though he intimates that he said nothing offensive, we may doubt whether he manifested much forbearance. The ministers now gave him peremptory orders to quit Paris; it is obvious that they were acquainted with his memorial, and were irritated by it beyond measure. He had proceeded forty-three leagues on his journey to the south of France, when he was overtaken by an officer of police, who carried him back a prisoner to the capital.

Latude was now taught that hitherto he had not reached the lowest depth of misery; he was doomed to experience “a bitter change, severer for severe.” Till this time his companions in suffering had been men with whom it was no disgrace to associate; but, in this instance, he was tossed among a horde of the most abandoned ruffians on earth; he was immured in the Bicêtre, in that part of the jail which was appropriated to swindlers, thieves, murderers, and other atrocious criminals, the scum and offscouring of France. On his arrival there, he was stripped, clad in the coarse and degrading prison attire, thrust into a dungeon, and supplied with a scanty portion of bread and water.

He was now in the midst of wretches, who tormented him with questions as to what robberies and murders he had committed, boasted of their own numerous crimes, and laughed at his pretending to innocence. “I was condemned,” says he, “to endure their gross and disgusting language, to listen to their unprincipled projects, in short to breathe the very atmosphere of vice.” It was in vain that, to procure his liberation from this den of infamy, he wrote to the friends who had rescued him from Charenton; some of them were silenced by the old falsehood that he was a dangerous madman, and others were alienated by being told that he had broken into the house of a lady of rank, and by threats had terrified her into giving him a large sum of money. This last calumny stung him to the soul, and he wrote to M. de Sartine to demand a trial; but his letter produced no other effect than the issuing of an order to take from him the means of writing. Such accumulated injustice soured his mind, and, brooding over the hope of revenge, he assumed the name of Jedor, in allusion to a dog so called, the figure of which he had seen on the gate of a citadel, with a bone between its paws, and underneath, as a motto, “I gnaw my bone, expecting the day when I may bite him who has bitten me.”

While the money lasted which Latude had taken into the prison, he could obtain a supply of food, bad indeed in quality, and villanously cooked, but still capable of supporting nature. But the money was soon spent, and he was then reduced to the prison allowance, which was scanty in quantity, of the worst kind, and often polluted by an admixture of filth and vermin. Latude was a large eater, and the portion of food allowed to him was so trifling, that he was tortured by hunger. To such extremity was he driven, that he was compelled to petition the sweepers to give him some of the hard crusts which were thrown into the passages by the richer prisoners, and which were collected every morning for the pigs.

Bad as the fare of Latude was, his lodging was far worse. His windowless cell, only eight feet square, swarmed with fleas and rats to such a degree that to sleep was all but impossible; fifty rats at a time were under his coverlet. He had neither fire nor candle, his clothing was insufficient, and the wind, rain, and snow beat furiously through the iron grating, which barely admitted the light. In rainy weather, and during thaws, the water ran in streams down the walls of the dungeon.

Eight-and-thirty months were spent in this infernal abode. Rheumatism, that prevented him from quitting his pallet, was the first consequence of his exposed situation. This brought with it an aggravation of another evil; for when Latude was unable to approach the wicket, the keeper flung in his bread, and gave him no soup. Scurvy of the most inveterate kind at length attacked him, his limbs were swelled and blackened, his gums became spongy, and his teeth loose, and he could no longer masticate the bread. For three days he lay without sustenance, voiceless and moveless, and he was just on the point of expiring, when he was conveyed to the infirmary. The infirmary was a loathsome place, little better than a charnel-house, but the medical aid which he obtained there restored him, after a struggle of many months, to a tolerable state of health.

