“We had been rowing all the time, and we were very tired when we reached the open sea. We relieved one another at nightfall, and the master of the vessel and I tried to make out our way with the aid of a small compass, illumined by the feeble rays of a lantern. While thus engaged I was so overpowered with fatigue that I fell asleep; but I was soon awakened by the noise of a terrible gust of wind, which threw the little vessel on her side, and filled her with water in an instant. By a quick movement of the helm I was fortunate enough to avoid the threatened shipwreck—a disaster that must have proved fatal, as we were more than fifteen leagues from land. My companions, who were also asleep, were quite as suddenly awakened as myself by the waves beating about their heads. Our biscuit and our beer were quite spoiled by the seawater, and it took us a long while to bale out the water with our hats. At about eight o’clock on the following day we landed at a spot two leagues from Tréguier, on the coast of Brittany.”
THE ABBÉ COUNT DE BUCQUOY.
1700-1702.
The Count de Bucquoy, who was originally an officer in the army, had become, under the combined influence of the Jesuits and the monks of La Trappe, a religious enthusiast, but had afterwards quarrelled with his priestly friends. He was of an active mind, and, if we may believe his own account of himself, he was too much addicted to the advocacy of advanced ideas. This, and his hostility to Louis XIV., caused him to be arrested at Sens, on a charge of having been heard to mutter disaffection at an inn. While he was being taken to Paris he tried to escape, but without success; and his account of the attempt shows that he did not then possess the skill in conducting that class of enterprises which he afterwards acquired.
He was sent to For-l’Évêque; and from the very first day of his imprisonment he began to consider how he could recover his liberty. He remembered that one of the body-guard, who had been imprisoned in the same place, had nearly made his escape through a window of a loft, which looked out upon one of the quays, then called the Valley of Misery, and that he had failed, owing solely to his terror at the sight of the precipice on which his prison was built.
Bucquoy, however, made up his mind to repeat this attempt. He tried at first to form a clear idea of the plan of this terrible place. He discovered that the loft in question served as a kind of antechamber to his small cell, and that it was, at the same time, the lumber-room of the prison. Wishing to make sure of everything before risking his life, he one day pretended to be ill, and asked to be led upstairs to breathe the air at a small window which over-looked that part of the building. The height from the quay was appalling; and, in addition to that, every one of the numerous window-gratings to which he would have to cling in making his descent was covered with short, sharp spikes. The sight was enough to strike terror into the stoutest heart.
When he had once more been locked up in his cell, he, however, confirmed himself in his resolution to escape through the loft. All that was necessary was to find means to leave the cell unobserved, and to reach a certain part of the antechamber.
To get out without the consent of the gaoler, he would have had to break the door down; but he soon saw that it would be impossible to do this, as he was wholly unprepared with tools, and as the noise of his operations would be certain to alarm his guards. It occurred to him, however, that he might burn away the door; and with this view he obtained permission to cook for himself in his own cell. He asked for a few eggs and some charcoal, and paid liberally for both, in order the more readily to induce the gaoler to supply them. All being ready, and the whole household asleep, he placed the brasier close to the door and fanned the flame until it ignited the ponderous timbers. When he had by this means burnt a hole large enough to admit his body, he passed through, first taking care to extinguish the flames, as it was not his wish to destroy the building. In this operation he was nearly suffocated by the smoke from the smouldering beams. He was without a rope to tie to the window of the loft, but he made a substitute for it by binding together a number of strips of webbing cut from a mattrass which he found among the furniture. He then fastened this band to a bedstead, which he dragged to the window, and, gliding gently down, was fortunate enough to pass the windows without receiving any fatal injury from the spikes, and to reach the quay. It was daybreak, and the market people opening their shops did not fail to observe him, all torn and bloody as he was, for many of the spikes had entered his flesh. But a greater danger threatened him, in the unwelcome attentions of a number of young men, who had only just risen from supper, and who chased him through the streets with drunken cries. A timely shower of rain, however, dispersed them, and he was saved.
In trying to avoid them he made many turns and doubles, and at last found himself at the door of a café, near the Temple, which he entered for the purpose of making some slight changes in his appearance, in case he should meet his tormentors again. His dress, however, began to excite remark among the customers, and fearing he was already known, he hastily paid his reckoning, and went out without knowing what direction to take. He at last took refuge at the house of a relation of one of his servants, to whom he told a plausible story to excuse the negligence of his attire. The woman fetched him some food at his request, but feeling he could not confide in her discretion, he soon left the house to seek a more secure asylum.
After spending some nine months in sending petition after petition from his various hiding-places, he tried to leave the kingdom, but choosing his time badly, was arrested at La Fère and sent to prison. He made two attempts to escape, and failed only by a hair’s breadth in the second, having scaled a wall and swum across a ditch before he was discovered. He was at length taken back to Paris, and imprisoned in the Bastille.