One of the most celebrated prisoners of Vincennes in the eighteenth century was Masères de La Tude, who expiated a folly by twenty years of cruel captivity, spent partly here and partly in the Bastille. Ingenious, clever, indefatigable, and patient, the schemes he contrived to effect an escape, and to communicate with his neighbours in misfortune, would fill a volume. Nevertheless, although Madame de Pompadour, the person he had offended, was dead, he would probably have never recovered his liberty but for a lucky breeze of wind, which blew a piece of paper, on which he had described his sufferings, into the lap of an honest woman called Legros, who kept a shop in Paris. The good soul was so touched by the narrative, that, by dint of perseverance and money, she obtained the release of her protégé in 1784.
Not far from the chamber inhabited by La Tude was that of the unhappy Prévôt de Beaumont, who was guilty of the unpardonable rashness of denouncing the famous Pacte de Famine. 'I accused De Sartines,' says he in his memoir published after the Revolution, 'who was attorney-general under Louis XV., of occasioning the famines that desolated France for three years; and to punish me, he inflicted on me, for fifteen years, sufferings to which the martyrology of the saints can present no parallel. Torn from my family and friends, buried alive in a dismal dungeon, chained to the wall, deprived of light and air, perishing of hunger and cold, nearly naked, I endured horrors so repugnant to nature, that my surviving to relate them is nothing less than a miracle!'
Not only did the dire injustice of arbitrary will in those days tyrannise thus cruelly over men's bodies, but it did not scruple to destroy their minds. When a prisoner of state was considered dangerous from his courage, his patience, or his power of endurance, it was no uncommon thing to put him in a strait waistcoat, and carry him to Bicêtre. Here he was shut up in a cage, and bled, under pretext of curing him, till he died, or went really as mad as they said he was. Few survived and withstood this treatment; but amongst those who did was the Prévôt de Beaumont. He was found at Bicêtre by Mirabeau and his colleagues when they visited the hospital for the purpose of releasing those who had been unjustly confined there; on which occasion the infamies discovered are said to have been terrific. Many of the prisons in France are distinguished by the names of saints, which arises from the circumstance of their having been formerly religious houses. St Pelagie is the place to which persons were latterly sent for political offences: editors of newspapers, caricaturists, and people who would not be satisfied with things as they are, formed a considerable portion of its population.
At the period of the First Revolution, the keeper of this prison was a man named Bouchotte, who, uninfected by the rage of cruelty that seemed to have seized on the population of Paris, distinguished himself by his courageous humanity. When the massacres of September were being perpetrated, and the furious mob were attacking all the jails, and slaughtering the prisoners, the jailors, far from making any resistance, generally threw wide their gates with a hearty welcome; but when the assassins reached St Pelagie, they found the house apparently abandoned; the gates were closed, all was silent within, and none answered to their summons. At length, having obtained implements, and forced an entrance, they found Bouchotte and his wife fast bound with cords. 'You are too late, citizens!' said Bouchotte; 'the prisoners, hearing of your approach, became desperate, and revolted. After serving us as you see, they have all made their escape!' Fortunately the mob was deceived; nor was it known till long afterwards that the whole scene was a scheme of this worthy man's to save the lives of the intended victims.
An American gentleman of the name of Swan resided for twenty years in this prison; for we can scarcely say he was confined there, since he might have been restored to liberty had he desired it. After a long suit with a Frenchman, in which the American was cast, he preferred going to jail to paying a demand he considered unjust. Every year his creditor paid him a visit, in hopes of finding him less obstinate; and the employés of the prison, as well as his fellow-captives, by all of whom he was exceedingly beloved, would intreat him to give way; but he only smiled, and bowing to his disappointed visitor, bade him adieu till that time next year. The love the prisoners bore him was well earned by innumerable acts of kindness and beneficence. He not only gave bread to the poorer debtors, but he restored many to liberty by satisfying the demands of their creditors. Mr Swan died at St Pelagie in 1830.
Clichy is also a prison for debtors, where a cell is shown which was for two years inhabited by a man of forty years of age, who had been sent there for a very singular sort of debt—namely, the money he owed for the wet nurse's milk which he had imbibed while an infant, the amount of the debt at the period of his incarceration having accumulated to twelve thousand francs!
A law formerly prevailed in France, that if a debtor escaped, the keeper became responsible for his debt. Of course this arrangement rendered evasion extremely difficult; nevertheless, to revenge some real or fancied injustice, a singular trick was played by a debtor, which greatly amused the Parisians. A certain Monsieur L—— having contrived to escape, presented himself one evening at the house of his astonished creditor.
'You see,' said he, 'I am free. You may seize me, certainly, and send me back to jail, but I can never pay you; whereas, if you will give me money enough to escape out of the country, you can claim your debt of the keeper who can.'
The creditor, who does not seem to have been very scrupulous, consented to this arrangement, on condition that he himself saw Monsieur L—— off by the diligence; which having done, and feeling himself safe, he on the following morning knocked at the gate of Clichy, and asked the keeper if he remembered him.
'Certainly,' said the functionary; 'you are the creditor of Monsieur L——.'