On his recovery he was placed in a decent apartment. He did not, however, long enjoy it. Having attempted to present a petition to a princess of the house of Bouillon, who came to see the Bicêtre, he was punished by being thrust into a dungeon more horrible than that which he had previously inhabited. His own words will best describe what he underwent. “I was,” says he, “still enduring a physical torture which I had experienced before, though never to so cruel and dangerous an extent. After having triumphed over so many disasters, and vanquished so many enemies by my unshaken constancy, I was on the point of yielding to the intolerable pain occasioned by the vermin which infested my person. My dungeon was totally dark, my eye-sight was nearly extinguished, and I tried in vain to deliver myself from the myriads of these noxious animals that assailed me at once; the dreadful irritation made me tear my flesh with my teeth and nails, until my whole body became covered with ulcers; insects generated in the wounds, and literally devoured me alive. It was impossible to sleep: I was driven mad with agony, my sufferings were drawing to a close, and death in its most horrid shape awaited me.”

Gloomy as appearances were, the dawn of a brighter day was at hand. A providential occurrence, which seemed calculated to destroy his last hope, was the cause of his redemption. In 1781, the President de Gourgue visited the Bicêtre, heard the story of Latude, desired that the captive would draw up a memorial, and promised to exert himself in his behalf. Latude wrote the memorial, and intrusted it to a careless messenger, who dropped it in the street. The packet was found by a young female, Madame Legros, who carried on in a humble way the business of a mercer, and whose husband was a private teacher. The envelope being torn by lying in the wet, and the seal broken, she looked at the contents, which were signed “Masers de Latude, a prisoner during thirty-two years, at the Bastile, at Vincennes, and at the Bicêtre, where he is confined on bread and water, in a dungeon ten feet under ground.”

The gentle heart of Madame Legros was shocked at the idea of the protracted agony which the prisoner must have suffered. After she had taken a copy of the memorial, her husband, who participated in her feelings, carried it to the president. But the magistrate had been deceived by the falsehood, that the captive was a dangerous incurable lunatic, and he advised them to desist from efforts which must be fruitless. Madame Legros, however, who had much good sense and acuteness, would not believe that the captive was mad; she again read the memorial attentively, and could perceive in it no indication of disordered intellect. She was firmly convinced that he was the victim of persecution, and she resolved to devote her time and her faculties to his deliverance. Never, perhaps, was the sublime of benevolence so fully displayed as by this glorious woman, whose image ought to have been handed down to posterity by the painter’s and the sculptor’s hand. In the course of her philanthropic struggles, she had to endure calumny and severe privations, she was reduced to sell her ornaments and part of her furniture, and to subsist on hard and scanty fare, yet she never paused for a moment from the pursuit of her object, never uttered a sentence of regret that she had engaged in it. Her husband, too, though less personally active, has the merit of having entirely coincided with her in opinion, and aided her as far as he had the power.

It is delightful to know that her noble labours were crowned with success. Her toils, and the result of them, are thus summed up by Latude, who has also narrated them at great length. “Being thoroughly convinced of my innocence, she resolved to attempt my liberation; she succeeded, after occupying three years in unparalleled efforts, and unwearied perseverance. Every feeling heart will be deeply moved at the recital of the means she employed, and the difficulties she surmounted. Without relations, friends, fortune, or assistance, she undertook everything, and shrank from no danger and no fatigue. She penetrated to the levées of ministers, and forced her way to the presence of the great; she spoke with the natural eloquence of truth, and falsehood fled before her words. They excited her hopes and extinguished them, received her with kindness and repulsed her rudely; she reiterated her petitions, and returned a hundred times to the attack, emboldened by defeat itself. The friends her virtues had created trembled for her liberty, even for her life. She resisted all their entreaties, disregarded their remonstrances, and continued to plead the cause of humanity. When seven months pregnant, she went on foot to Versailles, in the midst of winter; she returned home exhausted with fatigue and worn out with disappointment; she worked more than half the night to obtain subsistence for the following day, and then repaired again to Versailles. At the expiration of eighteen months, she visited me in my dungeon, and communicated her efforts and her hopes. For the first time I saw my generous protectress; I became acquainted with her exertions, and I poured forth my gratitude in her presence. She redoubled her anxiety, and resolved to brave everything. Often, on the same day, she has gone to Montmartre to visit her infant, which was placed there at nurse, and then came to the Bicêtre to console me and inform me of her progress. At last, after three years, she triumphed, and procured my liberty!”