Legends of the Bastille

by Frantz Funck-Brentano

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.