WONDERFUL ESCAPES.

REVISED FROM THE FRENCH OF F. BERNARD
AND ORIGINAL CHAPTERS ADDED.
BY
R I C H A R D W H I T E I N G.
With Twenty-six Plates.
NEW YORK:
CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO.
1871.

Illustrated Library of Wonders.
PUBLISHED BY
Messrs. Charles Scribner & Co.,
654 BROADWAY, NEW YORK.

* In Press for early Publication.

The above works sent to any address, post paid, upon receipt of the price by the publishers.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

WONDERFUL ESCAPES.

ARISTOMENES THE MESSENIAN.
ABOUT 684 B.C.

Aristomenes, the Messenian general, fighting at the head of his troops against very superior numbers of the Lacedemonians, commanded by the two kings of Sparta, received a severe blow on the head from a stone, and fell insensible and to all appearance dead. He was taken prisoner, with fifty of his soldiers, and dragged to Sparta, where the Lacedemonians condemned them all to be thrown into the Cœada, a hideous gulf formed by a fissure in the earth, in whose depths already lay the bones of hundreds of criminals who had been put to death. The barbarous sentence was actually carried out; and Aristomenes, with all his surviving soldiers, was hurled into the gulf. The latter perished to a man in the fall; but their general, on this as on so many other occasions, was saved—as the historian Pausanias has it, by the favour of a god. The most enthusiastic chroniclers of his exploits say that an eagle flying towards him sustained his body on its extended wings, and thus bore him unharmed to the bottom of the ravine. A happy chance revealed to him a means of egress from this dismal prison. When he reached the bottom, he lay for some time on the ground, wrapped in his mantle, and in momentary expectation of death. He scarcely stirred from this position for two days; on the third day of his entombment, however, he heard a noise, and uncovering his face, saw a fox creeping along in the gloom towards a heap of corpses. Judging from this that there must be an opening in the ravine, he waited until the animal approached him, and then seized its leg with one hand, thrust his mantle into its mouth with the other when it turned to bite, and suffered himself to be dragged through the passages of his subterranean prison. They came at last to an opening just large enough to give a passage to the fox and to admit a feeble ray of light into the cavern. The animal bounded forward into the daylight, and disappeared as soon as Aristomenes let go his hold, leaving the captive general to follow after he had enlarged the opening with his hands. This escape of Aristomenes was considered a manifest proof of the favour and protection of the gods. (Pausanias: Description of Greece, bk. iv., ch. xviii.)

HEGESISTRATUS.
ABOUT 475 B.C.

Mardonias had for an augur, according to the Greek rites, Hegesistratus of Elea. This man, at one time, was in the power of the Spartans, to whom he had wrought very great harm, and he lay heavily ironed in prison, and condemned to death. In this extremity, knowing that he had to expect, not only to lose his life, but to suffer the most frightful tortures before his execution, he performed an incredible exploit. He was fastened to a heavy wooden fetter bound with iron, and by the aid of a scrap of the same metal which he found by accident in his prison, he accomplished the

most courageous action ever recorded; for, having carefully measured off as much of his foot as he could manage to drag out of the fetters, he cut it away from the rest by the tarsal bone. He then contrived, although the prison was strictly guarded, to pick a hole in the wall of his dungeon, and escape to Tegea, walking, or rather hobbling along, by night, and hiding during the day. He arrived at Tegea on the third night, after eluding all the vigilance of the Lacedemonians, who had, indeed, been struck with almost ludicrous astonishment when they found only the half of the man’s foot in their safe keeping and the owner gone. As soon as Hegesistratus was cured, he provided himself with a wooden foot, and became the declared enemy of the Lacedemonians. His hatred of them was about equalled by his love of gain; and he was enabled to gratify both passions by sacrificing, and by drawing divinations for the Persians at the battle of Platea, for which he was most liberally paid by Mardonius. But his enmity to the Spartans brought him to a bad end, for he was captured by them at Zacynthus, where he was following his trade of divination, and put to death. (Herodotus, bk. ix., § xxxvii.)

In the time of Herodotus, the term “tarsus” was applied, not only to that part of the foot so designated by modern anatomists, but also to that immediately above the toes. It would even seem to follow, from a passage in Hippocrates, that the term tarsus was employed specially to designate those portions now called metatarsal, and to the second row of the bones of the tarsus, from which he distinguishes those in direct communication with the leg. From the text of Herodotus, however, it is sufficiently clear that Hegesistratus cut off his foot at the part where the tarsus and metatarsus join.

It would at first seem incredible that a man could have the resolution to mutilate himself in this way, and, above all, to do subsequently what is here recorded by the Greek author; but facts certainly as extraordinary have been observed among the North American Indians. It is but rarely, however, that among stories of the kind we have collected, even though they may be taken from the gravest historians, some details are not found open to at least the suspicion of exaggeration. We give the name of our authority: the reader must take the story for what it is worth.

DEMETRIUS SOTER.
162 B.C.

Demetrius had been sent to Rome as a hostage by his father, Seleucus Philopater. Antiochus having afterwards assassinated Seleucus, and made himself King of Syria, Demetrius asked the Senate to restore him his liberty and his throne. But, according to Polybius, although the senators were touched by the words of the young prince, they thought it more to the interest of the Republic to detain him in Rome, and to recognise the son of Antiochus.

Some time after, Demetrius wished to renew his appeal to the Senate, and he consulted Polybius, who tried to dissuade him from it: “Do not,” said the historian, “bruise yourself a second time against the same stone. Believe in yourself and in yourself alone, and prove by your own boldness that you deserve to be king.”

The prince, expecting no doubt advice more in harmony with his intentions, did not follow the counsel of Polybius till he was taught the value of it by a second refusal from the Senate; and then he prepared for flight. Diodorus, who had educated him, arrived very opportunely at that moment from Syria, and assured him that if he were to present himself to his people with but one attendant at his back he would be immediately proclaimed king.

Polybius, Diodorus, and some other friends of the young prince, devoted themselves to his service. They bought a Carthaginian ship lying at the mouth of the Tiber, without much hindrance it would seem from the vigilance of the authorities; for the sale and all the arrangements, including the settlement of the very hour of departure, were effected with the utmost publicity. When the time came Demetrius assembled his friends around him, a limited number of them only being in the secret, and standing pledged to embark with their slaves at a given signal. Polybius was ill, and could not leave his house, but he became apprehensive lest the young man should abandon himself to the pleasures of the table, and forget the hour fixed for his setting out. He therefore sent a slave to him towards nightfall, with orders to approach him as though on business of importance, and to place a letter in his hand reminding him of his duty. Demetrius read the letter, invented a pretext for withdrawing from the table, and returned with his confidants to his own house, whence he sent away his servants to Anagnia with orders to get everything in readiness for a boar hunt on the next day but one—this being his favourite sport, and the one which had first brought him into contact with Polybius. His friends also gave the same orders to their slaves, and in due time all the confederates assembled at Ostia. Demetrius still pretended that he meant to stay at Rome, and that he was merely sending out some trusted friends of his own age with instructions to his brother. The captain of the ship, for his part, was not disposed to be too particular in his inquiries about anything except the money for the voyage; and towards night Demetrius and his companions quietly embarked. At daybreak the anchors were raised, the vessel stood out to sea, and the fugitives were free. (Polybius, bk. xxxi., frag. xii.)

MARIUS.
85 B.C.

When Marius felt himself menaced by Sylla’s march on Rome he tried to raise the slaves in his favour, but on the failure of the attempt, he took to flight, knowing that he had no mercy to expect from his rival, whose friends he had so remorselessly slain. He had hardly left the city when his attendants dispersed, and he was obliged to seek refuge alone at Solonium, one of his country retreats. From this place he sent his son to collect food in the grounds of his father-in-law, Mucius, which were not far off. The hunted man at the same time hurried away to Ostia, and without waiting for his son’s return, embarked with his son-in-law, Granius, in a vessel kept in readiness for him by Numerius, one of his friends. The young Marius had meanwhile got a store of provisions; but at daybreak he was alarmed by the approach of the horsemen of Sylla, whose suspicions had led them to the place. They were seen, however, at a distance by Mucius’s faithful steward, who hid the youth in a cart laden with beans, and harnessing his oxen to it, pushed boldly on before the horsemen into the city. The fugitive was then conveyed to his wife’s house, where he waited till nightfall, and then took ship, and reached Africa in safety.

The elder Marius had weighed anchor, and was carried along the coasts of Italy by a favourable wind; but he ordered the sailors to stand off from Terracina, because he feared his enemy Geminius, one of the principal inhabitants of that place. They were in the act of obeying him when a gale began to blow, which soon swelled to such a furious tempest that it seemed impossible for the boat to live. This, joined to the illness of Marius, who was prostrated by sea-sickness, obliged them to make for the coast of Circæi, where they landed with great difficulty.

They were scarcely a league from Minturnæ when they saw a troop of horsemen approaching, and quite by chance perceived a couple of barks afloat. They at once turned in terror from the horsemen, and plunged into the sea to swim to the barks. Granius easily reached one of the boats and made for the island of Enaria, situated opposite to this point of the coast; but Marius, who was then seventy years of age, was dragged with great difficulty towards the other by two slaves, and had hardly been placed in it when his pursuers reached the bank and ordered the sailors to row him ashore, or else to throw him overboard and go wherever they pleased without him. Marius had recourse to supplications and to tears, and his companions, after hesitating a little while, refused to abandon him. But his enraged pursuers had hardly left the shore when the sailors again changed their minds and steered towards the land. They cast anchor at the mouth of the Liris (the Garigliano), the waters of which formed a marsh, and they urged Marius to land in order to take some nourishment and recover from his sea-sickness and to await a more favourable wind. He confided in them and followed their advice; and when they had put him ashore he hid himself in a meadow, little thinking of what was to follow, for he had hardly left the vessel when they weighed anchor again and left the place, as though thinking it would neither be honest in them to deliver him to his enemies, nor safe to try to save his life.

Left thus alone and abandoned by all, Marius for a time lay stretched upon the shore, without the power to rise or to utter a single word; but at length, lifting himself up with difficulty, he began to totter painfully along a pathless waste of land. After crossing several deep marshes he came by chance to the cottage of an old labouring man, and falling at his feet he besought him to save one who, if he escaped from his present dangers, would have it in his power to bestow an unhoped-for recompense upon his deliverer. The old man, either knowing him or detecting something of his real importance in his bearing, replied that if he wished for rest he might find it in the cottage, but if he sought for safety from his enemies he would hide him in a more secret place. Marius begged him to do so, and the peasant, leading him into the marsh, told him to crouch in a hole on the bank of a river, and covered him up with reeds and other light things, which effectually concealed him, without oppressing him with their weight.

He had not lain there long when he heard a slight uproar and the sound of voices coming from the cottage. Geminius of Terracina had, in fact, sent a number of people in pursuit of him, and some of them, who had penetrated to that place, were trying to frighten the old man by charging him with having harboured the enemy of Rome. Marius then foolishly revealed himself by crawling out of his hiding-place and plunging naked into the filthy waters of the marsh, where he was at once seen by his pursuers. They dragged him out half suffocated and covered with mud, and took him to Minturnæ, where the magistrates thought it prudent to deliberate on his fate, although the decree ordering his pursuit and immediate execution when captured had been published in all the cities. They decided at last on placing him for safe custody in the house of a woman named Fannia, whom he had formerly injured, and who, it was thought, would be very evilly disposed towards him. Fannia, however, on this occasion showed him no animosity; indeed, the sight of her supposed enemy did not appear to recall one bitter feeling to her mind, for she placed food before him and exhorted him to take courage. He told her he had just seen a favourable omen and was full of confidence, and ordered her to close the door of his chamber, as he wished for repose.

Meanwhile, the authorities of Minturnæ had decided that he should be put to death without delay, but not one citizen could be found to undertake his execution. At length a horse-soldier—a Gaul according to some, and according to others a Cimbrian—took a sword and entered the woman’s dwelling. The room in which the captive lay was very badly lit, and was indeed in almost total darkness; and the Cimbrian (so runs the story) thought he saw two fierce eyes darting flames, and heard a terrible voice calling to him out of the gloom, “Wretch! darest thou slay Caius Marius?” At all events, he at once threw down his sword in terror and ran away, exclaiming, as he leaped headlong over the threshold, “No, I dare not kill Caius Marius.” The whole city was seized with astonishment, and then with pity and repentance, and the people reproached themselves for their cruel and ungrateful resolution against a man who had saved Italy, and whom it had once been a crime to refuse to aid. “Let him go where he will to meet his destiny,” they said; “and, for our part, let us supplicate the gods to pardon us for having cast him out naked and helpless from our midst.”

A number of the citizens then went to Fannia’s house, and forming in procession before the proscribed man led him to the sea. As each had some useful thing to present to him for his journey, he lost some time in receiving and acknowledging their attention, and this delay threatened to be further prolonged by the fact that the sacred grove, called Marica, lay in the way of their direct passage to the shore. An old man, however, had the courage to enter the wood, observing that where the safety of Marius was concerned there should be no forbidden path, and the rest followed his example. On reaching the shore Marius found a ship ready to receive him, which had been thoroughly equipped and provisioned for his service by a citizen named Beleus. In this manner he made his escape.

