There were certain provinces in the land, however, that did not share in this admiration and that made their protestations known in a variety of forms, either in the guise of religious nonconformity or, more explicitly, in the shape of peasant uprisings, rebellious leagues or outright fronds.
Louis XIV’s revocation of the Edict of Nantes was the final blow delivered against these remaining pockets of resistance. Villars had successfully quashed the uprising of the Cévennes; those Camisards who had survived the general massacre made their way to Germany in small groups, where they joined up with the millions of Protestant exiles who had been forced to emigrate with the wreckage of their fortunes, taking with them their skills in commerce and trade.
Louis XIV’s troops burned the Palatinate, the French Protestants’ place of refuge: « such are the pastimes of princes », as La Fontaine might have quipped. The sun of the grand siècle was still enjoying its own reflection in the ornamental pools of Versailles; but it was noticeably growing paler. Even Mme de Maintenon had ceased to battle against time: her major concern now was to instill religious fervor into the soul of her skeptical consort, whose only response was to present her with the sums he received every day from his Minister of Finances, Chamillart:
Three million in debts! . . . how on earth could Providence ever repay them?
Louis XIV was no ordinary man. It is very likely that he cared deeply for France and its military glory, but his character, combined with his blind nepotism, proved to be his undoing as he advanced in years and became subject to the machinations of his entourage.
Shortly after the battle of Hochstedt, which cost us a hundred leagues of land in Flanders, Archambault de Bucquoy was passing through Morchandgy, a small village in Burgundy, about two leagues away from Sens.
Where was he coming from?... Difficult to determine . . .
Where was he going?... We shall find out later ...
One wheel of his carriage was broken; the village wheelwright said it would take an hour to fix. The count said to his servant: « The only place I see around here is this inn . . . Let me know when the wheelwright has finished.
— It would be safer if the count just waited in his carriage.
— Don’t worry, my man! ... I’ll just pass the time in the inn; I’m sure there’s no danger. »
Archambault de Bucquoy made his way into the kitchen and asked for some soup. — But first he wanted to take a sip of the stock.
The innkeeper bowed to his request. But having found it a bit too salty, Archambault observed: « I see that salt is rather cheap in these parts.
— Not all that cheap, said the innkeeper.
— I imagine that the salt smugglers make it readily available.
— These are not people I know, she said, besides, they wouldn’t dare set foot here . . . His Majesty’s troops would immediately intervene; at any rate, all their bands have been cut to ribbons by the authorities, except for some thirty carters who were marched off to prison in shackles.
— Ah, said Archambault de Bucquoy, so the poor devils ended up getting caught, did they? . . . If they had a man like myself as their leader, their business outlook might be far rosier. »
From the kitchen he made his way into the dining room, where he quaffed down a bottle of excellent burgundy, which wouldn’t have aged well elsewhere at any rate.
Having taken his place at the table, Archambault de Bucquoy was served his soup, — which he continued to find too salty. The denizens of Burgundy, it might be remembered, loathe this particular adjective: ever since the fifteenth century, the vilest insult one could hurl at them was to call them salty Burgundians.
The stranger tried to explain himself.
— All I mean is that you don’t seem to be skimping on salt in this establishment . . . Which goes to prove that it’s not exactly a rare commodity in these parts.
— Right you are, chimed in a man of colossal stature who was drinking with friends at a nearby table and who got up and tapped him on the shoulder. But it takes men with guts to make sure that salt comes cheap around here!
— What’s your name? »
The man did not answer, but a fellow diner said to Archambault de Bucquoy:
« He’s the captain . . .
— My word, he replied, I see I am among a band of brothers . . . So let me speak freely . . . It’s clear you deal in contraband salt . . . Well, bully for you.
— Times are hard, said the captain.
— Well, my brothers! God looks out for those who look after others.
— Sounds like a Huguenot, some of the drinkers whispered to each other.
— The end is upon us, Archambault continued, the old king is on his last legs; his old mistress is running out of steam . . . He has sucked dry all the genius and vigor of France. The major battles these days have been reduced to the spats between Fénelon and Bossuet! The former maintains that “the love of God and of one’s neighbor can be pure and disinterested.” The other that “charity, qua charity, should always be founded on the hope for Eternal Bliss.” These, my brothers, are the burning issues of the day! »
Gales of laughter throughout the inn greeted this particular observation. Archambault lowered his head and gulped down his soup without uttering a further word.
The captain tapped him on the shoulder:
« What is your opinion of the religious ecstasies of Mme Guyon?
— Fénelon thought she was a saint and, despite his initial skepticism, Bossuet is now ready to concede that she is, at the very least, divinely inspired.
— Squire, said the captain, I suspect you of being something of an expert in theology.
— I’m done with all that . . . I’ve decided to become a simple Quietist, especially after having read the following in this book called Contempt for the World: “It profits a man more greatly to cultivate himself in the sight of the Lord than to cultivate the earth, which is as ashes to us.”
