However, the little mishap in the Constituent Assembly was to be the only check that Latude suffered in the course of his glorious martyr’s career. Presented to the Society of “Friends of the Constitution,” he was elected a member by acclamation, and the Society sent a deputation of twelve members to carry the civic crown to Madame Legros. The leader of the deputation said, in a voice broken by emotion, “This day is the grandest day of my life.” A deputation from the principal theatres of Paris offered Latude free admission to all performances, “so that he might go often and forget the days of his mourning.” He was surrounded by the highest marks of consideration; pleaders begged him to support their cases before the tribunals with the moral authority bestowed on him by his virtue. He took advantage of this to bring definitively before the courts his claims against the heirs of the Marquise de Pompadour. Citizen Mony argued the case for the first time before the court of the sixth arrondissement on July 16, 1793; on September 11 the case came again before the magistrates: Citizens Chaumette, Laurent, and Legrand had been designated by the Commune of Paris as counsel for the defence, and the whole Commune was present at the hearing. Latude obtained 60,000 livres, 10,000 of which were paid him in cash.
And now his life became more tranquil. Madame Legros continued to lavish her care on him. The 50,000 livres remaining due to him from the heirs of the Marquise were paid in good farm lands situated in La Beauce, the profits of which he regularly drew.
Let us hasten to add that France did not find in Latude an ungrateful child. The critical situation in which the nation was then struggling pained him deeply. He sought the means of providing a remedy, and in 1799 brought out a “Scheme for the valuation of the eighty departments of France to save the Republic in less than three months,” and a “Memoir on the means of re-establishing the public credit and order in the finances of France.”
When the estates of Madame de Pompadour were sequestrated, the farms Latude had received were taken from him; but he induced the Directory to restore them. He was less fortunate in his requisition for a licence for a theatre and a gaming-house. But he found consolation. The subsidies he went on extorting from right and left, the proceeds of his farms, the sale of his books, and the money brought in by the exhibition of his ropeladder, which was exhibited by a showman in the different towns of France and England, provided him with a very comfortable income.
The Revolution became a thing of the past. Latude hailed the dawning glory of Bonaparte, and when Bonaparte became Napoleon, Latude made his bow to the emperor. We have a very curious letter in which he marks out for Napoleon I. the line of conduct he should pursue to secure his own welfare and the good of France. It begins as follows:—
“Sire,—I have been five times buried alive, and am well acquainted with misfortune. To have a heart more sympathetic than the common run of men it is necessary to have suffered great ills.... At the time of the Terror I had the delightful satisfaction of saving the lives of twenty-two poor wretches.... To petition Fouquet d’Etinville on behalf of the royalists was to persuade him that I was one myself. When I braved death in order to save the lives of twenty-two citizens, judge, great Emperor, if my heart can do ought but take great interest in you, the saviour of my beloved country.”
We are given some details of the last years of Latude’s life in the Memoirs of his friend, the Chevalier de Pougens, and in the Memoirs of the Duchess d’Abrantès. The Chevalier tells us that at the age of seventy-five years he still enjoyed good health; he was “active and gay, and appeared to enjoy to the full the delights of existence. Every day he took long walks in Paris without experiencing the least fatigue. People were amazed to find no trace of the cruel sufferings he had undergone in the cells during a captivity of thirty-five years.” His popularity suffered no diminution under the Empire. Junot awarded him a pension from funds at his disposal. One day the general presented him to his wife, along with Madame Legros, whose side Latude never left. “When he arrived,” says the Duchess d’Abrantès, “I went to greet him with a respect and an emotion that must have been truly edifying. I took him by the hand, conducted him to a chair, and put a cushion under his feet; in fact, he might have been my grandfather, whom I could not have treated better. At table I placed him on my right. But,” adds the Duchess, “my enchantment was of short duration. He talked of nothing but his own adventures with appalling loquacity.”
At the age of eighty, a few months before his death, Latude wrote in the most familiar terms to his protector, the Chevalier de Pougens, a member of the Institute: “Now I assure you in the clearest possible words, that if within ten days of the present time, the 11th Messidor, you have not turned up in Paris (the Chevalier was staying at his country estate), I shall start the next day and come to you with the hunger of a giant and the thirst of a cabby, and when I have emptied your cellar and eaten you out of house and home you will see me play the second act of the comedy of Jocrisse[51]; you will see me run off with your plates, and dishes, and tankards, and bottles—empty, you may be sure—and fling all your furniture out of the window!”
On July 20, 1804, Latude compiled one more circular, addressed to the sovereigns of Europe: the kings of Prussia, Sweden, and Denmark, the Archduke Charles, brother of the Emperor; and to the President of the United States. To each of them he sent a copy of his Memoirs, accompanied by the famous scheme for replacing with muskets the pikes with which the sergeants were armed. He explained to each of the sovereigns that as the country he ruled was profiting by this child of his genius, it was only just that he should reap some benefit.
Jean Henri, surnamed Danry, alias Danger, alias Jedor, alias Masers d’Aubrespy, alias De Masers de Latude, died of pneumonia at Paris, on January 1, 1805, aged eighty years.