Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2

by H. Sutherland Edwards

Criminal lunatics, condemned by a verdict, or dangerous ones, certified as such, are kept apart in a building called La Sureté. Within this sinister rotunda the patients are kept in cells, and subjected night and day to the strictest surveillance. The ordinary occupation of these dangerous lunatics is the harmless one of cutting out artificial flowers. Their occasional fits of violence are dealt with only by the application of the strait-jacket.

Many of the officials at Bicêtre look upon the place not only as a home, but as a native land. Born at Bicêtre of parents who were preceded at the same institution by their own parents, the functionaries form a sort of official dynasty. Bicêtre has had its celebrities, its dramas, its memorable events. In legendary times the hill-side of Gentilly was haunted by Wehr-wolves, and the wizards of the neighbourhood held sabbath there. Interesting anecdotes have been told about the captivity of Salomon de Caux in the dungeons of Bicêtre, and the visit of Marion Delorme to the inventor, supposed by many of his countrymen to have constructed the first steam engine. At the time, however, of Salomon de Caux (1580-1630) Bicêtre was a magnificent country house, and neither a prison nor an asylum. It is certain, on the other hand, that this establishment has reckoned among its prisoners or its patients Latude, the unhappy victim of the hatred of Mme. de Pompadour, who, after escaping three times from Vincennes and the Bastille, was three times re-arrested, and finally delivered, after thirty-five years of captivity, by the courageous perseverance of Mme. Legros.

The pathetic story of Latude might be told in connection with more than one of the Paris prisons, mixed establishments, and lunatic asylums; for he was confined successively in the Bastille, the Castle of Vincennes, at Charenton, and, finally, at Bicêtre. With a genius for escaping from imprisonment, and an equal aptitude for getting recaptured, this able, energetic, yet light-minded, and, in sum, most unhappy man, provoked his first incarceration by a too ingenious device which he adopted with the view of securing the favour of Mme. de Pompadour, the all-powerful favourite of Louis XV. He was a lieutenant in the army when the idea occurred to him of obtaining promotion by[{215}] putting himself forward as saviour of Mme. de Pompadour’s life. Sending her a collection of explosive toys, combined so as to form a sham infernal machine, he at the same time warned her not to open any parcel that might be addressed to her, since it had come to his knowledge that a case was being forwarded, which, on removal of the lid, would violently explode. “The gentleman knows too much,” thought Mme. de Pompadour; and she communicated her reflection to the Lieutenant of Police, who, sending for Latude, questioned him, and after convicting him out of his own mouth of the imposition he had practised, sent him to the Bastille.

Transferred a few months later to the Castle of Vincennes, he succeeded on the 25th of June, 1750, in making his escape, and in this very original manner. Watching until he found one of the prison gates open, he ran out and, breathless as he was, asked every sentinel he passed whether he had seen the Abbé de Saint Sauveur, whose ministrations were needed for a dying prisoner. Taking him for one of the officials of the establishment, the sentinels allowed him to hurry on—allowed him, that is to say, to make his escape. Latude was unable to profit by his liberty. Convinced that Mme. de Pompadour would pardon him his thoughtless act, he wrote her a letter of regret and appeal, related to her his escape, and confided to her his place of concealment. But the selfish marchioness could not forget that he had caused her a moment’s fright. She sent his letter to the Lieutenant of Police, and the poor man was once more thrown into the Bastille, with orders that he was to be strictly watched. One day, however, the governor took pity on him, and to render his captivity less rigorous gave him a companion. This companion was another young man who, strangely enough, had himself given offence to the all-powerful marchioness by an epigram of which he had been proved to be the author. His name was D’Aligre; and the two prisoners, both indebted for their captivity to the same tyrannical woman, made common cause and became fast friends. Their first thought was naturally to escape from the Bastille; and the project having once been formed, it was easier for two persons to carry it out than for only one. The preparations for their escape occupied them not less than two years. From time to time they cut off faggots from the blocks of wood furnished to them as fuel, and at the same time tore strips from their shirts and their bed-linen. The linen was tied and twisted into a knotted rope, more than a hundred yards long. With the wood they made a ladder to aid them, when they had descended into the moat, in getting up the parapet on the other side. All the preparations having been finished, the two prisoners chose for their escape a dark wintry night, when there was but little chance of their movements being observed. They began by climbing the chimney, one after the other. Then having fastened the rope, they one after the other slid down, till, excited, exhausted, and with bleeding hands, they reached the moat in safety. The wooden ladder enabled them, as their next step, to get over the parapet, which brought them into the governor’s garden. The wall which surrounded it was too high to climb, and they had no second ladder with which to escalade it. Fortunately, in view of some difficulty of this kind, they had provided themselves with a strong wooden stick, and this they made use of for picking out the mortar, loosening the bricks, and ultimately making a hole sufficiently large for them to crawl through. During this laborious and dangerous work, when the very noise they were making might at any moment cause their discovery, day broke, and they had just time to force themselves through the aperture they had made, when there were already signs of movement within the fortress. Latude and his companion had just taken refuge in one of the narrow streets surrounding the Bastille when the alarm-bell sounded. Their flight had been discovered. D’Aligre, disguised as a peasant, had no difficulty in passing the frontier. He was arrested at Brussels. Latude, informed of the capture of his friend, changed his route, but was equally unfortunate. Just when he was on the point of taking ship for India the police seized him at Amsterdam. He was brought back to the Bastille.