— A rule of thumb that a lot of people seem to be following these days, said the captain. Who cultivates the earth anymore? . . . People fight, people hunt, people do a bit of salt smuggling . . . or bring in contraband goods from Germany or England, or sell books that have been banned. People with a bit of money on their hands speculate on ground rents; but as for cultivating the earth, it’s a job for ignoramuses. »
Archambault seized the irony behind these words. « My friends, he said, I find myself here by sheer chance, and yet I feel I am one of you . . . I come from one of those ancient military families who have always feuded with kings and who have always been suspected of rebellious tendencies. I myself am no Protestant, but I am among those who have protested against absolute monarchy and all its abuses of authority . . . My family wanted to make a priest out of me . . . but I threw my frock away and became a free man. How many of you are there anyway?
— Six thousand! said the captain.
— I’ve put in some years of military service myself... I even tried to organize a regiment after having given up the religious life . . . But all the debts of my late uncle crippled the financial resources I had expected from my family . . . M. de Louvois caused us untold anguish!
— My dear sir, said the captain, you don’t seem to have lost your pluck . . . There’s still a chance to make a go of it. — Where will you be staying in Paris?
— With my aunt, the dowager countess de Bucquoy. »
One of the group got up and said to his table companions, « This is the man we have been looking for. » This man was known to be a member of the auxiliary police; he rushed out to find an officer of the constabulary.
At the very moment that Archambault de Bucquoy, forewarned by his servant, was getting back into his carriage, the officer arrived on the scene with six gendarmes and informed him he was under arrest. The company that had been gathered at the inn spilled out onto the road and tried to put a halt to the proceedings. He wanted to use his pistols but the officer now had reinforcements.
The traveler was
placed in his carriage between two officers; the gendarmes followed in the rear. Soon they reached Senlis. The provost judge first questioned all those present in an impartial manner, then said to the traveler:
« You are the abbé de La Bourlie?
— No, your honor.
— You’ve been down in the Cévennes?
— No, your honor.
— You are a disturber of the peace?
— No, your honor.
— I know that, back at that inn, you claimed your name was de Bucquoy; but if you are indeed the abbé de La Bourlie, also known as the marquis de Guiscard, you can go ahead and admit it, for you will receive the same treatment. He got mixed up in the affairs of the Cévennes; you have compromised yourself with the salt smugglers ... Whoever you are, I shall be obliged to have you escorted to the prison of Sens. »
Archambault de Bucquoy found himself there in the company of some thirty salt smugglers who were being tried by the presidial court of Sens; the circuit judge, who had been sent over from Melun for this case, considered his arrest to have been ill-advised and rather unfounded. Nonetheless, he was already facing several charges.
He had been a military man for five years, then had become what was back in those days called a petit maître or man of the world . . . and then « without taking much account of the Christian religion», he embraced the system of belief « claimed by some to be a gentleman’s religion », that is, what used to be termed deism.
After an adventure whose details remain rather sketchy but which would seem to involve affairs of the heart, the count de Bucquoy threw himself into a religious devotion so fervid that it seemed merely the impulse of a moment. He joined the order at La Trappe and vowed to observe its law of silence, so difficult to maintain . . . Eventually he grew tired of this discipline, put his military uniform back on, and left the Trappist monastery without so much as a goodbye.
Back on the road, he quarreled with a man who had insulted him and wounded him with his sword. This stroke of bad luck landed him back in the lap of religion. He became convinced that he should shed his earthly garments and exchange them with those of a pauper and it was at this point that, converted to the doctrines of St. Paul, he founded a community or seminary at Rouen which he directed under the name of Le Mort, that is, The Dead Man. For him, this name symbolized the forgetting of all of life’s sorrows and the desire for eternal rest.
He proved to be extremely eloquent as a teacher, which may well have been the result of his protracted silence among the Trappists. At any rate, hearing of this, the Jesuits wanted to invite him to join their order; but he was afraid that this might too greatly « expose him to society ».
Although some of this previous history may well have caused the officials at Sens to view the abbé de Bucquoy with suspicion, it was his unfortunate luck to have been mistaken for the abbé de La Bourlie, who had been heavily implicated in the Cévennes uprisings.
In addition, the abbé de Bucquoy’s position had been further aggravated by the fact that in his carriage there had been found « books dealing extensively with revolutions, a mask, and a number of caps », not to mention tablets covered with ciphers.
When asked to justify these items, he managed to explain himself quite well, and his case was beginning to look up. But having grown restless during this stay in prison, he took it upon himself to attempt an escape, having persuaded the thirty salt smugglers who were locked up with him to join forces, together with a number of other inmates who had been arrested on petty charges in order to impress them into the regiment of the Count de Tonnerre. Back in those days, all along the highways men were being seized by this kind of levy in order to supply soldiers for the wars of Louis XIV.
The escape plan was soon discovered and the abbé de Bucquoy was accused of having enticed the daughter of the concierge to aid him in his scheme. At two in the morning they entered his jail cell, clapped his hands and feet into irons in a very civil fashion and then stuffed him into a van, escorted by a dozen constables of the watch.
