"I heard all about you, sir, before I came here," he said. "I was secretary to M. Chamillart, the minister, and you were often talked of at the bureau. I told M. Chamillart that if you could turn iron into gold, it was a pity you were not appointed manager of the iron mines. But it is never too late to turn one's talents to account, monsieur le marquis, and as a magician of the first water you shall effect our escape."
The achievements of the noble wizard came short of this end, but they were far from contemptible. He took surreptitious impressions in wax of the keys dangling from the very belt of the warder who visited them, and manufactured a choice set of false ones, which gave the two prisoners the range of the dungeon. There was no night watch within the tower, and when the warders had withdrawn after the prisoners' supper-hour, Du Puits and the Marquis ran up and down the stairs, and from hall to hall, called on the other prisoners in their cells, and made some agreeable acquaintances, including that of a pretty and charming young sorceress. Trying a new lock one night, they found themselves in the governor's pantry—after this, some rollicking supper parties. The feasts were organised nightly in one cell or another, Du Puits and the Marquis furnishing the table from the ample larder of the governor. Healths were being drunk one night, when the door was rudely opened, and the guests found themselves covered by the muskets of the guard. An unamiable prisoner whose company they had declined had exposed the gay conspiracy, and there were no more supper parties.
The last years of Vincennes as a State prison have little of the interest either of romance or of tragedy. Its fate in this respect was settled by Mirabeau's lettres de cachet. Vincennes was the only prison of which he had directly exposed the callous and cruel régime, and the ministry thought well to close it, as a small concession to the rising wrath of the populace. In 1784, accordingly, Vincennes was struck off the list of the State prisons of France. A singular and oddly ludicrous fate came upon it in the following year, when it was transformed into a sort of charitable bakery under the patronage of Louis XVI.! The cachot in which the Prévôt de Beaumont had lain hungry for eighteen months, and for three days without food, was stored with cheap loaves for the working people of Paris. A little later, the dungeon was a manufactory of arms for the King's troops. After the destruction of the Bastille, Vincennes was attacked by the mob, but Lafayette and his troops saved it from their hands. Under the Republic it was used for a time as a prison for women. The wretched fate of the Duc d'Enghien, Napoleon's chief captive in this fortress, has been told; and there is only to add that the last prisoners who passed within the walls of Vincennes were MM. de Peyronnet, de Guernon Ranville, de Polignac, and Chantelauze, the four ministers of Charles X. whose part in the "Revolution of July" belongs to the history of our own times. Brave old General Daumesnil, "Old Wooden-Leg," who died August 17, 1832, was the last governor of the Dungeon of Vincennes.
CHAPTER IV.
THE GREAT AND LITTLE CHÂTELET, AND THE FORT-L'ÉVÊQUE.
Louis VI., called le Gros, whose reign was from 1108 to 1137, did much to enlarge and to embellish the mean and narrow Paris of his day. He built churches and schools both in the Cité and beyond the river, and thanks to the lectures of Abelard his schools were famous. He built a wall around the suburbs, and for the further defence of the Cité he set up the two fortresses called Le Grand and Le Petit Châtelet, "at the extremities of the bridge which united the Cité with the opposite bank."
Here was established the court of municipal justice, and here the Provost of Paris had his residence. The prison of the Châtelet became one of the most celebrated in Paris, and prison and fortress were not completely demolished until 1802.