He afterwards ordered all these incidents to be made the subject of a grand picture, which he placed as an offering in the temple standing near the place of his embarkation.

ATTALUS.
SIXTH CENTURY.

Theodoric and Childebert entered into an alliance, took oath not to march against one another, and mutually received hostages for the better observance of the terms of their treaty. Among these hostages were many of the sons of senators, who, when the kings unfortunately began to quarrel again, were reduced to servitude, and became the slaves of those in whose guardianship they had been placed. Many of them, however, contrived to escape, and but a few

were kept in servitude for any length of time. Among the latter was Attalus, nephew of Gregory, Bishop of Langres. He had been sold as a slave to the State, and had been employed in the care of horses under a certain barbarian in the district of Treves. Some servants of Bishop Gregory, who had been sent in search of the youth, and had discovered his whereabouts, tried to buy his freedom from the barbarian; but he refused their modest offerings, on the ground that a person so illustrious as his captive ought to pay at least ten pounds’ weight of gold for his ransom. On the return of these emissaries, one of them named Leon, employed in the bishop’s kitchen, said to his master, “God grant that your lordship give me permission to make the attempt, and perhaps I shall be able to redeem Attalus yet.”

The bishop consented, and Leon set out for Treves. He tried at first to get the young man away secretly, but this was impossible. He then deliberately caused himself to be sold to the barbarian, offering the price of the transaction as a reward to the man who had pretended to be his owner. The buyer asked what the new slave could do. “I am a very clever cook,” replied Leon; “I can serve everything fit for the table of a great lord; and I don’t believe that my equal in this science is to be found anywhere. I dare venture to say that if my master wanted to entertain the king, he could not do better than order me to invent him a right royal feast.”

“Sunday is coming,” said the barbarian, “and on that day I am going to invite my friends and relations. I want you to prepare a banquet for me which will excite their admiration.”

The Sunday came, and the new slave served one of his choicest repasts, which so pleased his master that he at once took him into high favour, and made him almost the second person in the household. At the end of about a year he was so trusted that he was enabled one day, without exciting suspicion, to walk after Attalus into a meadow near the house, and to begin a conversation with him, though they took the precaution of sitting back to back and at some distance from one another. “It is time,” said Leon to the young man, “that we began to think of our country; and I have come to you to give you warning not to go to sleep to-night after you have put up your horses, but to be ready to leave this place the moment you hear me call.”

The barbarian was in the meanwhile feasting at his own table with a number of his relations and a son-in-law, to whom he wished to do especial honour. As they left the table at midnight to go to bed, Leon followed this son-in-law to his apartment, and presented him with a cup of wine.

“You are very high in the confidence of my father-in-law,” said the son-in-law, jocularly; “but, suppose you had the power, when would you have the will to jump on the back of one of his horses, and make a dash for your own country?”

“I hope to do it to-night, please God,” said Leon, adopting the same tone of pleasantry, with great self-possession.

“Then, please God too,” returned the other, laughing, “my servants will keep a sharp look out, for I must see that you don’t take away any property of mine;” and they left one another in this pleasant way.

When the whole household was asleep, Leon softly called Attalus, whose horses were ready saddled, and asked him if he had a sword. “I have nothing but a small spear,” said Attalus.

Leon went straight into his master’s room, and took down his sword and buckler, not without awakening him, however, for he called out to know who was there. “Only Leon,” replied the slave; “I am going to wake Attalus, to make sure of his being up in time to take the horses to grass, for he is as sound asleep as a drunken man.”

“Oh! is that all?” murmured the master; “very well,” and he turned over and went to sleep again.

Leon stole out, and gave the weapons to the young man; and, by nothing less than a miracle, found the doors of the court-yard open, though they had been closed at nightfall, with heavy iron wedges, for the better security of the horses. They both gave thanks to God, and at once made off, taking with them all the horses, and their few personal effects as slaves. But at Moselle they were obliged to leave both horses and effects behind for fear of awakening the suspicion of some persons they overtook there; and once rid of these encumbrances, they easily gained the opposite bank of the river by floating over on their bucklers. The darkness favoured them; and they soon found shelter and concealment in a forest. They stayed there till they had been three whole days and nights without tasting food, till at length, by the special favour of Providence, they found a plum-tree, the fruit of which served to satisfy their more pressing and immediate wants. They then started with renewed strength on their journey, and took the road to Champagne. They had not gone far when they heard the sound of hoofs, and they hastily hid themselves in a thicket of brier, taking care, however, to draw their swords, so as to be ready to defend themselves in the last extremity. A moment after a number of horsemen drew up at the thicket, and one of them was heard to say, “Why cannot we find these wretches? I swear if I came across them, I would hang the one and hack the other in pieces with my sword.” It was the voice of the barbarian, their master, who had ridden from Rheims in search of them, and who would certainly have found them on the way if the darkness had not been in their favour. The troop then pushed forward again, and the sound of their hoofs was soon lost in the distance.

The two fugitives resumed their journey, reached Rheims at nightfall, and asked the first person they met in the city the way to the house of the priest Pantellus. It was Sunday, and as they went through the great square on their way to the house, the bell sounded for matins. When they entered the priest’s dwelling, Leon disclosed to the good man the name and rank of Attalus. “My dream is made out,” said the overjoyed father; “for this very night in my sleep I saw two doves fly towards my threshold, and perch upon my hand, and one of them was a white one and the other black.” (The reader will bear in mind that Leon was a negro). “God forgive us,” replied the slave, “for not paying due observance to his holy day.” (On Sunday no one took nourishment till after mass.) “But we entreat you give us something to eat, for this is the fourth time we have seen the sun rise without breaking our fast.”

The priest hid the two young men, gave them some bread steeped in wine, and went to matins.

The barbarian, by-and-by, appeared on the scene, still in hot and eager pursuit of his slaves; but he had to go away again without them, for the priest deliberately put him on a wrong scent, out of his great friendship for Bishop Gregory. They then sat down to the uninterrupted enjoyment of a good meal; and they remained two days with the good priest until they had quite recruited their strength, and were enabled to pursue their journey towards their own home, which they reached without any further trouble. The bishop, transported with joy at the sight of them, fell weeping on the neck of Attalus: and as a special mark of his gratitude to the preserver of his nephew, he gave Leon and all his family their freedom, with as much land as sufficed for their subsistence for the rest of their days. (Histoire Ecclésiastique des Francs, bk. iii., ch. xv., translated by M. Henri Bordier.)

Attalus afterwards became Count of Autun.

RICHARD, DUKE OF NORMANDY.
TENTH CENTURY.

After the assassination of William Longsword, Duke of Normandy, near Pecquigny, on the Somme, his infant son Richard was called to the succession. Louis d’Outre-Mer, who had fixed his eyes on the throne, contrived to get the young prince in his power, and to have him sent to Laon, under pretence of giving him an education suited to his rank. The arch-plotter placed the child under the most rigorous espionage, and treated him with great cruelty. He even threatened to hamstring his innocent victim by fire, a frightful torture which the policy of the Middle Ages did not disdain to use as a means for depriving princes of their thrones.

The young prince’s steward, Osmond, hearing of the king’s determination, and foreseeing the terrible lot in store for the child, sent messengers to apprise the Normans of the perilous position of their lord. The news excited the utmost anxiety and alarm throughout all Normandy; and during a three days’ fast of the entire people, the clergy prayed continually for the safety of the captive. Osmond, meanwhile, by the advice of Yvon, the father of William de Belesme, found an opportunity to advise the young prince to pretend to be very ill, and to take to his bed as if he never hoped to rise from it again. The child, understanding the object of his steward’s instructions, showed great intelligence in following them, and stretched himself at full length on his bed, to all appearance at the point of death. This naturally had the effect of making his guardians less vigilant, and they soon began to neglect their charge of the seeming invalid to look after their own affairs. When Osmond judged that the fitting moment had arrived, he went into the courtyard of the prince’s house, and, putting the child in a bundle of grass which he found there, hoisted him on his shoulders as if he were going to carry fodder to his horse, and scaled the walls of the city while the king sat at supper and the streets were almost deserted. He then took horse, and in due time arrived at Conci, where he placed the child in the care of the governor, himself pushing forward, till he reached Senlis by the break of day. Count Bernard showed some surprise at the sight of him, and made many eager inquiries about the safety of the child; and when he had received a full account of all that had been done, he rode away with the brave steward to ask help of Hugo the Great. The appeal was not in vain. Hugo remembered an oath by which he had engaged to protect the prince, and sent a large army to Conci, whence the fugitive was conducted in state to Senlis, to the great joy of the entire people. (Guillaume de Jumièges: Histoire des Normands, bk. iv., ch. iv.)

LOUIS II., COUNT OF FLANDERS.
1347.

When Louis II., Count of Flanders, had succeeded his father, Louis I., in 1346, at the age of sixteen years, the Flemings wished him to marry Isabella, daughter of the King of England, while Duke John of Brabant and Philip VI. of Valois, King of France, had come to an understanding to unite the young count to the daughter of Duke John. Louis II., on his part, refused the marriage which his subjects wished to force on him, “Being,” says Froissart, “unwilling to marry the daughter of the man who had murdered his father, even if she brought him half the kingdom of England for her portion.” “When the Flemings heard that,” the old chronicler continues, “they said their lord was too much of a Frenchman, and was badly advised, and that he would not do for them at all if he did not mean to take their counsel. So they laid hands upon him, though with all courtesy and tenderness, and put him into prison, telling him he must remain there until he saw fit to do as they wished.

“The young count was shut up by his subjects a long while, and he even began to be in some danger, for his firmness provoked them. At last, however, he gave way, or pretended to do so, and told those about him that he would do as his people wished, since they were dearer to him than any other. This rejoiced the Flemings mightily, and they at once softened the excessive rigours of his captivity. They allowed him to extend his walks as far as the river, to his great joy though he was still attended by guards, who had orders never to leave him a moment out of their sight. When this had lasted a pretty long while, the young count seemed to yield absolutely, and told the Flemings that he was now quite willing to marry the lady of their choice. They ran in great haste with the news to the King and Queen of England, who were before Calais, and signified to their majesties that if they would take their daughter to the abbey of Bergues, the young count should be there to meet her, and the preliminaries to the marriage should be at once concluded. This arrangement was actually carried out; the young people were betrothed at the abbey, and the Flemings once more took the count back to his prison for safe keeping until the marriage.

“The count,” continues Froissart, “still went down to the river every day with his guards, but he pretended to look forward to the marriage with so much joy that they did not think it needful to watch him half so narrowly as before. But they did not quite know the temper of their young lord, for submissive as he was to outward seeming, he was soon to prove that he had at heart all the courage of a Frenchman. It wanted scarcely a week to the day fixed for the marriage, when he went out one morning to fly his falcon by the river. His falconer started one bird, himself another; and when the two falcons were seen in hot pursuit of the same prey, the count ran forward as if carried away by the excitement of the chase, and encouraged them with his cries. This ruse enabled him to reach the open fields without suspicion, and, once there, he clapped spurs to his horse, and in an instant was lost to view. He hardly paused till he came to Artois, where he felt safe, and he lost no time in laying his case before King Philip and the French people, and telling them by what a fine stratagem he had escaped from his own people and the English. The King of France was greatly overjoyed, and told the young man he had done more than well, and the French people said the same. The poor English, on the contrary, seemed to think that he had betrayed them.” (Froissart’s Chronicles, bk. i., ch. xxxi.)

THE DUKE OF ALBANY.
FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

James III., King of Scotland, saw, not without misgiving, that his two brothers, the Duke of Albany and the Earl of Mar, were greatly beloved by his subjects; and this feeling was soon changed into one of positive hate, thanks to the whisperings of certain evil counsellors who were about his person. These wretches, well knowing the feeble nature they had to deal with, threw the King into a very sickness of terror with impossible stories of his brothers’ design against his crown and life.

The Earl of Mar, they told him, had obtained a positive assurance from certain sorcerers that his royal kinsman would die by the hand of a near relation, and they brought a sorcerer of their own to the palace to say that there was a lion in Scotland which would be torn in pieces by its own whelps. This was enough for the king; his cowardly spirit was frightened into energy and decision, and he ordered the arrest of his brothers. Albany was thrown into Edinburgh Castle, but the fate of Mar was determined on at once. He was suffocated in a bath, according to some historians; or, according to others, bled to the last drop of his blood.

Albany was in great danger of the same miserable lot, but he had friends both in France and in Scotland who were resolved not to let him perish without making an effort to save his life. They were not long in forming their plans. A little sloop sailed into Leith Roads with a cargo of Gascony wines, of which two small casks were sent as a present to the captive prince. The governor of the castle allowed them to be taken into the chamber in which his prisoner was confined, and when the duke came to dip into them, he found in one a ball of wax, containing a letter urging him to escape and make his way to the water-side, where he would find the little vessel waiting for him. In the other cask there was a coil of rope, which would enable him to drop from the walls of his prison to the rock on which the castle stands. His faithful chamberlain, who shared his captivity, promised to aid him in the enterprise.

The main point was to make sure of the captain of the guard. Albany, therefore, invited this officer to sup with him under the pretext of wishing to have his judgment on the wine. The invitation was accepted, and the captain, having as usual posted his men with due circumspection, led three of them into the duke’s room with him, and took his place at table.