At Montereau, he invited his escort to dine with him and, even though they were keeping a very close eye on him, he managed to get rid of certain compromising documents. The constables paid no great attention to this detail, but while bantering over the dinner table they told him that they dared him to escape.
They put him to bed, chaining one of his feet to the bedpost. They then bedded down in an entryway . . . When he had made sure that they were asleep, the abbé de Bucquoy managed to lift up the canopy of his bed and slipped the chain over the top of the bedpost to which he had been attached. Then he started toward the window, but bumped against the boots of one of the guards, who woke up and started yelling for help.
They chained him up more tightly, put him on the coach from Sens and brought him to the hotel of the Silver Key on the rue de la Mortellerie in Paris. Not being one to bear grudges, he paid for his escorts’ supper.
Now under secure guard, he was escorted by two of the constables to the Fort-l’Évêque, which was located on the quai now known as quai de la Vallée.
There he remained for eight days without being questioned. He was free, however, to walk around the prison yard, where he reflected on just how one might escape from this place.
Upon arriving, he had noticed that the façade of the Fort-l’Évêque featured a series of grated windows reaching all the way up to the attics and that these grates could easily serve as ladders, except for the spaces formed by the gaps between floors.
After his official questioning, in the course of which he proved that he was not the abbé de La Bourlie but indeed the abbé de Bucquoy, and after having let it be known that « he was nonetheless in a position to rely on the influence of some very prominent personages », they no longer kept him under close watch and he was allowed to roam the corridors of the prison unsupervised.
Since he still had some gold coins on him, the jailer allowed him to go up into the attic area during the evening in order to get the fresh air he said was indispensable to his health. During the day, he passed his time twisting the linen of his bed sheets and towels into ropes and one evening, pretending absent-mindedness, he tricked them into forgetting all about him as he wandered through one of the highest corridors.
It was no great affair to force the attic door and throw the mansard window open. When he cast his eyes down onto the quai de la Vallée (then known as the Vallée de la Misère), he gave a start, frightened at the sight of all these moonlit branches covered with spikes and wire entanglements and other obstacles which, he said « created the most fearsome spectacle . . . it was as if one were looking at a forest bristling with spears. »
Nonetheless, in the middle of night, when the sounds of the city had died down and he could no longer hear the patrols passing by, the abbé de Bucquoy cast his ropes over the edge of the roof and, despite all the spikes along the window grates, managed to slide down safely onto the pavement of the quai de la Valléé . . .
II. OTHER ESCAPES
We have not gone into all the details of the abbé de Bucquoy’s escape from Fort-l’Évêque for fear of interrupting our principal narrative. Once he had come up with his plan of escape, — namely, to slip out through one of the mansard windows in the attic, — he realized that the door that led to the gables had a lock on it. He had no tools on him, so he decided to burn down the door. His keeper had allowed him to cook in his room and had sold him some eggs . . . i.e. charcoal and a tinder box.
It was by means of these that he set fire to the door, wanting simply to burn a hole in it large enough to allow him to squeeze through. But the flames shot up and threatened to set fire to the roof timbers; luckily he was able to find a bucket of water to extinguish them but the smoke nearly asphyxiated him and the fire singed much of his clothing.
We have thought it fitting to mention these details in order to explain what happened to him once he set foot on the quai de la Vallée. As he lowered himself down the rope, the spikes on the window grate
s and the wire entanglements ripped his already charred clothing to shreds, so that he presented quite a sight to the various shopkeepers who were opening for business at the break of day. But nobody breathed a word, — except for a bunch of street urchins who scampered after him, pursuing him with hoots, before a sudden downpour scattered them.
Thanks to the distraction of this rain shower, which also kept the sentries in their boxes, the abbé was able to cross the Pont-Neuf, make his way to the Saint-Eustache quarter, and finally arrive in the neighborhood of the Temple, where he found a tavern that was open.
The sorry state of his clothing, to which he had not yet paid much attention, provoked a certain amount of merriment; he said nothing, paid for his fare, and went looking for a safe hideout. It would not have been a good idea to hole up at the home of his aunt, the dowager countess of Bucquoy, but he remembered that one of his servants’relatives lived at the Enfant-Jésus near the Madelonnets.
The abbé arrived at this woman’s house at an early hour, telling her that he had just gotten into town from the provinces and that, while passing through the forest of Bondy, he had been attacked by robbers, — which explained his sorry state. She kept him there all day and cooked him up some food. Toward evening, he sensed she was casting him suspicious glances, which led him to decide to look for a safer hideout . . . He was on good terms with a number of those noble-minded persons who frequented the salon of Ninon de Lenclos, who was over eighty years old at the time and still had her share of lovers, despite what Mme de Sévigné claims in her letters. The great houses of the Marais provided the last remaining asylum for those townspeople and members of Parliament who formed the opposition to the king. A few aristocrats, the last remnants of the Fronde, were occasionally to be seen in these ancient homes whose deserted buildings nostalgically recalled the days when the counselors of the Grande Chambre and of the Hôtel des Tournelles used to stride through the crowds in their red robes, saluted and applauded as if they were the Roman senators of the party of the people.