the fortress, had nothing of 'the steeled jailor' about him; he was a generous, humane man, of amiable manners. He lis tened to the mournful tale of the captive, wept for his misfortunes, took on himself the responsibility of giving him a good apartment, and obtained for him the privilege of walking daily for two hours in the garden. Despairing, as well he might, of being ever released by his inflexible enemies, Latude meditated incessantly on the means of escaping. Fifteen months elapsed before an opportunity occurred, and then it was brought about by chance. He was walking in the garden on a November afternoon, when a thick fog suddenly came on. The idea of turning it to account rushed into his mind. He was guarded by two sentries and a sergeant, who never quitted his side for an instant; but he determined to make a bold attempt. By a violent push of his elbows he threw off the sentries, then pushed down the sergeant, and darted past a third sentry, who did not perceive him till he was gone by. All four set up the cry of Seize him!' and Latude joined in it still more loudly, pointing with his finger to mislead the pursuers. There remained only one sentry to elude, but he was on the alert, and unfortunately knew him. Presenting his bayonet, he threatened to kill the prisoner if he did not stop.

My dear Chenu,' said he to

him, 'you are incapable of such an action; your orders are to arrest, and not to kill me.' He had slackened his pace, and came up to him slowly; as soon as he was close to him he sprang upon his musket, and wrenched it from him with such violence that he was thrown down in the struggle. Latude jumped over his body, flinging the musket to a distance of ten paces, lest he should fire it after him, and once more he achieved his liberty.

Favoured by the fog, Latude contrived to hide himself in the park till night, when he scaled the wall, and proceeded by byways to Paris. He sought a refuge with the two kind females to whom he had entrusted his packet. They were the daughters of a hairdresser named Lebrun. The asylum for which he asked was granted in the kindest manner. They procured for him some linen and an apartment in the house, gave him fifteen livres which they had saved, and supplied him with food from all their own meals. The papers confided to them they had endeavoured, but in vain, to deliver to the persons for whom they were intended; two of those persons were absent from France; the third was recently married, and his wife, on hearing that the packet was from the Bastile, would not suffer her husband to receive it.

Latude was out of prison, but he was not out of danger. He was convinced that to whatever

quarter he might bend his steps, it would be next to impossible to elude M. de Sartine, who by means of his spies was omnipresent. In this emergency he deemed it prudent to conciliate his persecutor; and he accordingly wrote a letter to him, entreating forgiveness for insults offered in a moment of madness, promising future silence and submission, and pathetically imploring him to become his protector. This overture had no result. He tried the influence of various persons, among whom was the Prince of Conti, but everywhere he was met by the prejudice which Sartine had raised against him; and to add to his alarm and vexation, he learned that a strict search was making for him, and that a reward of a thousand crowns was offered for his apprehension. As a last resource, he determined to make a personal appeal to the Duke of Choiseul, the first minister, who was then with the court at Fontainebleau. It was mid-December when he set out, the ground was covered with ice and snow, and the cold was intense. A morsel of bread was his whole stock of provisions; he had no money, and he dared not approach a house, proceed on the high road, or travel by day, lest he should be intercepted. In his nightly circuitous journey of more than forty miles, he often fell into ditches, or tore himself in scrambling through the hedges. 'I hid myself in a field,' says he, 'during the whole

of the 16th; and after walking for two successive nights, I arrived on the morning of the 17th at Fontainebleau, worn out by fatigue, hunger, grief, and despair.

Latude was too soon convinced that there was no chance of escaping from the vengeance of M. de Sartine. As soon as he had announced his arrival to the duke, two officers of the police came to convey him, as they said, to the minister; but their mask was speedily thrown off, and he found that they were to escort him back to Vincennes. They told him that every road had been beset and every vehicle watched to discover him, and they expressed their wonder at his having been able to reach Fontainebleau undetected. 'I now learned,' says he, 'for the first time, that there was no crime so great, or so severely punished, as a complaint against a minister. These exempts quoted to me the case of some deputies from the provinces, who, having been sent a short time before to denounce to the king the exactions of certain intendants, had been arrested and punished as dangerous incendiaries!'

On his reaching Vincennes, he was thrown into a horrible dungeon, barely six feet by six and a half in diameter, which was secured by four iron-plated treble - bolted doors, distant a foot from each other. To aggravate his misery, he was told that he deserved a thousand

times worse treatment; for that he had been the cause of the sergeant who guarded him being hanged. This appalling news entirely overwhelmed him; he gave himself up to frantic despair, and incessantly accused himself as the murderer of the unfortunate man. In the course of a few days, however, a compassionate sentinel, who was moved by his cries and groans, relieved his heart by informing him that the sergeant was well, and had only been imprisoned.

The kind-hearted governor sometimes visited Latude, but the information which he brought was not consolatory. He had tried to move M. de Sartine, and had found him inflexible. Sartine, however, sent to offer the prisoner his liberty, on condition that he would name the person who held his papers, and he pledged his honour that no harm should come to that person. Latude knew him too well to trust him. He resolutely answered, 'I entered my dungeon an honest man, and I will die rather than leave it a dastard and a knave.'