The meal over, the duke proposed a game of trictrac, and took care while it was going on to ply his guest freely with the wine, while his chamberlain was no less attentive to the three soldiers. The drink, and the heat of a great fire, near which they had artfully placed him, soon made the officer very drowsy, and the men too began to nod their heads.

Their time was come: the duke, who was a strong man, suddenly jumped up, and with one blow of a poniard laid the captain dead at his feet. In another moment he had despatched two of the soldiers; while the chamberlain with his own dagger finished the third. Their work was the easier to do as the drink and the fire together had almost stupefied the poor wretches before a blow was struck. After they had taken the keys out of the captain’s pockets, they threw the bodies on the fire, and making their way to an out-of-the-way corner of the wails, began their perilous descent.

The chamberlain went down first to try the cord, but it was too short, and he fell and broke his leg. He uttered no cry of pain, but simply told his master the cause of the disaster. The duke went back to fetch his bed-clothes, and finally made the descent in safety. His first care was to provide for the injured man; and he did not bestow a thought on himself till he had carried his faithful dependent to a hut where he might remain in perfect security until his recovery. This done, he flew to the sea-shore, and a boat answering to the hail—at the signal agreed on—he boarded the sloop, which instantly set sail for France.

During the night, the guards, who knew that their officer had three men with him in the duke’s room, had no suspicion of what was passing. But when at daybreak they saw the cord hanging from the wall, they took the alarm, and rushed hastily into the apartment, when they stumbled over the body of one soldier lying across the doorway, and saw those of the captain and the two other men smouldering amid the dying embers in the large fireplace. The King expressed much surprise at this extraordinary escape, and he could not be brought to believe in it till he had seen the place with his own eyes. (Sir Walter Scott’s History of Scotland, vol. i., ch. xix.)

JAMES V., KING OF SCOTLAND.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

Sir George Douglas and his brother, the Earl of Angus, who had married Queen Margaret of Scotland, had obtained possession of the person of the young King James V., then a child; and the Earl of Angus administered the kingdom, and discharged all the functions of a regent without assuming the title. In a word, these two lords manœuvred so as to substitute their family for the reigning one upon the throne of Scotland. Several attempts for the King’s deliverance had failed, and even two great battles had been fought without success by the partisans of James V. At the commencement of the second battle, George Douglas, seeing that the King was eagerly watching an opportunity to escape, said, “It is useless for your Grace to think of getting out of our hands; if our enemies held you by one arm, and we by the other, we would see you torn in pieces rather than loosen our grip.” To make quite sure of their prize, they appointed a hundred chosen men to guard the youthful monarch, commanded by one of their own family, Douglas of Parkhead.

Every attempt by open force having thus failed, James resolved to have recourse to stratagem. He persuaded his mother, Queen Margaret, to give up her castle of Stirling to him, and to place it under the command of a gentleman in whom he had confidence. All this was done very secretly, and the King, having thus prepared a possible retreat, began to seek an opportunity of flying to it. The better to disarm the vigilance of the Douglases, he showed such deference to the Earl of Angus, that people began to think he had gone over to that nobleman’s party, and had become resigned to the loss of his own liberty. He was then living at Falkland, a royal residence very favourably situated for hunting and falconry, his favourite amusements.

The Earl of Angus and Archibald and George Douglas had all three left Falkland on various errands of business or pleasure, and no one remained near the King but Douglas of Parkhead, with the hundred men on whose vigilance the family knew they could rely. James saw the moment was favourable. To allay the suspicions of his guards, he announced his intention of rising early on a certain morning to hunt the stag, and Douglas of Parkhead never doubting that this was said in good faith, went to bed after posting his sentinels in the usual manner.

But the King no sooner found himself alone than he called his trusty page, John Hart, and looking at him very earnestly, said, “John, do you love me?”

“More than I love myself,” replied the page.

“And are you willing to risk everything for me?”

“My life, if needs be,” replied the youth.

The King then made him acquainted with his plan, and hastily putting on a servant’s livery, went to the stables with him, as though to prepare for the next day’s hunt. The guards, failing to recognise him in this disguise, suffered him to pass without hindrance. The King had previously taken another of his servants into his confidence, so that when he and the page reached the stable they found three good horses, ready saddled and bridled, awaiting them.

James mounted at once with his two faithful servants and galloped all night, light as a bird just escaped from its cage. At break of day he passed the bridge of Stirling, and as there was no other means of crossing the Forth than by this bridge or by a boat, he ordered the gates which barred the passage to be closed against all comers, without exception. He was very tired when he reached Stirling Castle, where he was received with joy by the governor, whom, as we have seen, he had himself been the means of placing in that fortress. The drawbridge was raised, the portcullis lowered, the guards were doubled—in fact, every possible precaution was taken that prudence could dictate. But the King was so much afraid of again falling into the power of the Douglas, that in spite of his fatigue, he refused to go to bed until he had himself placed the keys of the castle under his pillow.

There was great alarm at Falkland on the following morning. George Douglas had returned on the very night of the King’s flight at about eleven o’clock, and had at once asked for his prisoner. He was told that James had gone to bed early, wishing to rise in good time for the hunt; and he himself retired, perfectly satisfied that all was safe. But in the morning he was destined to hear very different news, for a certain Peter Carmichael, baillie of Abernethy, came rapping at his door, to ask him if he knew where the King was at that moment.

“He is asleep in his bedchamber,” said Sir George.

“You are deceived,” replied Carmichael; “he passed over Stirling Bridge last night.”

Douglas, jumping out of bed, ran to the King’s room, knocked loudly, and receiving no answer, broke open the door. Finding the apartment empty, he cried, “Treason! the King is gone!” dispatched couriers to his brothers, and sent out in every direction to call his partisans together for the recapture of James. But the King had by this time proclaimed by sound of trumpet that he would declare traitor every person bearing the name of Douglas who should approach within twelve miles of his person, or take any part in the administration of the kingdom. The Douglases were obliged to submit, and from that time commenced the decay of their house, for James could not be brought to pardon them. (Sir Walter Scott’s History of Scotland, ch. xxiii.)

SECUNDUS CURION.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

Cœlius Secundus Curion, a zealous Lutheran, having dared to give the lie in open church to a Jacobin who had heaped on him the most odious calumnies from the pulpit, was immediately arrested by order of the inquisitor of Turin. He was dragged from prison to prison, but he at last made his escape so cleverly that his enemies could only account for it by accusing him of magic. In order to exculpate himself from an accusation extremely dangerous at that time, he published an account of his escape in a little Latin dialogue, entitled “Probus,” from which we select the following passages for translation:—

“I had been shut up for eight days in my new prison,” says Curion, “with my feet fastened to enormous pieces of wood, when, by nothing less than a sudden inspiration from Heaven, I was urged to supplicate the young man in charge of me to release me from at least one of my fetters. The other, as I pointed out to him, would be quite heavy enough to ensure my safe custody. As he was merciful, and bore no malice against me, he at length suffered himself to be persuaded, and set one of my feet at liberty. He had no sooner left me than I set to work to carry out a plan I had already formed for my escape. I tore my shirt into shreds, and taking off my stocking and slipper, stuffed them with these rags till I had made a very fair model of a leg and foot. But though the form and contour of the flesh were there, you had only to touch the new limb to find that it was lamentably deficient in bone. What was to be done? I looked about everywhere, till at last my eye lighted on a stick hidden away under a settle. I seized it eagerly and soon fashioned bones for my leg; and then, hiding my real limb under my cloak, I sat calmly awaiting the success of my ruse. After a time the young man came in to pay me his usual visit and to ask me how I did. ‘I should feel better,’ I said, pointing to my dummy, ‘if you would kindly fasten this leg to the fetter and let me give the other a rest.’ He consented, and chained up my false limb with all imaginable care.”

The rest is soon told. The prisoner waited till nightfall, and as soon as he heard his attendants snoring, quietly parted company with his fettered leg, undressed it, clothed himself again, and softly stole out of his cell, which no one had taken the trouble to fasten on the outside. Even then his difficulties were not at an end; but he at length found means to scale the outer walls of his prison and to regain his liberty. (Ludovic Lalanne: Curiosities of Biography.)

BENVENUTO CELLINI.
1538.

Benvenuto Cellini lived nearly twenty years at Rome, producing those masterpieces of work in the precious metals which have immortalised his name. He was high in favour with Clement VII., and was sought after and entrusted with the most important commissions by the princes of the Church and other great personages who visited the Eternal City. He had won the especial regard of Clement by his courage in taking part in the defence of the castle of St. Angelo when it was besieged by the army of the Constable of Bourbon; and such was the confidence placed in him at that time that all the costliest things among the Papal treasures were given to him to be broken up, and he was allowed to hide the jewels for safe keeping in his own clothes. He afterwards engraved for the same Pope and his successor a series of coins, which have always been considered by the best judges to rival the finest productions of antiquity. But his was not the mild temper of the artist, nor was the history of his studio all the history of his life. He was brutal and ungovernable in his rage, and licentious in his love; and he was feared and hated almost as much as he was admired, although an easy tolerance of vice was the fashion of the time. A certain goldsmith, named Pompeo, had incurred his enmity by trying to deprive him of the favour of Clement VII.; and during the interregnum which followed the death of that Pope, he stabbed the unfortunate artist in open day and in the very midst of Rome. But he escaped the direct punishment due to this atrocious crime, for Paul III., who succeeded to the Papal throne, not only pardoned him, but gave him many important commissions. He was actively engaged in these labours when he was threatened by a new danger—probably the consequence of a former outrage. A workman accused him of having stolen some of the jewels entrusted to his keeping during the siege of Rome. Paul could afford to forgive the murder of a subject, but he could not look so lightly on a theft by which he himself was likely to be a sufferer, and he began to mistrust and to dislike Cellini before he had given himself much pains to examine into the truth of the accusation against him. Added to this, too, the artist had a mortal foe near the person of his patron in Peter Louis Farnese, the son of Paul. One such enemy would have been enough for his ruin; with two, he could hardly fail to be utterly lost.

“One morning,” says Cellini in his memoirs, “I put on my cloak to take a short walk, and was turning down the Julian street to enter the quarter called Chiavica, when Crispino, captain of the city guard, met me with his whole band of sbirri, and told me roughly I was the Pope’s prisoner. I answered him, ‘Crispino, you mistake your man.’ ‘By no means,’ said Crispino, ‘you are the clever artist Benvenuto; I know you very well, and have orders to conduct you to the Castle of St. Angelo, where noblemen and men of genius like yourself are confined.’ As four of his myrmidons were going to fall upon me and deprive me forcibly of a dagger which I had by my side, and of the rings on my fingers, Crispino ordered them not to offer to touch me. It was sufficient, he said, for them to do their office and prevent me from making my escape. Then coming up to me, he very politely demanded my arms. Whilst I was giving them up, I recollected that it was in that very place that I had formerly killed Pompeo. They conducted me to the castle, and locked me up in one of the upper apartments of the tower. This was the first time I ever tasted the inside of a prison; and I was then in my thirty-seventh year.”

It was not difficult for Benvenuto to disprove the charges against him; he was, nevertheless, kept in prison in spite of the good offices of Montluc, the ambassador of France, who begged for his release, in the name of Francis I. The governor of St. Angelo was a Florentine, and he showed every attention to his unfortunate fellow-citizen, even allowing him on parole a certain freedom of movement within the walls. But after a time he shut him up closely again; and then once more restored him to his state of partial liberty.

“When I found,” says Benvenuto, “that I was being treated with so much rigour, I reflected deeply on the matter; and I said to myself, ‘If this man should again happen to take such a freak, and not choose to trust me any longer, I should feel myself released from my word, and should make a trial of my own skill.’ I then began to get my servants to bring me new thick sheets, and did not send back the dirty ones; and when they asked me for them, I told them that I had given them away to some of the soldiers, but that they were not to speak about it or the poor fellows would run the risk of being sent to the galleys. I hid my sheets in the mattress that served me for a bed, and burnt the straw with which it was stuffed, bit by bit, in my chimney, to make room for them. I then tore them up into long bands, and when I had enough of these bands to reach to the bottom of the tower, I told my servants I did not mean to give away any more of my linen, adding that they were to bring me finer sheets in future, and I would return them the dirty ones.

