At which point the abbé proceeded to produce, — from where, nobody knew, — a great amount of gold and jewelry: suddenly his plan seemed to become far more feasible. It was decided to rip bed sheets into strips in order to create rope and to use the metal sawhorses supporting the beds and nails from the fireplace to fashion iron hooks.
Things were proceeding quite nicely when Corbé burst onto the scene with soldiers, announcing that he was wise to their plans. One of the prisoners had betrayed them . . . none other than the abbé Papasaredo. He had hoped to obtain a pardon by acting as an informant; but the only advantage he gained in the end was to be treated a bit more leniently for a short period of time.
All the others were thrown into the hole; the abbé de Bucquoy was dispatched to the lowest dungeon of all.
V. FURTHER ESCAPE PLANS
It would be pointless to underscore how unpleasant the abbé comte de Bucquoy found life in this dungeon. After several days of penitence, he resorted to a strategem that had served him well on a number of previous occasions: he decided to play the invalid. The turnkey who was looking after him became quite alarmed at his condition, which alternated between a kind of feverish exaltation and a deep depression which rendered him as motionless as a corpse. He managed to fake this condition so well that the Bastille medical staff had great difficulty recognizing any signs of life in him and declared that his illness was degenerating into a state of complete paralysis. After he had undergone this examination, he pretended that half of his body was fully paralyzed and that he could only move one side of it.
Corbé came to see him and said:
« We’ll have you moved elsewhere. But see where your escape plans have gotten you?
— Escape plans! exclaimed the abbé. Who possibly could hope to escape from the Bastille? Has anybody ever succeeded?
— Never! Hugues Aubriot, who had completed the construction of this fortress before being locked up in it himself, only managed to get free because of the revolution of the Maillotins. He’s the only person who has left this place against the wishes of the government.
— My Lord! said the abbé, were it not for this illness that has struck me down, I would have nothing to complain about . . . except for these toads that leave tracks of slime on my face when they traverse it during my sleep.
— You see what is gained by rebellion.
— On the other hand, I am finding some consolation in educating the rats down here: I give them the king’s bread which my poor state of health does not allow me to eat . . . Let me show you how intelligent they are. »
And he called out: « Moricaud? »
A rat scampered out of a crack in the stone wall and came to attention at the abbé’s bedside . . .
Corbé could not help but laugh out loud, and said:
« Let’s find you more appropriate quarters.
— If I had my choice, said the abbé, I’d like to share a room with the baron of Peken. I had just begun converting this Lutheran and now that my spirit is turned toward more spiritual matters because of this malady that God has visited upon me, I would be most happy to finish up the job. »
Under Corbé’s orders the abbé was transported to a room on the second floor of the tower of the Bretaudière where the baron of Peken had already spent several days in the company of an Irishman.
The abbé continued to play the paralytic, even in front of his companion, for the recent events in the tower of the Corner had put him on his guard. The German got along very poorly with the Irishman who soon also got on the abbé’s nerves. The baron de Peken, even more easily irritated, insulted the Irishman so grievously that the matter had to be resolved by a duel.
A pair of scissors was taken apart, the two blades were well sharpened, and the two men commenced the duel in accordance with the rules. The abbé de Bucquoy had initially thought that this was all a joke, but seeing that the situation was heating up and that blood was being shed, he started pounding on the door, hoping to attract the attention of the turnkey.
When questioned about this affair, he declared that it was the Irishman who was at fault, so that the latter was taken away, leaving him alone with the baron. It was at this point that he confided to him that he had come up with a plan of escape that was bound to be far more successful than the previous one: it involved piercing the wall that communicated with the latrines whose malodorous drainpipes in turn led down to the sewers on the rue Saint-Antoine.
They set to work with great determination, eventually breaking through the entire wall . . . But alas the baron of Peken was something of a prattler and a braggart. He had managed to establish communication with the prisoners on the floor above through the passage they had cleared, and soon both of them were conversing with these new and unidentified acquaintances.
The baron mentioned to them that he and his friend were hoping to escape and, whether out of jealousy or out of the desire to curry favor, one of the residents of the upper rooms, a certain Joyeuse, the son of a judge from Cologne, denounced them to Corbé, who in turn informed the governor of their plans.
Bernaville summoned the abbé de Bucquoy to his quarters. The latter, given his paralytic condition, had to be physically carried in; but once there, he engaged in a spirited defense, claiming that the baron of Peken, after several glasses of wine too many, had decided to regale this Joyeuse, who was something of a simpleton, with a number of tall tales. Besides, it would be a crying shame if an unfounded accusation of this sort should mean that he would have to be separated from the baron, whose conversion was coming along so nicely.
The baron corroborated his version of the events and Joyeuse’s accusations were in the end dismissed. Furthermore, the two friends had been tipped off in advance by their turnkey, whom the abbé’s money had transformed into a useful ally and had thus been able to repair the wall in time, so that nobody suspected anything.
The abbé de Bucquoy was placed in another room in the tower of Liberty. He continued his efforts to convert the Lutheran baron of Peken, while at the same time furthering their plans of escape.
