The marquis again and again implored aid from the coach window in broken English, but received none; to the watch his keepers said that he was "only a French fellow they had arrested for debt;" to others they said he had been made furious by the bite of a mad dog, and they were going to dip him in salt water at Gravesend. Thus his entreaties were abortive, and at about sunrise he found himself at a lonely place by the side of the river Thames. A cocked pistol was put to his ear, and resistance was vain; he was thrust on board a small vessel, which had been waiting for him in the river, and which, after he was secured below, dropped down with the ebb tide. So well did Souchard, Blasdale, and the Italian take all their measures, that on the night of the 29th the two last-named worthies landed the Marquis at Calais, the gates of which town were opened to admit them long after the usual hour of closing. He was then delivered over as a prisoner of state to the town authorities, who had all been duly communicated with, and probably well fee'd, and by whom he was sent, chained by the neck, in a post-chaise, to his father's house in Paris. The Counsellor, in virtue of his lettre de cachet, now sent his son the Marquis to be immured in the Bastile for life.
"This is the first narrative of the kind which has stained the annals of England," says a print of the time; "and if it be not the last, highly as we boast of giving laws to all Europe, we shall be little better, in fact, than a pitiful colony exposed to the mercy of every insolent neighbour." Great indignation was excited in London, where a subscription was raised for the purpose of punishing all concerned in this flagrant violation of British law; but nothing was achieved in the end,* though in January, 1754—one year and eight months after the outrage at St. Martin's Lane—our ambassador at the court of Versailles, General the Earl of Albemarle, demanded that both the Marquis and his infamous trepanner, Alexander Blasdale, at that time in Paris, should be delivered up and sent back to London. His request was never complied with, and for fourteen years the luckless Marquis was allowed to languish in the Bastile.
* "We are told that a foreign nobleman is already in custody of a messenger for this offence, and no person is permitted to have access to him, neither is he allowed the use of pen, ink, or paper."—Gentleman's Magazine, 1752. Very probably this "foreign nobleman" was the Baron Dages de Souchard.
He and his story were soon forgotten, and nothing more was heard of him, until some of the London papers of July 14, 1764, contained the following paragraph: "The Marquis de Fratteaux, that French gentleman who was some years ago forcibly carried off from England to France and confined in the Bastile, is now at liberty on his estate at Fratteaux; for when his brother, M. Bertin de Bourdeille, was made Intendant of Lyons, he obtained his liberty, on giving his word of honour to remain on his estate at Fratteaux, and never to go above six miles from it without leave from his father, with whom he had been at great variance, which was the occasion of his leaving France. Two months after his arrival at Fratteaux his father went to see him, and he had permission to return the visit at Bourdeille. He has kept his word of honour strictly, and lives at present in cordiality with the whole family."
Broken in health and spirit by all he had undergone, this unfortunate victim of a family feud and an unnatural hatred, died soon afterwards, and thus the wishes of his father were accomplished.
SOCIVISCA:
THE STORY OF A GREEK OUTLAW.
In the year 1688, that district of Western Turkey named Montenegro—the ancient Illyria—placed itself under the protection of the Venetian republic, which was then governed by the doge Francisco Morosini, a famous soldier, who took the castle of the Dardanelles from the Turks, together with Lepanto and several other places.
For a time after this, its inhabitants, those half-Greek and half-Slavonian mountaineers, with the people of Bosnia, enjoyed comparative peace; but by the treaty concluded at Passarowitz in July, 1718, between Charles VI. (last Count of Hapsburg) and the Porte, they were surrendered to the tender mercies of the Turks, and became subject to all the exactions of those grasping, ignorant, and impracticable conquerors.