“The constable of the castle had annually a certain disorder which totally deprived him of his senses, and when the fit came on him he was talkative to excess. Every year he had some different whim: at one time he thought himself metamorphosed into a pitcher of oil; at another he believed himself a frog, and began to leap around like one; and again he imagined he was dead, and it was found necessary to humour him by making a show of burying him. He had, in fact, a new mania every year. This year he fancied himself a bat,

and when he went to take a walk he sometimes made just such a noise as bats do, and made gestures with his hands and body as if he were going to fly. The physicians, who knew his disorder, and his old servants procured him all the amusements they could think of, and as they found he took very great pleasure in my conversation, they often fetched me to his apartments, where the poor man would chat with me for three or four hours at a time. On one of these occasions he asked me whether I had ever wished to fly. I answered that I had always been readiest to attempt such things as men found most difficult, and that with regard to flying, as God had given me a body admirably well calculated for running, I had even resolution enough to attempt to fly. He then asked me to explain how I proposed to do that. I replied that when I attentively considered the several creatures that fly, and thought of effecting by art what they do by the force of nature, I did not find one so fit to imitate as the bat. As soon as the poor man heard mention made of the bat, his mania for the year turning upon that animal, he cried out aloud, ‘That’s very true; a bat is the thing.’ He then suddenly turned to me and said, ‘Would you, Benvenuto, if you had the opportunity, have the heart to make the attempt to fly?’ I answered that if he would give me permission, I had courage enough to attempt to fly as far as Prati by means of a pair of wings waxed over. ‘I should like to see you fly,’ he returned, ‘but as the Pope has enjoined me to watch over you with the utmost care, and I know that you have the cunning of the devil, and would be glad of the opportunity to make your escape, I mean to keep you locked up with a hundred keys to prevent you from slipping out of my hands.’ I then began to supplicate him afresh, reminding him that I had had it in my power to make my escape, but would never avail myself of the opportunity through respect for the promise I had given him. Whilst I was uttering these words he gave peremptory orders that I should be bound, and confined a closer prisoner than ever.

“I at once began to think about the means of making my escape. As soon as I was locked in, I made a careful examination of my prison, and thinking that I had found a sure way out of it, I turned over several plans for descending from the top of the great tower, where I was, to the ground. At last, guessing the length of line which would about carry me down, I took a new pair of sheets, cut them into the requisite number of strips, and sewed them fast together. The next thing I wanted was a pair of pincers, which I stole from a Savoyard on guard at the castle. This man had the care of the casks and the cisterns, and likewise worked as a carpenter; and as he had several pairs of pincers, and one amongst others which was thick and large, I took it, thinking it would suit my purpose, and laid it in the tick of my bed. When the time had come for making use of the pincers, I began to pull at the nails fastening the plates of iron fixed upon the door; and, as the door was double, the clenching of those nails could not be perceived. I exerted my utmost efforts to draw out one of them, and at last, with great difficulty succeeded. As soon as I had drawn a few, I was again obliged to torture my invention in order to devise some expedient to prevent the loss being perceived. I immediately thought of mixing a little of the filings of the rusty iron with wax; and, as this mixture was exactly of the colour of the heads of the nails I had drawn, I counterfeited a resemblance of them on the iron plates, and in this manner imitated in wax as many as I drew. I left each of the plates fastened both at top and bottom, and refixed them with some of the nails I had drawn; but the nails were cut, and I drove them in only a little way, so that they just served to hold the plates. I found it a very difficult matter to do all this, because the governor dreamed every night that I had made my escape, and used to send often to have the prison searched. The man who came on these visits had the appearance and bearing of one of the city guards. His name was Bozza, and he used to bring with him another, named John Pedignone; the latter was a soldier, the former a servant. This Pedignone never came to my room without giving me abusive language. The other one confined himself to examining the plates of iron I have mentioned, as well as the whole prison. I constantly said to him, ‘Look after me well, for I mean to escape.’ These words once made him very angry with me, and I took that opportunity of depositing all my tools—that is to say, my pincers and a tolerably long dagger, with other things belonging to me—in the tick of my bed, and of sweeping the room myself, as soon as it was daylight, for I naturally delighted in cleanliness, and on this occasion I took care to be particularly neat. As soon as I had swept the room I made my bed with equal care, and adorned it with flowers which were every morning brought me by the Savoyard. When Bozza and Pedignone came near the bed, I told them angrily to keep away from it lest it should be defiled by their touch; and afterwards, when merely to amuse themselves, they tumbled the sheets, I added, ‘You dirty dogs, keep off, or I’ll draw one of your swords and maul you as you were never mauled before! Do you think your paws are fit to touch the bed of a man like me? If I made up my mind to kill you, I should not in the least hesitate to sacrifice my own life; so be warned in time; leave me to my own troubles and sorrows, and do not add to the bitterness of my lot, or I will show you what a desperate man can do.’ The men duly repeated all this to the constable, who expressly ordered them never to go near my bed, to unbuckle their swords before coming to my cell, and to be as careful as possible in all other respects. The object of all this on my part was to secure my bed from search, and I gained my point.

“One holiday evening the constable was in a very bad way, and his mania had risen to such a pitch that he did nothing but repeat that he had become a bat. He told his attendants to take no notice if Benvenuto should escape, for he would soon be caught by a bat so much better able to fly by night than himself. ‘Benvenuto,’ the poor man was pleased to add, ‘is a counterfeit bat; I am a real one; let me alone to manage him. I’ll soon have him back again. I’ll be bound.’ He had continued in this state for several nights, till he quite tried the patience of all his servants, as I learned from my faithful Savoyard, who continued very much attached to me. I had made up my mind to escape that night, let what would happen, and I began by praying fervently to Almighty God that it would please his Divine Majesty to befriend and assist me in my hazardous enterprise. I then went to work, and was employed the whole night in getting everything in readiness. Two hours before daybreak I took the iron plates from the door, with great trouble and difficulty, for the bolt and the wood that received it made a great resistance, so that I could not open them, but was obliged to cut the wood. I, however, at last forced the door; and having taken with me the slips of linen I have mentioned, which I had rolled up in bundles with the utmost care, I got out, and reached the right side of the tower, and leaped with the utmost ease upon two tiles of the roof which I had observed from within. I was in a white doublet, and had on a pair of white leggings, over which I wore tight boots that reached half-way up my legs, and in one of these I put my dagger. I then took the end of one of my bundles of long slips, which I had made out of the sheets of my bed, and fastened it to a tile that happened to jut out four inches, to which it hung like a stirrup. I then again prayed to God in these terms: ‘Almighty God,. come to my aid; for thou knowest that my cause is just, and that I aid myself.’ Then letting myself go very gently,. and supporting myself by the strength of my arms, I reached the ground. There was no moon, but the night was clear. When I once more felt the earth beneath my feet, I looked up with awe at the immense height from which I had made so adventurous a descent, and I went forward very joyfully believing I was free, though that was by no means the case.

“The constable had built on this side of the castle two pretty high walls, which enclosed his stables and his hen-houses, and which were closed by doors with very strong bolts. Despairing of being able to leave the place that way, I wandered on at hazard, reflecting on my sad position, when my foot struck suddenly against a large pole covered with straw. I reared it, though not without great difficulty, by the side of the wall, and then by sheer strength of arm I climbed to the top of it, and so reached the parapet. The end of the pole being firmly fixed in an angle of the coping stone, I could not draw it up after me, but it afforded me a secure fastening for my second band (I had been obliged to leave the first hanging from my window in the tower), and by this means I reached the ground on the other side of the wall, though with hands torn and dripping with blood. I was very greatly fatigued, but after I had rested a little I felt strong enough to attempt to surmount the last wall looking towards Prati. I accordingly laid my roll of bands on the ground for a moment, and was just about to throw one of them over a battlement, when I saw a sentinel standing almost by my side. Feeling that not only the success of my enterprise, but my very life was in danger, I was preparing to attack the fellow, when he saved me the trouble by taking to his heels as soon as he saw the glitter of the poniard in my hand. I lost no time in getting back to my bands, and then I saw another man on guard, but he appeared not to wish to notice me. I fastened my band to the battlement; I clambered up the wall on one side, and I slid down it on the other; but, whether from fatigue or from a miscalculation as to the distance between my feet and the ground, I opened my hands too soon, and fell head first to the earth with such violence that I remained unconscious an hour and a half, as nearly as I can judge.

“The freshness of early morning brought me to myself, but I did not at once recover my memory. It seemed to me that I had had my head cut off and that I was in purgatory. But as my reason gradually came back, I saw that I was outside the castle, and then I remembered all I had been doing. I put my hands to my head, and found that it was covered with blood. There was no serious wound upon my body, but on attempting to raise myself, I found I had broken my right leg in three places at a point about midway between the knee and the heel. Without in the least losing courage, I drew my knife and its sheath from my boot. There was a great ball at the end of the sheath, and this, pressing on the bone in my fall, had caused the fracture. I threw the sheath away, and cutting up what little of the band was left with the poniard, I set the leg as best I could and knife in hand began to crawl slowly on my knees towards the city gate. It was closed; but observing that one of the great stones that formed the threshold was loose, I managed to pick it out, and to squeeze my body through the aperture. It was more than five hundred paces from the place where I had fallen to this gate.

“I had hardly entered Rome when a number of prowling dogs rushed at me, and tore me cruelly; but when they returned to the charge, I gave them a taste of my poniard, and pricked one of them so vigorously that he limped off with a hideous howl that damped the ardour of the rest. I followed his example, so far as to leave that place, and I set out on my knees for the church of the Traspontina.

“When I came to the end of the street that turns down to St Angelo, I directed my steps towards St Peter’s. It was broad day, and I ran some risk of being discovered; so, seeing a water-carrier pass by leading a heavily laden ass, I called out to him to take me on his shoulders and carry me to St Peter’s market-place. ‘I am,’ said I, ‘a poor fellow who has broken his leg in trying to preserve the honour of a lady. I had to leap from a window to save myself from being cut to pieces, and I am still in danger. Take me up then, I beg of you, and you shall have a crown in gold for your trouble;’ and I put my hand to my purse, where I carried a good number of these tempters. He at once lifted me in his arms, and carried me to the market-place, where he left me very hastily, and went back to find the ass. I then took to my hands and knees once more, and slowly crawled towards the Duke Octavio’s house. The duchess, his wife, was a daughter of the Emperor, and had

been married to Duke Alexander of Florence. Many of my friends had accompanied this great princess from Florence to Rome, and I knew that she was extremely well disposed towards me.

“I crawled, then, towards his Excellency’s house, where I felt certain of finding safety. But, as the adventures I had gone through were too wonderful for a mere mortal, God would not let me give myself up to the vain glory which must have followed an absolute success, but mercifully ordained for my good an affliction far more severe than any to which I had yet been subjected.

“While I was on my way to St. Peter’s market-place, I was recognised by a servant of Cardinal Cornaro, who was lodged at the Vatican. The man ran at once to his master’s bedroom, woke him, and said, ‘Benvenuto, your protégé, is below; he has escaped from the castle, and he is dragging himself along all covered with blood. He seems to have his leg broken, and there is no saying where he is going.’ ‘Quick,’ said the cardinal, ‘run and bring him to me—in this room.’ When I came before him, he at once told me I had nothing to fear, and he sent for the best surgeons in Rome to attend upon me. He also took care to have me placed in a secret apartment; and having thus provided for my immediate wants, he set out to demand, in person, my pardon of the Pope.

“By this time there was a great stir in Rome, for the bands hanging from the high tower had been discovered, and all the city ran to see this incredible thing.

“When Cardinal Cornaro reached the Vatican, he met Signor Roberto Pucci, and related to him the details of my escape, and the fact that I was at that moment hidden in his house. The two then went together to throw themselves at the feet of the Pope; but before they could speak, his Holiness said to them, ‘I know what it is you want of me.’ ‘Most holy father,’ said Pucci, ‘we beg of you, for pity’s sake, to spare this poor man. His talents entitle him to some consideration; and he has just shown such courage and address as seem above humanity. We know not for what offences your Holiness has had him put in prison, but if they are at all pardonable, we entreat you to forget them for our sake.”

“The Pope, somewhat ashamed, replied that he had sent me to prison because I was too presumptuous; ‘But,’ he added, ‘his merit is very well known, and we wish to keep him near us, to which end we will place him beyond the necessity of returning to France. I am sorry that he is so ill. Tell him to make haste to get well, and say that we will then give him cause to forget all the miseries he has suffered.”

“These two great personages duly brought me these good tidings on the part of the Pope.”

* * * * * *

The governor afterwards visited him, and asked if no one had aided him in his flight.

Cellini continues: “When he went back to the Pope, he gave him all the particulars of my escape, as he had heard them from me, to the astonishment of every one present. ‘It is truly something prodigious,’ said the Pope. ‘Most holy father,’ replied my old enemy, the Signor Peter Louis Farnese, ‘he will do many other things equally prodigious for you, if you set him at liberty, for he is one of the most audacious of men. I will give you a proof of it, of which perhaps you have not yet heard. Before you shut him up in the Castle of St. Angelo, this same Benvenuto, having had some words with one of the Cardinal Santa Fiore’s gentlemen, threatened to strike him; and the cardinal hearing of the affair, said that if the arch-fool attempted to carry out his threat, he would cure him once for all. The words were repeated to Benvenuto, and the cardinal’s palace being in front of his studio, he took his musket one day when he saw his Eminence at the window, and was just going to shoot him, when his intended victim happened to be warned in time and withdrew. He can put a ball in the centre of a farthing with that musket; and when he saw that the cardinal had escaped him, he coolly blew off the head of a pigeon perched on the opposite roof, to give his enemies a proof of his skill. But let your Holiness do what you please with him; I, at least, have warned you. The man is quite capable, if he thought himself unjustly treated, of firing upon even you. He has a character of the utmost ferocity, and he stops at nothing. Remember, he ran his dagger twice into Pompeo’s throat, although the poor wretch was in the midst of ten men appointed expressly to guard him. One of Santa Fiore’s gentlemen was present, and confirmed what the Pope’s son had said.

