“But the cord—” said he simply.
“Exactly,” I said; “the cord's where we left it snugly tied with a bowling knot to the chimney of our block, and I'm an ass.”
“Oh, poor Paul!” said the priest in a prostration at this divulgence of our error. “I'm the millstone on your neck, for had I not parleyed at the other end of the cord when you had descended, the necessity for it would never have escaped your mind. I gave you fair warning, lad, 'twas a quixotic imbecility to burden yourself with me. And are we really at a stand? God! look at Paris. Had I not seen these lights I had not cared for myself a straw, but, oh lord! lad, they are so pleasant and so close! Why will the world sleep when two unhappy wretches die for want of a little bit of hemp?”
“You are not to blame,” said I, “one rope was little use to us in any case. But anyhow I do not desire to die of a little bit of hemp if I can arrange it better.” And I began hurriedly to scour up and down the palisade like a trapped mouse. It extended for about a hundred yards, ending at one side against the walls of a gate-house or lodge; on the other side it concluded at the wall of the chapel. It had no break in all its expanse, and so there was nothing left for us to do but to go back the way we had come, obliterate the signs of our attempt and find our cells again. We went, be sure, with heavy hearts, again ventured into the chapel, climbed the stairs, went through the ceiling, and stopped a little among the rafters to rest his reverence who was finding these manoeuvres too much for his weighty body. While he sat regaining sufficient strength to resume his crawling on rimey tiles I made a search of the loft we were in and found it extended to the gable end of the chapel, but nothing more for my trouble beyond part of a hanging chain that came through the roof and passed through the ceiling. I had almost missed it in the darkness, and even when I touched it my first thought was to leave it alone. But I took a second thought and tried the lower end, which came up as I hauled, yard upon yard, until I had the end of it, finished with a bell-ringer's hempen grip, in my hands. Here was a discovery if bell-pulls had been made of rope throughout in Bicêtre prison! But a chain with an end to a bell was not a thing to be easily borrowed.
I went back to where Father Hamilton was seated on the rafters, and told him my discovery.
“A bell,” said he. “Faith! I never liked them. Pestilent inventions of the enemy, that suggested duties to be done and the fleeting hours. But a bell-rope implies a belfry on the roof and a bell in it, and the chain that may reach the ground within the building may reach the same desirable place without the same.”
“That's very true,” said I, struck with the thing. And straight got through the trap and out upon the roof again. Father Hamilton puffed after me and in a little we came upon a structure like a dovecot at the very gable-end. “The right time to harry a nest is at night,” said I, “for then you get all that's in it.” And I started to pull up the chain that was fastened to the bell.
I lowered behemoth with infinite exertion till he reached the ground outside the prison grounds in safety, wrapped the clapper of the bell in my waistcoat, and descended hand over hand after him.
We were on the side of a broad road that dipped down the hill into a little village. Between us and the village street, across which hung a swinging lamp, there mounted slowly a carriage with a pair of horses.
“Bernard!” I cried, running up to it, and found it was the Swiss in the very article of waiting for us, and he speedily drove us into Paris.