Into the den where he was, as it were, walled up, no ray of light entered; the air was never changed but at the moment when the turnkey opened the wicket; the straw on which he lay was always rotten with damp, and the narrowness of the space scarcely allowed him room to move. His health, of course, rapidly declined, and his body swelled enormously, retaining

in every part of it when touched the impression of the finger. Such were his agonies, that he implored his keepers as an act of mercy to terminate his existence. At last, after having endured months of intense suffering, he was removed to a habitable apartment, where his strength gradually returned.

Though his situation was improved, he was still entirely secluded from society. Hopeless of escape, he pondered on the means of at least opening an intercourse with his fellow-prisoners. On the outer side of his chamber was the garden in which each of the prisoners, Latude alone being excluded, was daily allowed to walk by himself for a certain time. This wall was five feet thick; so that to penetrate it seemed almost as difficult as to escape. But what cannot time and perseverance accomplish! His only instruments were a broken piece of a sword and an iron hoop of a bucket, which he had contrived to secrete; yet with these, by dint of twenty-six months' labour, he managed to perforate the mass of stone. The hole was made in a dark corner of the chimney, and he stopped the interior opening with a plug formed of sand and plaster. A long wooden peg rather shorter than the hole was inserted into it, that, in case of the external opening being noticed and sounded, it might seem to be not more than three inches in depth. For a signal to the

prisoner walking in the garden, he tied several pieces of wood so as to form a stick about six feet long, at the end of which hung a bit of riband. The twine with which it was tied, was made from threads drawn out of his linen. He thrust the stick through the hole, and succeeded in attracting the attention of a fellow-captive, the Baron de Venac, who had been nineteen years confined for having presumed to give advice to Madame de Pompadour. He successively became acquainted with several others, two of whom were also the victims of the marchioness. One of them had been seventeen years in prison, on suspicion of having spoken ill of her; the other had been twenty-three years because he was suspected of having written against her a pamphlet, which he had never even seen. The prisoners contrived to convey ink and paper to Latude through the hole. He opened a correspondence with them, encouraged them to write to each other, and became the medium through which they transmitted their letters. The burden of captivity was much lightened to him by this new occupation.

An unfortunate change for the prisoner now took place. The benevolent and amiablemannered Guyonnet was succeeded by Rougemont, a man who was a contrast to him in every respect. He was avaricious, flinty-hearted, brutal, and

a devoted tool of M. de Sartine. The diet which he provided for the captives was of the worst kind; and their scanty comforts were as much as possible abridged. That he might not be thwarted in the exercise of his tyranny, he dismissed such of the prison attendants as he suspected of being humane, and replaced them by men whose dispositions harmonized with his own. How utterly devoid of feeling were the beings whom he selected, may be judged by the language of his cook. This libel on the human race is known to have said, 'If the prisoners were ordered to be fed on straw, I would give them stable-litter;' and on other occasions he declared, 'If I thought there was a single drop of juice in the meat of the prisoners, I would trample it under my foot to squeeze it out!' Such a wretch would not have scrupled to put poison into the food, had not his master had an interest in keeping the captives alive. When any one complained of the provisions, he was insultingly answered, 'It is but too good for prisoners;' when application for the use of an article, however insignificant, was made, the reply was, 'It is contrary to the rules.' So horrible was the despotism of the governor, that within three months four of the prisoners strangled themselves in despair. 'The Inquisition itself,' says Latude, might envy his proficiency in

torture !' Latude was one of the first to suffer from the brutality of Rougemont. The apartment in which Guyonnet had placed him commanded a fine view. The enjoyment of a prospect was thought to be too great a luxury for a prisoner, and accordingly Rougemont set about depriving him of it. . He partly built up the windows, filled the interstices of the bars with close iron net-work; and then, lest a blade of grass should still be visible, blockaded the outside with a blind like a millhopper, so that nothing could be perceived but a narrow strip of sky. But his situation was soon made far worse. In a fit of anger, caused by his being refused the means of writing to the lieutenant of police, he imprudently chanced to wish himself in his former cell again. He was taken at his word. On the following morning, when he had forgotten his unguarded speech, he was led back to his dark and noisome dungeon. 'Few will believe,' says he, 'that such inhuman jests could be practised in a civilised country.'

M. de Sartine, being now appointed minister of the marine, was replaced by M. Le Noir. It was some time before Latude knew of this change, and he derived no benefit from it, the new head of the police being the friend of Sartine. He wished to address the minister, but the means were refused, and he again tasked his skill to re

move the obstacle. The only light he enjoyed was when his food was brought to him. The turnkey then set down the lamp at the entrance of the wicket, and went away to attend to other business. Of the turnkey's short absence Latude availed himself to write a letter; it was written on a piece of his shirt, with a straw dipped in blood. His appeal was disregarded; and to prevent him from repeating it in the same manner, the governor ordered a socket for the candle to be fixed on the outside of the wicket, so that only a few feeble rays might penetrate into the dungeon. But the captive was not easily to be discouraged; and besides, he took a delight in baffling his persecutors. He had remaining in a pomatum pot some oil, sent by the surgeon to alleviate the colic pains which were caused by the dampness of his abode. Cotton drawn from his stockings supplied him with a wick. He then twisted some of his straw into a rope, which he coiled up and fastened in the shape of a bee-hive. With another portion of straw he made a sort of stick five feet long, with a bit of linen at the end of it. The turnkey was always obliged to bring his food twice; and while he was fetching the second portion, Latude thrust out the stick, obtained a light from the candle, lighted his taper, and then closely covered it over with the bee-hive basket. When he was left by himself he unhooded