“The Pope was still under the unfortunate impression produced by these words when, two days after the above conversation, Cardinal Cornaro came to ask him for a bishopric for one of his gentlemen, André Centano. The Pope had, in fact, promised him the bishopric; and, as one was now vacant, the cardinal reminded him of his word. ‘It is true,’ said his Holiness, ‘I have promised you a bishopric, and you shall have one; but I have one favour to ask in return—let me have Benvenuto again.’ ‘Most holy father,’ replied the cardinal, ‘you have for my sake consented to his pardon and his liberty, what will the world say of both of us?’ ‘You want your bishopric,’ replied the Pope, ‘and I want my Benvenuto: let the world say what it pleases.’ ‘Give me my bishopric,’ said the good cardinal, ‘and for the rest your Holiness yourself shall be the judge of what ought to be, and what can be done.’ ‘I will send for Benvenuto,’ said the Pope, somewhat ashamed of breaking his word, ‘and I will put him in one of the lower apartments of my private garden, where he will want for nothing that can aid his recovery. His friends may come and see him, and I will bear the entire cost of his living myself.’

“The cardinal returned to his apartments, and sent to tell me through Signor André that the Pope wished to have me once more in his power, but that I should be lodged in his private garden, and should be free to see any one I pleased. I implored André to ask the cardinal not to give me up, but rather to let me have myself taken at once to a safe place I knew of outside Rome, for that to put me in the power of the Pope would be to send me to death.

“The cardinal would, I believe, have aided me to carry out this plan; but Signor André, who did not like to give up his bishopric, caused the Pope to be acquainted with the whole affair, and I was immediately ordered into custody.”

Cellini was well treated for a time in his new prison. He was afterwards sent to Torre di Nova, and from thence he was taken back again to the Castle of St. Angelo. The mad governor, incensed with a prisoner who had dared to brave him, threw the unfortunate artist into a subterranean cell, which only admitted the sun’s rays for about an hour and a half each day. He remained there four months, with nothing to occupy his time but the reading of the Bible and the Chronicles of Villani, which had been sent to him by his tormentor. This poor maniac felt that he was dying; and attributing his death to Benvenuto, he sometimes redoubled his cruelty towards him, though at others he treated him with greater tenderness. He had him removed from his first dungeon to another and a deeper one, particularly famed since a certain preacher named Foiano had died there of starvation. Meanwhile Montluc, the ambassador of France, had very energetically demanded Cellini’s liberty, in the name of his master, Francis I., and after a time, the governor, whose reason was restored a few days before his death, also urged his release. At length Cardinal Ferrara, on his arrival from France, went to pay his respects to the Pope, who kept him to dinner, “Thinking,” says Cellini, “that a good meal loosens the tongue, and wishing to hear his Eminence talk on several important subjects.” The cardinal, an accomplished diplomatist, accepted the invitation, and entertained the Pope with the pleasures and the amusements of the Court of France, till he saw that he had put his Holiness into an excellent humour, when he implored him in the name of the King to pardon Cellini. The Pope consented, and said to him with a loud burst of laughter, “Take him away at once with you.” The necessary orders were given, and without so much as waiting for the morrow, the cardinal sent immediately for Cellini, who left the Castle of St. Angelo, never to return to it again.

MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS.
1568.

When the confederate Scotch lords had taken Mary Stuart prisoner after her defeat at Carberry Hill, and had resolved to dethrone her, they sent her for safe custody to the castle of Loch Leven, situate on a small island in the middle of the lake of that name. They chose this gloomy place, not only because it was nearly inaccessible, but because the hapless lady would there be in the keeping of that most watchful of all gaolers, a mortal enemy. Margaret Erskine, mother of William Douglas, the owner of the castle, had had a son by James V., whom it pleased her to regard as the legitimate heir to the throne of Scotland, and she hated Mary as an obstacle to her schemes of ambition. Religious differences intensified this feeling, for Margaret was a zealous Presbyterian. In short, her character, her faith, her family pride, and the natural harshness of her temper, all conspired to make her an inexorable guardian of the unfortunate Queen.

After Mary had been compelled by violence to renounce the crown in favour of her son, she was placed in the most rigorous confinement, the strictest watch being kept over her to prevent her, not only from effecting her escape, but from holding any sort of communication with the outer world. Many of the sovereigns of Europe were well disposed towards her, but she was not allowed to write to her friends, though she sometimes found an opportunity of doing so while the daughters of Margaret, who shared her chamber, were asleep, or at their meals. The cruelty of these restraints defeated their end, for it touched the very son her gaoler, George Douglas, with compassion for the captive Queen, and led him to form a plan for her escape. But his first attempt to aid her was unsuccessful. It was arranged that the Queen should leave the castle in the dress of the laundress who brought her linen to Loch Leven, and that George Douglas and a number of his partisans should be ready to receive her as soon she had crossed the lake. The appointed day came; the young man was at his post, and the Queen, thanks to her disguise, had actually got clear of the castle, and reached the boat, when one of the boatmen, struck by the figure of the pretended laundress, attempted to lift her veil, and the hasty gesture with which the Queen resisted his touch, revealed a hand too white and too delicately formed to be that of a hard-working girl. The man at once guessed her real rank, but even at that moment Mary did not lose her presence of mind. She declared her name and title, and ordered him, on pain of death, to row her across the lake. The name of Margaret Erskine had, however, greater terror for the fellow than that of Mary Stuart; and the Queen was taken back to captivity again.

As the penalty of this unfortunate attempt of the 25th March, George Douglas was sent away from the island. This did not, however, make him one whit the less eager to succeed in his noble design; and he confided the Queen to the care of one who was equally devoted to her—his brother, a youth of fifteen or sixteen, called the “Little Douglas,” and employed as page to his mother.

Mary was, of course, made to suffer more heavily, and every fresh precaution against her escape took the form of a new torture. Her life became almost unendurable. She wrote to Elizabeth, to Catherine de’ Medicis, and to Charles IX., supplicating them for aid, but before any of them could move in her favour other help was at hand. George Douglas had never forgotten his promise to set her free. He used the liberty gained by his banishment from the castle in extending the circle of her friends. He engaged the powerful families of the Seatons and the Hamiltons in her cause, and with their aid formed a more carefully prepared plan than the last for her escape. It was arranged that on a given night they should be waiting for her where he had formerly waited. The page, young Douglas, undertook the rest. Sunday, the 2nd May, 1568, was the day fixed for the execution of the project. The whole household at Loch Leven took their meals in a common hall; and while they were together the keys of the fortress were placed on the table by the governor’s side. At supper time on the appointed night the young page watched his opportunity; and while he held out his plate to be filled, he contrived to get possession of the keys without being for the moment observed. He at once ran to Mary’s chamber and released her, and then led her to the boat, locking every door behind him on his way to diminish the chances of pursuit. He then threw the keys into the lake, and took the oars, after handing the Queen and her waiting-woman into their seats, and pulled vigorously for the shore. Before leaving the castle he had placed a signal light in one of the windows, so that when the Queen stepped from the boat she found her friends waiting to receive her. She at once took horse, and accompanied by Lord Seaton, galloped hard for that nobleman’s house at Niddry, in East Lothian, whence after a few hours’ repose she made her way to the more strongly fortified castle of the Hamiltons. She was received there by the Archbishop St. Andrew’s and Lord Claude, who had gone out to meet her with fifty horses. The news of this escape, according to Scott, spread through Scotland with the rapidity of lightning, and the Queen was greeted everywhere with enthusiasm. The people remembered her affability, her grace, her beauty, and her misfortunes; and if they remembered her errors too, it was only to say that she had been punished for them too severely. On Sunday Mary had been a sad captive, abandoned to her enemies in a solitary tower; and on the Saturday

following she found herself at the head of a powerful confederation, in which nine counts, eight lords, nine bishops, and a great number of gentlemen of the highest rank were engaged to defend her and to restore her to her throne. But this ray of hope only illumined her sombre destiny for an instant.

The keys thrown into the lake by the page were found by a fisherman in 1805, and are now placed at Kinross. The place where the fugitive Queen landed, on the southern shore of the lake, is still called Mary’s Knoll.

CAUMONT DE LA FORCE.
1572.

During the massacre of St. Bartholomew the murderers found their way into the Rue de la Seine, where lived Monsieur de la Force and his two sons, who were noted for their courageous profession of the condemned doctrines. Monsieur de la Force was strongly urged by his brother to escape, but he refused, because his eldest son, who had been very ill, was not yet able to travel, and he would not leave him behind. He had barely taken his heroic resolution before he was surrounded and made prisoner by a band of zealots, red-handed from the work of death. They threatened him, but desisted for a time when he offered their chief two thousand crowns of ransom. He was then led away with his two sons to a house in the Rue des Petits-Champs, and left there in the custody of two Swiss soldiers, after he had given his solemn word of honour that he would not try to escape. The soldiers felt some pity for the hapless gentleman, and gave him to understand that they would not stand in the way of his flight; but he was a slave to his word, and he refused either to move himself or to allow even his youngest son to be taken to a place of safety.

On the next day, according to the Memoirs of La Force, Count Coconas, with a party of fifty soldiers, came to the house in the Rue des Petits-Champs, and told Monsieur de la Force that he had come to fetch him by order of Monsieur the King’s brother. There was a purposed vagueness in the words which did not escape the unhappy gentleman’s notice, and he asked where he was to be taken, at the same time beginning to make some few alterations in his dress, as if he thought it best to pretend to believe what he had heard. But Coconas spared him this trouble, and at the same time relieved himself of the irksomeness of concealment, by tearing hat and cloak out of his hands before he could put them on. Then both father and sons knew what was intended for them, and began to prepare their minds for death. It soon became evident that they were not being conducted to the apartments of Monsieur in the Louvre; but when De la Force pointed this out to the escort, and complained bitterly of the breach of faith towards him after his offer of ransom had been accepted, they answered not a word, but pushed their victims on towards the slaughterhouse.

The father, bareheaded and without his cloak, walked first; the sons, in the same half-naked condition, followed—the elder, who could scarcely move, but to whom terror had given a little strength, being second; and the younger the last in the dismal column. In this way they were taken the entire length of the Rue des Petits-Champs, until they came to the rampart, when the officer in charge, without a word of warning, called out, “Kill! kill!” and in an instant, a circle of soldiers was formed round the victims, and the daggers were at work. The eldest son fell first with the cry, “O my God, I am dead!” The father, turning instinctively to help him, was struck as he was bending over the body, and fell across him—his shield even in death. The youngest son, by nothing less than a miracle of presence of mind, repeated his brother’s cry before a single dagger had reached him, and fell with the others, though his skin was not so much as scratched. But his body was covered all over with the blood that welled from their wounds, and the assassins stripped him almost naked without once suspecting that he had not received a mortal thrust. When they had treated all their victims in this way, they left their naked and still warm bodies with the contemptuous expression, “There they lie, all three.”

The eldest son was quite dead; his diseased frame had probably offered no resistance to the shock of the first blow; the father was mortally wounded, but he lay a long while gasping out his life, while the frame of his youngest and unhurt child, who had nestled close to him the better to feign death, vibrated to every shudder. The child was, of course, quite conscious, and perhaps his position was the more pitiable of the two, for he lay side by side with death, or worse than death, without daring to stir or to utter a single cry of horror, lest he should bring the assassins back. He remained in this sickening companionship till about four in the afternoon, when some persons crept out of the neighbouring houses to look at the bodies and secure what few valuables the soldiers had left behind. One of these marauders, a marker at tennis, in taking off the stockings of the living child, turned him over with his face to the sky, with the exclamation, “Alas! poor little one, what harm has he done?” “I am not dead,” whispered young Caumont, raising himself gently: “pray, pray, save my life!”

“Hush!” said the man; “keep quiet: they are still there,” and pointing to a group of the murderers who were still hovering about the place, he went away, but returned after a little while, when the coast was clear, and told the child to get up. He had brought a tattered, dirty cloak with him, which he threw over Caumont’s naked shoulders; and in this guise of poverty and wretchedness he drove the child before him through the streets, pretending that he was chastising a runaway nephew who had sold his clothes. By this ruse he contrived to pass almost unquestioned through several groups both of citizens and of soldiers, and to lead the boy to the miserable garret in which he and his family lived.

Caumont hid himself for a while in the straw of the marker’s bed, and tried to get a little sleep. In the meantime the man had observed that he wore several rings of great value; and he asked for them in return for his hospitality as soon as the child awoke. Caumont unhesitatingly drew them one by one off his fingers with the exception of a certain diamond, which had been his mother’s gift; and in answer to a question by the marker’s wife, he told her why he wished to keep it. The woman angrily replied that he ought to grudge nothing to persons who had shown him so much kindness, and who could not afford to be out of pocket by their good actions; and the child knowing how much he was in their power, reluctantly yielded up the coveted reward. She then gave him a meal of very unpalatable food, and her husband offered to guide him to any place of safety he might select. The child at first chose the Louvre, where his sister, Madame de Larchant, was near

the person of the Queen; but the man positively refused to take him there on account of the great risk of his being recognised by some of the guards. “Take me to the arsenal then,” said young De Caumont, “to the house of Madame de Brisambourg, my aunt.” “Agreed,” replied the tennis-marker; “it is a long way, but we will go round by the ramparts, and perhaps we shall be so lucky as not to meet a single person on the road.”

