“Are you asking for me?” said Mademoiselle Marsilière, when she approached the poor wounded creature. “Yes, mademoiselle; save me—for mercy’s sake help me. Take me to some place where I may die, so that no one may witness my sufferings.”
“But Mademoiselle Marsilière replied that I should endanger her safety as well as my own. ‘I must go,’ she said, ‘before any one sees me, or I shall be put in prison myself.’
“I was wounded to the heart at this treatment from a co-religionist, and I asked her if she had the courage to leave me in this condition. ‘Help me, at least,’ I said, ‘to crawl behind this wall, so that I may not be seen by the passers-by.’ ”
But neither the prayers nor the sufferings of the unfortunate Blanche had the least effect on the prudent and charitable person whom she had called to her aid. Mademoiselle Marsilière went away, but returned shortly afterwards with the almoner of the religious house of which she was a member, who, without paying the least regard to the distressed condition of the wounded girl, began to address to her a series of questions about her escape and her accomplices. At length two men, seizing her by the shoulders and the feet, carried her to the hospice and laid her down upon the stones in the courtyard.
It is impossible to enter fully here into all the details of the rigorous punishment endured by the poor girl for some months after this. She bore all with her ordinary courage and patience, but the mere recital of such atrocities would give too much pain to the most unfeeling heart.
She was at last allowed to return to her parents, and she recovered her health after her long sufferings, and retired to Switzerland with her family.
JEAN BART AND THE CHEVALIER DE FORBIN.
1689.
Jean Bart escorting a fleet of twenty merchantmen, had hoisted his flag on board the frigate La Raileuse, of twenty-eight guns, having for second in command under him the Chevalier de Forbin, captain of Les Jeux, a frigate of twenty-four. They were attacked by two English ships, one of forty-eight, and the other of forty-two guns, and they nobly sacrificed themselves to save the merchant fleet. Jean Bart lost nearly all his men and was slightly wounded in the head, but Forbin was still more unfortunate, for he received six wounds, and nearly all of his crew perished. They were compelled to surrender, but the fleet of merchantmen was saved, while all the English officers and a great number of the common seamen were killed.
They were taken to Portsmouth, where they of course expected to be treated as prisoners of war on parole, but the governor of the fortress would not even grant them this scanty honour. They were shut up in a sort of inn with barred windows, and sentinels were placed before their door. This wretched treatment naturally made them anxious to escape, and they did not even wait until their wounds were cured before they began to form their plans. An Ostend fisherman, a relation of Jean Bart—as some say, Gaspar Bart, his brother—having put in to Portsmouth, found means to gain admission to the prison, and to confer with his two friends on the project which occupied all their thoughts. On one of his visits he left a file behind him, with which they cut the bars before their windows, hiding the marks by covering them with pieces of moistened bread and soot.