He had been quite humiliated to hear from the turnkey just how easily a certain Du Puits had made his exit from the prison of Vincennes using a set of false keys.
This Du Puits had been the secretary of M. de Chamillard and was known as the golden quill because of the excellence of his handwriting. He was no less adept at duplicating keys, which he forged by melting down the tin plates on which his meals were served.
With the keys that he had thus fashioned, this Du Puits used to leave his room at night to pay visits to his fellow prisoners, and even to some of the female inmates, who received him with as much astonishment as largesse.
He finally succeeded in escaping from Vincennes and took refuge in Lyon with a certain Pigeon, his cell-mate. « Never, observes Renneville in his memoirs, never was Doctor Faustus deemed as great a magician as this Du Puits. »
As fate would have it, he was rearrested in Lyon where, in order to come up with quick cash, he had forged a number of official treasury bonds issued in the name the king.
At the Bastille Du Puits had less luck escaping than at Vincennes. He had succeeded in climbing down into a moat where they were mowing weeds and had noticed that when the workers went home in the evening they left the gate open behind them. He therefore hid out near this gate but it still being daytime, a sentry took a shot at him with his harquebus and he was taken back to the Bastille where, after a long illness, he was reduced to limping around with a bracket under his arm.
The end of this story was far from reassuring. Nonetheless, when it came to his own escape plans, the abbé de Bucquoy remained undeterred. He was careful to strip all the bottles he was served of their wicker casings, assuring his turnkey that he needed these to light his fire in the mornings. He spent his days weaving the wicker into ropes, using thread he had extracted from his bed sheets, his towels, and from the canvas cover of his mattress, and being careful to sew all these back up so nothi
ng would be suspected.
For his part, the baron of Peken occupied himself with the fabrication of tools with bits of iron that he picked up here and there, or the odd nail or kitchen utensil. Having heated up all this metal in the fireplace, they then sharpened it on the stoneware pots in which their water was kept.
The wicker ropes were extremely bulky. The abbé de Bucquoy pried up a number of floor tiles and succeeded in creating a hiding place for all this material. One day, however, he dug so deeply under the floor that its joists, which were rotten with age, suddenly collapsed, causing him and the baron of Peken to plummet into the room directly below, which was occupied by a Jesuit priest . . . who, already a bit soft in the head, now went completely out of his wits.
The abbé de Bucquoy and his accomplice escaped with a few minor contusions. The Jesuit priest was shouting for help so frantically that the abbé enjoined him (in Latin) to kindly shut up, while promising to include him in their future escape plans. The Jesuit, feeble of mind as he was, thought that his life was being threatened and bellowed all the louder as a result.
The turnkeys arrived on the scene and the abbé de Bucquoy and the baron in turn started screaming and yelling, complaining to high heaven about the rotten floor that had caused their fall.
Upon being returned to their room, they quickly hid the rope ladders and iron hooks that they had stored under the floor. All was going well until one day a workman arrived, informing them that he had been ordered to create a grate in the door . . . The abbé asked him why this was being undertaken and he replied that the grate would be used to slide in food to the mad Jesuit who was to be soon moved into this cell. As for them, they were going to be transferred to a better room . . . This did not sit well with our two friends, for they had already managed to saw through the window bars and had prepared everything for an imminent escape.
The abbé requested an interview with the governor and informed him that he was most happy with his current quarters; besides, if he were to be separated from the baron of Peken, the latter’s conversion would become impossible, seeing as he had not yet been able to gain the Lutheran’s full confidence . . . But the governor would have none of it: and upon his return the abbé informed the German of their dilemma.
On the abbé’s advice, the latter pretended that the mere threat of changing rooms had rendered him so melancholy that he was being driven to suicide. The baron played his part so well that instead of just shedding a few drops of blood, he opened the veins of his arms and, terrified at the sight of this blood spurting all over the place, the abbé called out for help. The sentries alerted their superiors, and even the governor made a visit to their cell, manifestly moved.
If the governor had displayed this level of sympathy, it was because he had been recently instructed to set the baron free . . . But, to further profit from his prison fees, he had delayed his liberation for as long as possible.
After this adventure, the abbé de Bucquoy was transported not to the dungeons but to one of the top floors of the towers called calottes. Previous prisoners in the room had taken it upon themselves to cover its walls with frightening images and quotations from the Bible that allowed them « to prepare them to meet their maker ».
Other prisoners, less religious than political in inspiration, had written satires of the following ilk on the wall:
Under Fouquet, if the truth be told
We were favored with an Age of Gold;
The Age of Silver followed in its wake
With Colbert at the helm; his policies alas
Caused Pelletier to make many a mistake
And we all lapsed back into the Age of Brass.
But now bereft of money and bread,
The sky has fallen on poor France’s head:
Under Pontchartrain’s greedy reign,
The Age of Iron dawns once again.
Another prisoner had been so bold as to scrawl the following doggerel on the wall:King Louis should not get too sore
About losing Milan, Naples, Sicily,
Spain and Holland in his glorious wars.