This time he was cast into a dungeon which looked out on to the moat, whose fetid vapours had a very injurious effect upon his health. To occupy his time and divert his thoughts, the unhappy prisoner undertook the taming of rats, and having from the branch of a bulrush made a primitive flute or flageolet, he played tunes upon it, an attention to which the little animals are said to have been by no means insensible. With marvellous patience and ingenuity, Latude now made tablets with the crumb of his bread, and wrote upon them with his blood. He had conceived certain plans of financial reform and of much-needed amelioration in various departments of state, and these[{216}] he noted down as best he could by the difficult and painful means just mentioned. Finding how he was occupied, the governor was seized with compassion, and in his sympathy supplied the patient, intelligent prisoner with pen, ink, and paper. Latude now wrote day and night on all kinds of political and financial subjects. His suggestions were transmitted to the different ministers, less in the hope that they would be adopted than that their exposure would draw attention to the writer’s wretched state. One day Latude succeeded in getting a letter into the hands of Madame de Pompadour. It was in these words:—“On the 25th of this month of September, 1760, I shall have had 100,000 hours of suffering.” He thought for a moment that this pathetic utterance might restore him to liberty. But he had still 200,000 hours to count.

THE VILLAGE, SALPÊTRIÈRE.

Permission was now given to him to walk on the terrace of the tower. He succeeded in awakening the interest of two young laundresses whose garret-windows looked out upon the walls of the Bastille; and one fine day in April, 1764, these girls, by means of large letters traced on a strip of paper, informed him that the woman who had persecuted him was dead. In his usual impulsive way, Latude now wrote to the Lieutenant of Police, telling him that he had heard of Mme. de Pompadour’s death, and that he trusted there was now some chance, after such prolonged tortures, of his being set at liberty. By way of reply, the lieutenant wished to know how he (Latude), of all the prisoners, was the only one that the news had reached. Determined not to compromise his kind-hearted informants, Latude refused to explain, upon which the lieutenant ordered that he should be watched more closely than ever. He was now put back in the dungeon, but soon afterwards, without any reason being assigned, was transferred to Vincennes. There a certain liberty was allowed him. Among other privileges he was permitted to walk in the garden, by which he soon profited to make his escape. The young laundress gave him asylum, and he now, with his unvarying imprudence, wrote to the Lieutenant of Police to request an audience. M. de Sartines took no notice of the application, except to have his correspondent arrested and taken back to Vincennes.

Latude now passed ten continuous years in prison. He had long been utterly forgotten when the minister Malesherbes, making a scrupulous inspection of the state prisons, saw him, heard the tale of his woes, and promised to do him justice. Circumvented, however, by the Lieutenant of Police, who represented Latude as a dangerous lunatic, he, with the best intentions, ordered the poor wretch to be removed to Charenton. This was still further to aggravate the captive’s condition, for Charenton was by several degrees worse than Vincennes. Madmen were then treated in the cruellest fashion, confined in narrow cells, and fed on a disgusting diet. Allowed a little more freedom than the other inmates, he was shocked to find, in a fetid little dungeon, loaded with chains and mercilessly beaten by the warders, his old companion D’Aligre, whose reason had not been able to survive his misfortunes, who scarcely recognised his friend, and who died shortly afterwards.[{217}]