The Road to Paris: A Story of Adventure

by Robert Neilson Stephens

But Dick, who lived in an age when young men of talent did not set upon leisure the value they give it in this overworking period, pined for the open. He began to grudge the time lost in captivity, and the fear grew on him that he was doomed indeed to forgetfulness. Summer came and went. The flowers in the elevated garden withered. Autumn winds howled around the towers, and winter snow was lodged on the lofty platforms. The beginning of December brought Dick, through the lieutenant of the Bastile garrison, the news that in America the British had taken Philadelphia, but that their Northern army, under Burgoyne, had surrendered at Saratoga, and that the glorious victory had been largely won by his own old commanders, Arnold and Morgan. Such tidings made Dick eager to be out in the world. At night he would fall asleep, gazing at the dying embers in his fireplace, and dream of broad fields, boundless stretches of varied country over which he could speed with bird-like swiftness, barely touching the ground with his feet. At last he resolved to uncage himself.

The aperture that served as his cell window was defended by iron bars an inch thick, so crossing one another that each open space was but two inches square. There were three such gratings. As Dick was high up in the tower, the outer end of this aperture was at a great distance from the earth. Dick turned from this opening in despair, put out his fire, stooped into the fireplace, and examined the interior of the chimney. It was not very far from the bottom to the top, but the way was guarded by several iron bars and spikes, securely fixed in hard cement. They had the look of being less difficult to unfasten than the bars in the window seemed. Dick resolved to attack the obstructions in the chimney.

There was no iron in his cell, his scanty furniture being joined by wooden pegs. The stone of his cell floor was so soft that the first piece of it he succeeded in detaching crumbled like plaster against the hard cement of the chimney. What was he to do for an instrument with which to scrape free the iron bars from the cement in which they were set? His lucky star sent him an inspiration in the shape of a toothache.

By patiently and painfully forcing aside his gum with a chip of fire-wood, and by strong exertions of thumb and forefinger, he succeeded in extracting the tooth after several hours' excruciating pain and labor. With the tooth itself he hollowed out of a fagot's end a place in which afterward to set its root, which he then fastened securely in this handle by means of extemporized wooden wedges. He thus had a scraper, so adjusted that he could apply his full strength in using it. This he hid in his bed.

He then unravelled underclothing, handkerchiefs, and cravat, and twisted the threads into a rope, to which he tied, at intervals of one foot, small wooden bars to serve as hand-holds and foot-rests. All this work was done at times when he was least likely to be visited by any official or attendant of the prison.

He tied a heavy fagot, six inches long, to the end of his rope, and by dint of much practice he finally managed to throw this end up the chimney and over one of the iron bars therein. He then swung his rope about until it was so entangled with the suspended fagot as to remain fast to the bar when he put his weight on it. Armed with his scraper, he then mounted by the rope to the iron bar, undid and lowered the rope's end that had the fagot, thus giving himself a double rope to cling to, and began work with the scraper on the cement that held one of the other bars than that over which the rope was thrown. Habit had taught him to see in the dimmest light, and his fingers to find their way in total darkness. To his joy he soon found that the hard enamel of his tooth had effect on the surface of the cement.

With what difficulty and pain he worked, supported by his fragile rope ladder, compelled to brace himself against the sides of the chimney, and often to find relief from his cramped position by hanging to the iron bar, is hardly to be imagined. When he desisted he had to descend by the double rope, then let go of one end and draw the rope by the other end over the bar, for the rope also had to be hidden in his bed when not in use.

When not working in the chimney, Dick made additional rope, for that purpose unravelling all of his clothing and bedding that would not be missed by any who might enter his cell. He continued to borrow books, and as he now asked for such as he was already acquainted with,—either French works that he knew through translation, or French versions of English works,—he could talk so well of their contents that the officers he occasionally met supposed him to pass all his time in reading. So apparent was his seeming contentment, that no one suspected him of desiring to escape. But that desire increased daily. It was only stimulated by the news, in February, that France had recognized the independence of his country and formed an alliance with it.

In less than eight months after setting to work, he had opened a way through the chimney. So slender was he, and so supple, that he found he had not to remove all the bars, for he could wriggle between some of them and the chimney wall. Those that he did unfasten he replaced loosely in position after each period of work. He now estimated that he had nearly two hundred feet of rope, and he had been told correctly that the towers of the Bastile were nearly two hundred feet high. By the first of August, 1778, all was ready; and Dick waited only for a dark and rainy night.

Such a night came on Wednesday, August 5th. Dick had walked in the court that afternoon, under a steady downpour of the kind that lasts twenty-four hours or more, and he felt assured of a black sky for the night. He attached his rope in the usual manner, ascended the chimney, removed the loosely replaced iron bars, one by one, climbed by the rope to the highest of the bars he had left fast, squeezed through between that bar and the chimney wall, attached the rope's end to his waist, and then laboriously worked his way up the rest of the chimney with arms and legs, rubbing the skin off elbows and knees in doing so. At last he emerged from the top of the chimney, and, after resting a minute, dropped on the flat roof of the tower.