After all, he’s got La Maintenon for his whore:
How could a king want anything more?
The abbé was not at all happy to find himself all alone in this octagonal room with its ogival vaults. They offered him the company of a Capuchin called Brandebourg, but the abbé soon complained that this priest put on too many airs and insisted on being treated like royalty. He asked that the governor place him with some decent Protestant lad so that he might devote himself to his conversion. He even mentioned a certain Grandville about whom he had already heard from his previous cellmates.
This Grandville was a very enterprising fellow, less interested in conversion than in making his escape; he proved to be an excellent match for the abbé de Bucquoy.
VI. THE FINAL ESCAPE ATTEMPTS OF THE ABBÉ DE BUCQUOY
The abbé and Grandville set to work on the wall; they had almost broken through it by demolishing an ancient bricked-up window when suddenly their labors were interrupted by the arrival of two new guests, one of whom was the chevalier de Soulanges, a trustworthy fellow whom the abbé de Bucquoy had previously met. They exchanged embraces. As for the fourth individual, he was a queer duck by the name of Gringalet who was suspected of being an informer, one of those spies whom the authorities always placed in the larger cells. But they made his life so disagreeable that he asked to be transferred out of the room and was soon replaced by someone else.
The four prisoners, recognizing that they were all men of honor and brothers in arms, held a council in which they discussed strategies for escape; in no time the abbé’s plan was unanimously agreed upon.
The plan was simple: to saw through the window bars and to lower themselves into the moat in the middle of the night by means of ropes. The abbé had managed to hold on to a few of the wicker ropes he had woven with the baron de Peken and he explained to his companions how to fabricate more of them and how to melt metal into hooks.
As for sawing through the bars, he showed them a tiny file that he always kept ready at hand and that would nicely do the job.
His recent escape attempts having been so often foiled, the abbé had grown somewhat distrustful of his accomplices; he therefore requested that everybody formally promise not to betray the others. To this effect, he wrote out passages from the Gospels with a pen made of straw and ink made of diluted soot and demanded that everybody solemnly swear upon the Bible.
They argued, however, as to how best approach the counterscarp once they had made it to the moat.
The abbé thought it made better sense to climb up the counterscarp that lay on the rue Saint-Antoine side of the prison; the others were for « cutting across the demilune of the moat that runs just outside the gate ».
Opinions were so divided on this matter that they had to name someone president of their council . . . In the end they resolved that, once in the moat, each individual would just follow the escape route that suited him best.
It was on the 5th of May at two in the morning that the escape finally took place.
To support the ropes, they needed to affix a hook to the window which would project out and thus provide the necessary clearance. They had constructed something that resembled a sundial which they attached to a rod and stuck out the window, the hope was the sentries would get used to the sight of this contraption. Then they had to stain the ropes black using soot and hang them off the hook that projected from the window. Since they ran the risk of being seen as they dangled in the front of the window of the floor below, they had taken the precaution of hanging out a large blanket which they pretended to be drying.
The abbé de Bucquoy was the first to make his way down. It had been agreed that he would observe the back-and-forth movements of the sentry and then inform his comrades by jerks of the rope whether it was a good moment or not to descend. He lay there waiting in the tall weeds for over two hours without seeing anyone come down.
Things
had been delayed because Grandville’s girth was such that he was unable to pass through the opening they had made in the bars and which they were now frantically trying to enlarge.
At long last two of the prisoners made it down the ropes and informed the abbé de Bucquoy that Grandville, unable to squeeze through the bars, had decided to sacrifice himself to the common good, saying « that it was better if just a single one of them perished. »
The abbé’s mind, however, was entirely on the sentry; he offered to take him out of commission, seeing as how his comings and goings were seriously threatening their escape route over the counterscarp on the rue Saint-Antoine side. His friends disagreed, however, saying they would rather flee in another direction and take advantage of the cover provided by the weeds.
The abbé, never one to vacillate, stuck to his guns and remained where he was, waiting for the sentry to move away before he climbed over the wall and dropped into another moat. Once he had crossed this moat, he found himself at the top of a drain pipe which connected onto the rue Saint-Antoine. All he then had to do was to clamber down the roof of a building that housed butcher stalls.
As he was preparing to slip down the drainpipe, he wanted to check on his comrade’s progress; but all he heard was a rifle shot, which led him to conclude that theyhad unsuccessfully attempted to disarm the sentry.
As he was sliding down the drainpipe, the abbé de Bucquoy had cut himself on a metal flange, opening a gash in his arm. But paying no attention to his wound, he hastened down the rue Saint-Antoine, then turned onto the rue des Tournelles and, crossing all of Paris, finally arrived at the porte de la Conférence at the home of one of his acquaintances from the café Laurent. There he hid out for several days. This time, however, he did not make the mistake of remaining in Paris: adopting a disguise, he traveled through Burgundy and finally reached Switzerland. There is no record of his having stopped along the way to deliver speeches to the salt smugglers.