Early the next morning little Caumont, once more disguised in the dirtiest garments, and wearing a red hat bearing a leaden cross, set out with the tennis-marker for the arsenal, which they reached without any noteworthy incident. At the outer gate, Caumont told his guide to go no farther, but to wait until some one should return to him with the dress and thirty crowns. The child at the same time stood ready to enter the arsenal, but he could not summon up courage to call out to the soldiers to open the gate. At length, however, some one came out, and he passed in without having to submit to the dreaded scrutiny. He traversed the first court, and saw several people whom he thought he knew; but he was so effectually concealed in his rags that none of them had a moment’s suspicion of his real identity.

In the massacre in which Caumont had so narrowly escaped death, a page named La Vigerie, and called L’Auvergnat, to distinguish him from a namesake, had met with an equally miraculous preservation. He was with M. de la Force and his two sons in the house in the Rue des Petits-Champs when the Count de Coconas and his party arrived; and he was about to follow his master, when one of the Swiss soldiers said to him, “Look out for yourself; they are going to be killed.” He accordingly stayed behind; and as soon as the party had left he stole quietly out of the house, and followed them at a distance without attracting notice, for he wore the livery of the Count de la Marck, one of the chiefs of the massacre. He watched the assassins at their bloody work, and then hurried away to Madame de Brisambourg at the arsenal, with the news of her brother-in-law’s death. He was kindly received, and though the lady was well-nigh overwhelmed with grief, she took ample measures to provide for his safety.

The young De la Force had stood for some time trembling before Madame de Brisambourg’s door, when it was opened from within, and he saw this page standing in the entry. He called out to him, but in so weak a voice that he was not heard, and the door was closed again. But shortly after it opened a second time, and then he made himself heard, calling out two or three times in the energy of his misery and his despair, “Auvergnat! Auvergnat!” The page ran out, and for a time failed to recognise his young master in the dirty and ill-dressed little boy who began to appeal to him for protection. “Do you not know me, Auvergnat?” inquired the child, looking him full in the face. The Auvergnat returned his gaze, and when at length he found out who it was, his astonishment at this return to life of one slain, as he thought, before his very eyes was almost ludicrous to witness. He at once seized Caumont by the hand, and hurried away with him to a gentleman of the household, by whom he was taken to Madame de Brisambourg. The lady fell on his neck, and for some time could not speak for sobs.

When she was a little recovered Caumont told her his story, and her first care was to have his dress changed, and to send back the bundle of dirty clothes with the promised reward of thirty crowns to the tennis-marker at the outer gate. She then had him put to bed in the room occupied by her waiting-women. After he had slept a little he got up, and dressing himself, by his aunt’s direction, in the livery of the Marshal de Biron, Grand Master of the Artillery, was taken to see that nobleman, and allowed to enter his service as a page, with the Auvergnat for a play-fellow.

He had not been more than two days in the marshal’s apartments when word was brought that the King had heard of fugitives being concealed there, and had directed that the place should be searched. The marshal was greatly incensed, and he ordered four pieces of cannon to be pointed against the principal gate of the arsenal, to repel any attempt at intrusion. Whatever truth there may have been in this particular rumour, the Queen-mother had certainly heard of the escape and concealment of young De la Force; for a very few days after his arrival at the arsenal, she sent a gentleman to the marshal’s apartments, at the instance of a certain M. de Larchant, to demand him. While this messenger was discharging his errand, the child was hurried away into the room of the marshal’s daughters, and concealed between two beds, on which a few farthingales were thrown with such an appearance of carelessness that no one would ever have thought of looking for a fugitive there. When all was ready, the gentleman was invited to begin his search, and he passed through all the rooms without finding the boy. He then returned to the Louvre, with the tidings that the Queen had been deceived by a false rumour, greatly to the disgust and disappointment of M. de Larchant, for it was this person in effect who had mainly instigated the Queen-mother to order the search. He was actuated by the very vilest motives, being next heir after the three De la Forces to a very considerable property. His influence was all-powerful at the palace; and but for this circumstance it is more than probable that none of that family would have been marked for destruction at the massacre.

When the Queen’s gentleman had gone, young Caumont crept out from between the beds and went back to his old place of concealment in the marshal’s apartments. But it was not considered prudent to let him remain there, and the very next day, M. de Born, Lieutenant-general of the Artillery, and a friend of his aunt, took him very secretly to his own lodgings, where they breakfasted. M. de Born then told him that he was to enter the service of M. Guillon, Controller of the Artillery, as page, and that when asked his name he was to say he was son of M. de Beaupuy, a lieutenant under the Marshal de Biron. He at the same time cautioned him particularly against leaving the house when in M. Guillon’s service, and against talking, lest he should by some chance word betray the secret of his identity. The poor child promised faithfully to observe all these directions, and was led away to the controller’s house, trotting by the side of his new protector, who was on horseback because he had a wooden leg, and could not walk without pain.

Arrived at the house, M. de Born delivered the child over to the controller, in a speech full of praises of his friend’s goodness of heart, and lamentations about the disturbed state of the country, which made it very difficult for persons who had the care of young children and such helpless folk to know how best to provide for their security. M. Guillon listened, and readily undertook the charge of young De Beaupuy, as Caumont was called. This was done simply out of his friendship for M. de Born, for the two had been long acquainted; and the fact that, notwithstanding this intimacy, De Born did not think fit to entrust him with the whole secret, may serve to show in what extreme peril the young fugitive was judged to be. Guillon guessed it, nevertheless, from the evident anxiety of his friend, or at least he had a pretty shrewd suspicion that he had not heard all the truth.

Caumont had been some seven or eight days with the controller, and had not failed to do everything M. de Born had told him. His master came home every day to dinner, and it was the new page’s business to let him in; but one day opening the door in answer to a knock at the usual hour, Caumont was surprised to see, in place of M. Guillon, a person he had formerly known. He hastily shut the door in great terror; but the new comer only knocked more loudly than before, and called out that he had a very urgent message to deliver from Madame de Brisambourg. When he had thus gained admittance, he told the child that Madame de Brisambourg had sent him to say that she was in great trouble about her nephew, and wished to have news of him. This said he went away, and the terrified boy still suspecting him, jumped on horseback immediately, and rode to M. de Born to tell him what had happened. M. de Born took him to Madame de Brisambourg for an explanation, but the lady was equally astonished with himself, and said that no messenger had been sent by her.

The peril was immediate, and a council of the child’s friends was held without delay. It was seen that in the neighbourhood in which he then was, the safety of the little fugitive could no longer be reckoned on, and it was resolved to dispatch him into a distant part of the country. The marshal was accordingly prevailed on to apply to the King for a passport for his house-steward, whom he was sending with a page to Guyenne, to look after his affairs in that province. The request was granted; a trusty gentleman of the marshal’s personated the house-steward, and the page was, of course, no other than the poor hunted child. They set out, and thanks to M. de Born, passed safely through the gates of Paris; but when they were about a two days’ journey from the capital, the child was horrified at the sight of a fellow wearing his father’s dressing-gown, whom he recognised as one of the executioners of the Rue des Petits-Champs. The wretch was boasting of his exploits, but some chance words dropped by him acquainted Caumont with the fact that his uncle, with about a hundred of his gentlemen, had escaped the massacre. Farther on their guide put them all in great peril by his imprudence, in publicly condemning the massacre in a little inn in which they stayed. At length, after having escaped many dangers, they arrived on the eighth day of their journey at the chateau of Castelnaut-des-Mirandes, in Guyenne, where the child was received in the arms of his uncle, with every demonstration of gratitude and joy, and where he found plenty, peace, and security awaiting him after all his troubles. (Memoirs of Caumont de la Force.)

CHARLES DE GUISE.
1591.

Charles de Guise, eldest Son of Henry de Guise, who was assassinated at Blois, was arrested at the death of his father, in 1588, and confined in the chateau of Tours. He remained there three years (till 1591) before he could make his escape.

“The duke,” says the president De Thou, had taken counsel with Claude de la Chastre and his son, and had resolved to make an effort for liberty on August 15th, the fête of the Virgin. He took the communion on that day, in order to deceive his guards and to remove all suspicion of his intention from their minds. He had remarked that it was their custom to close the doors after dinner, and to take the keys to the sheriff. On August 15th, accordingly, when the men were seated at their meal in the large hall, he quietly locked them in, and ran with great speed to the top of a high tower which lay nearest to the bridge beyond the city, first taking care to bolt the door behind him.

“Everything succeeded according to his wish. His trusty valet, who aided him on the occasion, was waiting for him at the top of the tower, holding a cord in his hand, with a piece of wood tied transversely to the end of it, to form a seat for the duke and facilitate his descent. When all was ready the valet let the cord go gently, and his master reached the ground in safety. The man then fastened the rope firmly to a stake, and at greater peril followed the duke, who had already hurried away along the course of the river, and whom he did not overtake till he reached Saint-Côme.

“The guards were in great consternation. Rouvray, the Governor of Tours, sent the news of the escape in all directions, with orders to the neighbouring population to take up arms and put themselves on the track of the fugitives. He had previously broken open the door of the tower; but the men employed in the work, finding no traces of their former prisoner, joined their companions, who were running wildly about the city. A great deal of time was wasted in the search for the keys of the bridge gate and the various doors of the chateau, for all the doors were opened at hazard, as it was not known what direction the fugitives had taken.”

“As soon as the duke reached the ground,” says Davila, “he took the road into the country by the Loire, and soon found two men holding a horse ready for him to mount. Galloping hard, he presently joined the Baron de Maison, son of the Lord de la Chastre, who, with three hundred horsemen, attended him beyond the Cher, and who sent the escort on with him to Bourges, where he not only found safety but was received with every demonstration of joy.” (Ludovic Lalanne: Curiosities of Biography.)

MARY DE’ MEDICIS.
1619.

Mary de’ Medicis, after the assassination of her favourite, Concini, seeing herself shut out from all participation in affairs by the intrigues of Luynes, asked for and obtained permission to retire to Blois (May, 1617), where she soon became a prisoner. Luynes surrounded her with spies, and placed two companies of cavalry in the neighbouring villages, with orders to watch her slightest movements. But the Duke d’Épernon and other malcontent lords, who had retired from the court, wishing to give more importance to their party, sought to deliver the Queen-mother and to place her at their head.

M. d’Épernon was chiefly urged on to this enterprise by a devoted adherent of the Queen-mother, named De Ruccellai, who had no other thought than how to serve his mistress, and no other inspiration than a passionate desire to see her at liberty. After long meditation over various plans, Ruccellai thought that no person could be made so useful to him as M. de Bouillon, on account both of that nobleman’s reputation among all classes of his countrymen, particularly among the Huguenots, and of the security which was afforded by his retreat at Sedan. He accordingly made a secret journey to Blois, and obtained the Queen-mother’s permission to speak to M. de Bouillon, and to promise him whatever might be necessary, in her name. He then sought out M. de Bouillon, but at very great peril, for he was obliged to travel by night and alone, for fear of being discovered. M. de Bouillon, however, excused himself from all participation in the design on account of his age, his infirmities, and his good understanding with the King, which he was unwilling to risk, as he had no other wish than to enjoy the benefits of that mercy which had been extended to him after the death of Marshal d’Ancre, and to end his days in peace. He, however, referred the Queen-mother’s messenger to M. d’Épernon, who, being extremely ill-satisfied with De Luynes, and having, besides, a number of large establishments in the kingdom, would be likely to prove far more serviceable in the cause than himself.

Ruccellai, having written to the Queen-mother and obtained her consent to this change of plan, laid his proposals before M. d’Épernon. The latter at first received them with some suspicion, but he was finally won over. At the end of a secret conference at his house, which lasted several days, he authorised Ruccellai to tell the Queen that if she could once contrive to escape from the chateau, and to pass the bridge on the Loire, he would await her arrival on the other side of the river, with such an escort as would conduct her safely, in spite of every obstacle, to Angoulême, or any other part of the kingdom to which she might choose to go. The Queen replied that nothing would be more easy; and Ruccellai pressed D’Épernon to hasten the execution of his part of the plan; but the latter insisted on putting off the enterprise till the February of the following year.

De Luynes, ever suspicious, and wishing to discover the real feelings of the Queen, sent one of his creatures to her, to say that the King was shortly going to Blois, and that he would fetch her away with him. The envoy also made repeated protestations of service on the part of De Luynes, and assured the Queen that she would in future be treated exactly in accordance with her own desires; but he never failed, while proffering these services, to narrowly watch the countenances of the Queen and all who approached her, to gather what he could of their real feelings. But not one of the Queen’s people was yet aware of her design; and as she had already sworn without scruple, so she did not hesitate to swear again, and that so well, that the agent of De Luynes went back firmly persuaded that she was impatient for the coming of the King, and was perfectly ready to be on good terms with his master and forget everything.

D’Épernon, having completed his measures, went to Confolens, where the Archbishop of Toulouse was waiting for him, with two hundred of his friends; but he did not find the expected news of the Queen-mother. He had, however, gone too far to recede; and he at once sent M. du Plessis to the Queen, to warn her of his arrival and to learn her wishes. When M. du Plessis had delivered his message, the Queen decided on setting out that same night.

