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.