“My God!” he exclaimed, astonished at my effrontery, “were you not the very person that was chiefly the occasion of my letting you and your three companions down to visit your friends, and to celebrate the anniversary of a birthday, as you called it?”
“You must certainly, sir, have made a mistake; it was not me,” I rejoined with an air of offended innocence.
The man was not to be browbeaten or imposed upon in this way. He stuck to his text, and insisted that I was the culprit; but, to my great relief, he added that he had no desire to see me punished, for, as his punishment was over, mine could afford him no alleviation. I was glad to find one human being so devoid of the spirit of revenge; and yet the fellow added that he would have told the general and commandant of me, had not his wife persuaded him—Anglicè, ordered and compelled him—not to do it. Perhaps the lady might have had some peccadilloes on the part of her husband to resent, and was not over-grieved at the punishment into which I had betrayed him.
I still preserved my dignified composure, and assured him that he should lose nothing by his indulgence, and for what he had suffered in consequence of it, for I knew the generosity of the gentleman on whose account he had been put into confinement.
At this he could retain his countenance no longer, and he burst out into a horse-laugh in my face. I was obliged to throw off the mask. He shook me by the hand, and we became such good friends that he even took me to the dungeon that afternoon, to see my unfortunate companions. Nothing could astonish them more than my appearing with this man, whom they imagined it morally impossible to appease, as his indulgence to me had led to his disgrace and punishment. I gave them an account of all that had happened, and of the dialogue that had that day taken place between him and me, upon which they all congratulated me, and styled me the most fortunate prisoner of the fortress.
CHAPTER XIII
A trial at Metz—English officers sentenced to the galleys—Forging and using false passports—The consequences—A new scheme of escape—A favourable night but unfavourable sentinels—A farewell dinner—Another attempt at escape—A descent of ramparts by a rope—Concealment in a ditch—Rolling down a glacis—An adieu to the Mansion of Tears—Making towards the Rhine—Concealment in a wood—Refuge in a vineyard—Shooting a fox—Disturbed in our lair—A flight and its dangers—The banks of the Rhine—Passing the river—A joyful escape into neutral territory—Prospective comforts of an inn, and refreshment.
It was the next day (5th August, 1808) that my unfortunate companions received orders to prepare for a march to Metz, to which place they were sent under a strong escort, in order to take their trial as conspirators. How the simple attempt of prisoners of war at gaol-breaking could come under such a class of crime was to me inexplicable. Buché, the gendarme, was ordered to repair to Metz, to act in the double capacity of prosecutor and chief witness. I was now entirely in this man’s power. A single word from him would have included me in the number of the proscribed and condemned; for to be tried and condemned before such a tribunal were tantamount to the same thing. Fortunate did I consider myself that Buché did not denounce me.
I had the mortification to see my poor companions heavily ironed and bound in chains. After being closely confined in their filthy and pestiferous den for many days, they were to be marched twenty-five leagues, in order to be put upon their fictitious trials. We parted as affectionately as possible, and I could almost voluntarily have shared their fate,—“Our crime was common,” in the words of the poet, and I could not help repeating the end of the line, “and common be the pain.”
In a few days I received a letter from my friend Mr. Ashworth, giving me a melancholy narration of the trial; and he concluded by stating that himself, and several of our friends, were sentenced “as slaves to the galleys for fifteen years. Mr. Tuthill was sentenced to only nine.[25]”