She then for the first time took others into her confidence, and broke the matter to the Count de Brennes, her master of the horse, to M. de Merçay, and another officer of her body guard, and to the Signora Caterine, her woman of the bedchamber. She ordered the Count de Brennes to be at the door of her room at five the next morning, and to see that her travelling chariot with six horses was at the same time beyond the bridge. The others she kept with her all night, to pack up her jewels and wearing apparel.

With these three gentlemen then, and a single woman of the bedchamber, she left the place on the 22nd of February, at six in the morning, by the window of a room looking out upon the terrace, from which, owing to a broken wall, it was easy to reach the ground without passing by the door of the chateau. After the Queen had let herself glide down this ruin, and had regained her feet, she made her way to the bridge, where she met two men, one of whom, seeing her almost alone at that early hour, passed a very uncharitable judgment upon her. The other, however, recognised her, guessed her purpose, and wished her “God speed.”

On the other side of the bridge she found her carriage, and entering it, with her attendants she went to Montrichard, where she came up with one of her gentlemen, who had preceded her to make sure of the passage of the Cher. She remained there two days, during which time she wrote to the King, and then she set out for Angoulême.

After long conferences and innumerable intrigues, in which De Luynes and Richelieu, then Bishop of Luçon, displayed all their ability, Mary de’ Medicis, seeing all her partisans abandoning her interests in their anxiety to carry on a quarrel among themselves, left Angoulême for Tours, where Louis XIII. and Anne of Austria were waiting for her. They received her at about two leagues from the city, and lavished upon her the most affectionate caresses. She passed seven or eight days with them, and then withdrew for a time to Chinon, until the preparations were completed for her grand entry into Angers.—(Memoirs of Fontenay-Mareuil.)

GROTIUS.
1621.

Grotius was involved in the ruin of Barneveldt, for whom he had a very great admiration, and whose partisan he had been; and was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, and the confiscation of all his property. He was confined in the castle of Louvenstein, near Gorcum. This was in 1619, when he was in his thirty-sixth year. He was very closely guarded, and the only consolation he enjoyed was that of the company of his wife, Marie de Reygesberg, who had obtained permission to visit him. The boon was accompanied by this cruel condition, that if she left the prison she would not be allowed to return to it. After a time, however, the severity of this rule was slightly relaxed, and she was allowed to leave the place twice a week.

Grotius had been some eighteen months at Louvenstein, when Muys van Holi, one of his declared enemies, who had also been one of his judges, warned the States-General that he had received certain information of the prisoner’s intention to escape. An agent was at once sent to the castle, to examine into the truth of the report, but he returned without having been able to find anything in confirmation of it. It was, however, so far true, that Marie de Reygesberg was constantly occupied with a design for effecting her husband’s liberation.

The prisoner had been allowed to borrow books of his friends, and when he had read them they were sent away in a large trunk, together with his linen, which was washed at Gorcum. During the first year the guards had never once failed to make a close search of this trunk whenever it was sent out of the prison; but tired at length of turning over nothing but dirty linen and books, they used to allow it to pass without examination. Their negligence did not escape the notice of the prisoner’s wife, and it occurred to her that she might take advantage of it. She discussed her plans with her husband, and persuaded him to let himself be shut up in the trunk, first taking care to bore several small holes in it at either end for the admission of air. When all was ready, the intended escape was rehearsed. The prisoner was shut up in the trunk during the time usually occupied by the journey to Gorcum, and this experiment was repeated several times, until he had grown tolerably accustomed to all the inconveniences of the situation. The adventurous pair then awaited nothing but a favourable moment for carrying out their design.

This soon came: the commandant of the fortress left the place for a short time on business; and before his departure the brave wife sought an interview with him, and obtained his permission to send away the trunk full of books, alleging as a reason that her husband being very weak, she wished to place the temptation to study beyond his reach. On leaving the commandant she immediately returned to the apartment occupied by Grotius, and shut him up in the trunk. His valet and a female servant were in the secret, and she caused them to spread the report of her husband’s illness among the soldiers, so that his temporary absence from his accustomed place of resort within the castle might occasion no surprise. Two soldiers were then brought in to carry the trunk, and one of them finding it very heavy, observed: “There must be an Arminian inside,” in allusion to the sect, flourishing at this epoch, to which Grotius belonged. The wife replied calmly, “In truth there are some Arminian books.” The chest was then lowered to the ground by means of a ladder, though not without great difficulty. The soldier who had found it too heavy was by no means satisfied with the explanation he had received; and he insisted that the trunk should be opened, in order that he might see what it really contained. He even went so far as to communicate his suspicions to the wife of the commandant, but the lady, either through negligence, or with the deliberate intention of refusing to notice what she had no desire to see, declined to listen to him. She replied, that the trunk contained nothing but books, as the wife of Grotius had assured her, and that it might be taken to the boat. This was done, and the female servant was allowed to take charge of it and to convey it to a certain house in Gorcum, as she had been ordered to do. She steadily refused, on its arrival at the landing-place, to have it placed on a sledge along with the rest of the luggage, on the ground that it was full of very fragile articles, which might easily be damaged. It was accordingly lifted into a hand barrow, and wheeled to the house of David Dazelaër, a friend of Grotius, and a relation of Marie de Reygesberg. When the woman found herself alone with her charge, she lifted the lid of the chest, and her master leaped out safe and sound, though he had suffered somewhat from his long confinement in a space three feet and a half in length. He at once assumed the dress of a mason; and taking a rule and trowel in his hand, he left the house by a back door

and made his way across the square of Gorcum to a gate of the city leading to the river. Here he again took boat and went to Valvic, in Brabant, whence, after making himself known to some Arminian friends, he set out by coach for Anvers, using great precautions on the way to prevent discovery.

Meanwhile, the report of his illness was still current at Louvenstein; and his wife, in order to gain time for him, assured every one that he was in great danger. As soon, however, as she learned, by the return of the servant, that he had reached Brabant, and was, consequently, in safety, she boldly told the guards that their bird had flown. The commandant, who had just returned, ran at once to the prisoner’s apartment and ordered the courageous woman to say where her husband was hidden. She suffered him to spend some time in a fruitless search, and then informed him of the stratagem by which he had been duped. She was at once imprisoned, more rigorously than ever Grotius had been; but she petitioned the States-General, and in a few days was permitted to rejoin the husband for whose liberty she had risked so much.

ISAAC ARNAULD.
1635.

During the winter of 1635, Isaac Arnauld was governor of Philipsburg—a place well fortified by earthworks and a large ditch (the water of which was constantly frozen), but very insufficiently garrisoned. “The Imperialists, who were well informed of everything,” says the Abbé Arnauld, in his “Memoirs,” “had little difficulty in forming their plan of attack and putting it into execution.” When they entered the place they found the garrison under arms, but too weak to sustain a general assault. All the courage and conduct of the governor availed him nothing but to make a desperate defence and to sell his liberty dearly, after nearly all the garrison had been put to the sword. He was obliged to surrender, with a few companions who survived the slaughter; and after having been imprisoned in several places, was at length taken to Esslingen.

To add to the miseries of his situation, he was doomed to hear that he was openly accused, at the Court of France, of having lost Philipsburg by his negligence. From that moment he had but one thought—namely, how he could escape and clear his character before his sovereign; and with this view he steadily refused to become a prisoner on parole. His design was not easy of execution, for he was constantly guarded by soldiers, who accompanied him, even in his walks in the grounds of the fortress, and slept outside the door of his room at night. These difficulties, however, served only to give a stimulus to his invention. He carefully measured with his eye the exact height of his window which opened on the ditch of the fortress, and he became convinced that he had only to make the descent in safety to gain his liberty. He began by gaining the connivance of some French cavalry soldiers who were in the service of the Emperor, with the promise of giving them employment in his own regiment of carabineers, on his return to France; and he afterwards kept his word. The great and almost the only difficulty was to find rope for the descent, for there was but little to fear from the watchfulness of the garrison, the ditch beneath his window being very poorly guarded. To that end he always urged his confederates, when he was taking exercise, to pretend to be amusing themselves with various games, which they were always the more ready to do as he never failed to encourage them with liberal supplies of drink. After a short time, indeed, they proposed the games themselves, and seemed to take a real pleasure in them. One of these games, called Girding the Ass, was peculiarly favourable to his design, for it involved the use of a cord for binding the principal player. Arnauld always found a piece of silver for the purchase of this cord, and never asked for the change. When the game was over, the cord, being too small to seem worth keeping, used to be thrown away, and those who were in the prisoner’s interest took care to pick it up and give it him without attracting attention. When he had as many pieces as he judged necessary for his purpose, he put his scheme into execution, and escaped with the soldiers who had helped him; and he used such diligence that his friends first received the news of his liberty from his own lips.

On his arrival at Paris he constituted himself, by his own act, a prisoner in the Bastille, and demanded a full inquiry into the allegations against him. He remained there several months, until he had cleared his character, and he then consented to be set free. (Memoirs of the Abbé Arnauld.)

THE DUKE OF BEAUFORT.
1648.

The Duke of Beaufort, one of the chiefs of the party of the Fronde, was accused of having tried to assassinate Cardinal Mazarin, and was arrested at the Louvre, by order of Anne of Austria, and imprisoned in the tower of Vincennes. He remained there five years, but at length made his escape by the aid of his friends. The story is best told in the words of Madame de Motteville:—

“On the Day of Pentecost, the 1st of June, 1648, the Duke of Beaufort, who had been confined for five years at Vincennes, escaped from his prison at about twelve at noon. He found means to break his fetters, through the skill of his friends and of some of his own people, who served him faithfully on this occasion. He was closely watched by an officer of the body-guard, and by seven or eight soldiers, who slept in his room and had orders never to lose sight of him. He was waited on, besides, by the King’s own servants, and was not allowed to have one of his own men near him; and, moreover, Chavigny, the Governor of Vincennes, was unfriendly to him. The officer in charge of him, La Ramée, yielding to the request of some companions, had secretly given an asylum in the prison to a certain person, who alleged that he had fought a duel and that he wished to escape the penalty of his offence. There is some reason, however, to believe that he had been taken to Vincennes by the creatures of Beaufort, and probably with the knowledge of the officer; but I cannot speak positively as to this circumstance, and I am unwilling to deceive myself by mere appearances.

“At first this man, willing to make himself useful, played more zeal than any one else in his self-imposed service of watching the prisoner, and even did not shrink from rudeness, as the Queen was informed when this story was told to her. But whether he was at first there for the Duke of Beaufort, or against him, he presently allowed himself to be gained over by that prince, and he became useful to him by communicating with his friend and informing him of the schemes that were on foot for his release. When the time was ripe for the execution of their designs, the confederates expressly chose the Day of Pentecost, because every one was engaged in Divine service during that solemn fête. While the guards were at dinner, the Duke of Beaufort asked La Ramée to allow him to take a walk in a gallery, to which he had sometimes been permitted to have access. This gallery, although lower than the donjon in which the duke was confined, was, nevertheless, at a great height from the ditch, on which it looked. La Ramée followed his prisoner in his walk, and remained alone with him in the gallery. Meanwhile, the man whom the duke had gained had gone to dinner with the others, but, after taking a little wine, he feigned illness and left the table, as though to seek the fresh air of the gallery, taking care, on his way, to fasten several doors that were between his companions and their prisoner. As soon as he had joined the duke, the two threw themselves upon La Ramée so suddenly that he had not time to cry out. He was easily overpowered, for the duke alone was a very strong man. They were unwilling to take his life, though prudence might have dictated that course; but they gagged and bound him very securely, and left him on the floor. They then tied a cord to the window and slid, one after the other, to the ground, the man going first, as the one who would have been the most severely punished if their flight had been prevented. The depth of the ditch is so great, that although their rope was a very long one, they were obliged to drop a considerable distance. The servant suffered no injury from the fall, but the duke came to the earth with such violence that he fainted, and it took some time to bring him to himself. When he was sufficiently recovered, four or five of his people, who were on the other side of the ditch, and who had witnessed his sufferings with an anxiety that may easily be conceived, threw another rope to the fugitives, and by means of it drew them up by sheer force of arm to their own side—the servant taking precedence of his master, as before, in accordance with the engagement between them, which the duke most faithfully observed throughout the affair. When he reached the bank, the duke was in a very poor plight, for he had not only been wounded in falling, but his flesh had been cruelly pressed and cut by the tightened rope. But having a little recovered his strength, as much by his own natural force of will as by his fear of losing the reward of all his exertions, he raised himself and walked into a neighbouring wood, where he found a troop of fifty horsemen ready to do his bidding. One of his gentlemen, who was with him at the time, has since told me that the duke’s joy at seeing himself again at liberty and among his friends was such that it seemed to cure him in an instant, and that he leaped on horseback and vanished like a flash of lightning, as though he were mad with joy at the idea of being able to breathe the air without restraint, and to say with King Francis, when he set foot in France, on his return from Spain, ‘I am free!’ A woman gathering herbs by the side of the ditch, with her little son, saw all that passed; but the men in ambush had so threatened them, and they had besides, so little interest in preventing the escape of the duke, that they were perfectly still and became passive spectators of all that passed. As soon, however, as the fugitives were gone the woman ran with the news to her husband, the gardener of the place, and the two together alarmed the guard. But it was too late; it was not for man to change what God had ordained, for the stars, which seem sometimes to register the decrees of sovereigns, had already informed many persons, through an astrologer, named Goësel, that the duke would leave the chateau that very day. The news had a great effect on the whole court, and particularly on those who knew something of the duke’s plans. The minister was, no doubt, a good deal annoyed at the success of the little plot; but, true to his old habit, he did not make any display of his feelings.”

Madame de Motteville afterwards adds, “The Queen and Cardinal Mazarin talk very good-naturedly about it, and say laughingly, that M. de Beaufort has done right.”

CARDINAL DE RETZ.
1654.

In December, 1652, Cardinal de Retz, who had played so considerable a part in the troubles of the Fronde, was wasting his time in fruitless negotiations with the ministers, when he was arrested at the Louvre and taken to Vincennes. He did not like his prison, and he had therefore to do what was very distasteful to him—namely, to make a humble appeal to the Archbishop of Paris, ere he could procure his transfer to the Chateau of Nantes, then under the governorship of Chalucet. From thence in due time he made his escape; and he gives us the following account of the exploit in his memoirs:—

“The Marshal de la Meilleraye and the First President de Bellièvre came together to fetch me from Vincennes. As the marshal was a martyr to the gout he could not come upstairs, so that M. Bellièvre alone came to my room, and this gave him an opportunity to tell me, as we were leaving it together, that I was to be sure not to give my parole when I was asked for it. I had no sooner reached the bottom of the staircase than the marshal demanded this pledge. I replied, that though I had heard of prisoners of war being required to give their parole, I did not know that the demand was customary in the case of prisoners of state. M. de Bellièvre then struck in on my side and said, ‘You don’t understand one another. The cardinal will not refuse to give his word provided only that you (turning to the marshal) confide absolutely in him, and let him walk about without guards; but if you guard him, monsieur, of what use will his parole be, for a man who is guarded is free from all obligations of honour?’

“The First President knew very well what he was about in saying this, for he had heard the Queen make the marshal promise that they should never lose sight of me. ‘You know,’ replied the marshal, looking M. de Bellièvre in the face, ‘whether or not I am able to do what you propose. But come,’ he continued, turning to me, ‘I must guard you, then, it seems; however, I will take care that you have nothing to complain of.’

“I remained there simply under the charge of M. de la Meilleraye, and he kept his word, for it would have been impossible to add to the kindness with which he treated me. I saw everybody; I had even all the amusements I desired, including a comedy almost every evening. All the ladies were there, and they supped with me very often. The fidelity of the guards to their trust was equal to their good nature. They never lost sight of me except when I entered my room, and the only door of this room was watched by six men, day and night. The window—a very high one—looked out on a courtyard, always filled with soldiers, and the six men appointed to look after me used to watch me from a terrace when I was taking exercise in a little garden planted in a kind of bastion or ravelin on a level with the water.

“I resolved, however, to devote all my energies to the recovery of my liberty. The First President urged me very strongly to make the attempt, and Montresor had sent me, through a lady of Nantes, a note containing the following words:—‘You are to be taken to Brest at the end of the month, if you don’t get away.’ But my task was by no means an easy one. The first thing was to amuse the marshal, and in doing that I did not forget that the most suspicious persons are often the most easily duped. I then spoke to M. de Brissac, who made journeys to Nantes from time to time, and who promised to help me. As he carried a great deal with him he invariably had a number of mules in his train, and it occurred to me that I might easily hide myself in one of the large trunks fastened to these creatures’ backs. A trunk was accordingly made for me somewhat larger than the rest, and with a hole or two in it to admit air. I tried it myself, and came to the conclusion that this means of escape was not only practicable, but that it was as easy as it was simple, and that it would not oblige me to share my secret with many persons.

“M. de Brissac, too, was very much in favour of it at first, but in the course of a journey to Machecoul he quite changed his opinion. On his return to Nantes he assured me that I could not fail to be suffocated in the trunk; but to convince me that his good intentions on my behalf remained the same, he told me that if I devised some other plan I might reckon on very effectual help from him in all that concerned the outside of the castle. We therefore began to take new measures on a plan which I formed myself the moment I became convinced that the other one could not be put into execution.

“I have already said that I used sometimes to take exercise on a kind of ravelin that gives on the river Loire. As we were in the month of August, and the river was very dry, the water did not quite touch the wall of the ravelin, but left a long strip of shore visible at the foot of it. Between the garden which was on the top of this bastion and the terrace where my guards took their station, there was a door, which Chalucet had had made to prevent the soldiers from stealing his grapes. This circumstance shaped my plan, which was to quietly fasten the door after me one day without letting the guards observe what I was doing, and then, while they could still see me through the open trellis-work, without being able to reach me if their suspicions should be aroused, to drop down from the wall by means of a rope provided for me by my doctor and the Abbé Rousseau, and to jump on horseback at the bottom of the ravelin with four gentlemen, whom I intended to make the companions of my flight. This plan was, of course, very difficult of execution. It could only be carried out in open day, between two sentries standing but thirty paces apart, and in full view of the six guards who could fire at me through the openings in the trellis-work. It was necessary again that the four gentlemen who were to accompany me and to favour my escape should be careful to be at the foot of the ravelin at exactly the proper time, for their presence there a moment too early would excite suspicions that might ruin all. If my object had merely been to get out of prison it would have been enough for me to have taken only such measures as I have already indicated; but I had very much more to do besides, for it was my intention to make my way to Paris and to appear there in public. And more than that, I had other pretensions that entailed difficulties of a still more formidable nature. It was desirable that I should travel from Nantes to Paris by diligence, for the couriers of the marshal would be certain to carry the alarm along every road, and it would be impossible for me to avoid observation and arrest if I travelled alone. And lastly, I should have to take care to inform my friends in Paris of my intentions while keeping my enemies there in ignorance of them. No event of our time would be more extraordinary than the success of an escape like mine, if the end of it were at the same time to free me from my fetters and to make me master of the capital of the kingdom.

“I began my flight on Saturday the 8th of April, at five o’clock in the evening. The little garden door closed, so to speak, quite naturally after me, and I slid down easily (with a stick between my legs) from the bastion, which was forty feet high. My valet de chambre, Fromentin, who is with me still, kept the guards occupied by giving them drink, and they became quite absorbed in the amusement of watching a Jacobin, who had got out of his depth in the river and was drowning under the castle walls. The sentinel who was but seventy paces from me, but in such a position that he could not reach me, hesitated to fire, because the moment I saw him getting his match ready I called out to him that he would be hanged if he did me harm, and he afterwards declared that this led him to believe I was escaping with the connivance of the marshal. Two little pages, who were bathing, and who saw me hanging by the rope, cried out lustily that I was trying to get away, but no attention was paid to them, because it was thought that they were merely calling for help for the drowning Jacobin. The four gentlemen were waiting for me at the bottom of the ravelin, where they pretended to be watering their horses as though they were just getting ready for the chase. To be brief, I was on horseback myself before the least alarm had been given, and as I had forty relays placed between Nantes and Paris, I should infallibly have reached the capital had not an accident occurred which I may say has exercised a fatal influence over the rest of my life.

“The moment I got to horse I took the road to Mauve—which is, if I am not mistaken, at about five leagues from Nantes by the river. It was agreed that M. de Brissac and the Chevalier de Sévigné should be in readiness there with a boat to carry me over. La Ralde, master of the horse to the Duke de Brissac, who preceded me, told me that I must gallop very fast, so as not to give the marshal’s guards time to close the gate of a little street in their quarter through which we should have to pass. I was mounted on one of the best horses in the world, which had cost M. de Brissac a thousand crowns, but I did not let him have his head, because the pavement was very bad and very slippery. We were making great speed when one of my gentlemen having suddenly warned me to take to my pistols because two of the marshal’s guards were approaching—who, however, were not paying the least attention to us—I unfortunately followed his advice, and was in the act of presenting the pistol at the nearest guard, when it exploded and frightened my horse, which reared and threw me. I fell with great violence against a door-post and broke my left shoulder. Another of my gentlemen, named Beauchesne, lifted me up and put me on horseback again: and though I endured such frightful sufferings that I was obliged every now and then to pull my hair to save myself from fainting, I finished my ride of five leagues before the grand-master, who followed at full speed with all the couriers of Nantes, could come up with me. I found M. de Brissac and the Chevalier de Sévigné at the appointed place by the river, but I fainted the moment I entered the boat. They brought me to myself by throwing water in my face. I wanted to get on horseback again when we had passed the river, but I lacked the strength; and Monsieur de Brissac was obliged to put me in a stack of hay, where he left me with one of my gentlemen, named Montet, who held me in his arms. He took Joly away with him, who, with Montet, had alone been able to follow us, the horses of the others having broken down: and he went straight to Beaupreau, with the intention of assembling the nobility there to come to my aid.

“I was hidden there above seven hours, suffering agonies such as I can hardly describe. My shoulder was put out of joint, and I was covered with terrible bruises. I was seized with a fever at about nine o’clock in the evening, and the pain that gave me was cruelly aggravated by the heat of the hay. I did not dare drink, although I was on the bank of the river, because if Montet and I had quitted our hiding-place there would have been no one to arrange the hay after us; and this circumstance would have put our pursuers on our track. As it was, we heard the horse-soldiers passing to right and left of us. M. de la Poise St. Offanges, a gentleman of some distinction in the district, whom M. de Brissac had informed of my plight, came at about two o’clock in the morning to take me away from the stack as soon as he had remarked that there were no more horse-soldiers in the neighbourhood.

“Monsieur d’Offanges put me upon a hand-barrow and had me wheeled by two peasants to a barn at about two leagues from the place, where I was again covered with hay; but as I now had something to drink I found myself in a state of almost perfect comfort.

“In about seven or eight hours Monsieur and Madame Brissac came to fetch me with about fifteen or twenty horses, and they took me to Beaupreau, where I only remained one night, while the nobility were being called together. In this short time M. de Brissac had assembled more than two hundred gentlemen, who were joined at about four leagues from the place by three hundred gentlemen under M. de Retz. We passed almost within sight of Nantes, from which place some of the marshal’s guards came to intercept us. They were vigorously repulsed and driven within the barrier, and we arrived at Machecoul, which is in the district of De Retz, in perfect safety.”

From Machecoul, Cardinal de Retz was taken, not without difficulty, to Belle-Isle; and some days after he reached San Sebastian, whence he went with Spanish passports to Rome. (Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz.)

QUIQUÉRAN DE BEAUJEU.
1671.

Paul-Antoine Quiquéran de Beaujeu, Knight of Malta, had acquired the reputation of one of the first seamen of his time by the number and success of his fights against the Turks. In the month of January, 1660, he was driven by a storm into one of the worst ports of the Archipelago, where he was blockaded and attacked by thirty galleys of Rhodes, commanded by the Capitan Pacha Mazamet in person. He stood out against an overpowering fire for an entire day, and only yielded when he had spent all his ammunition and lost three-fourths of his crew. He was put into irons and carried away in triumph; but the victorious fleet was assailed with a new storm of such violence that Mazamet was obliged to have recourse to the superior seamanship of his captive. M. de Beaujeu saved him, and so won the gratitude of the Turk that the latter, with a view to rescue his preserver, placed him for concealment among the lowest slaves. The grand vizier, however, who had probably been informed of this stratagem, demanded the illustrious prisoner by name; and recognising Beaujeu by his haughty air, he picked him out from among the slaves and sent him to the Seven Towers, bidding him give up all hope of ransom or of exchange. The Porte rejected every proposal made for his release, although the King interceded for him, and the Venetians sought in vain to have his name included in the terms of the Treaty of Candia. One of his nephews, about twenty-two years of age, then formed a plan for effecting his release and he executed it in the most brilliant and successful manner. He first went to Constantinople with M. de Nointel, the ambassador of France, and there he was allowed to see the prisoner—that permission being freely granted to every one on account of the supposed safety of the place. No other precaution was taken than that of searching the visitors, who were obliged, before seeing the prisoners, to give up their arms, their pocket-knives, and even their keys.

M. de Beaujeu was at first alarmed at a proposal which threatened to have very dangerous results; but eleven years of imprisonment, his natural taste for hazardous enterprises, and the contagious example of the young man’s courage and enthusiasm soon decided him to give his consent to the attempt. His nephew then began to carry him at each visit a small piece of rope, which he placed round his body; and when he thought he had enough of it for his purpose, he fixed on the day, the hour, and the signal for his departure. When the signal was given, the chevalier slid down from the walls; but finding the rope somewhat too short, he let himself drop into the sea, which washes the base of the Seven Towers. The splash of the falling body was heard by some Turks passing in a brigantine, and they made towards the fugitive; but the nephew, reaching him first in a well-armed skiff, drove them off, picked up his uncle, and took him on board one of the King’s ships, commanded by his friend the Count d’Apremont. The vessel carried him safely to France, where he lived a long while in the bosom of his family, as Commandant of Bordeaux.

The Governor of the Seven Towers was put to death for permitting his escape.

CHARLES II.
1680.

Charles had landed in Scotland to attempt to reconquer the throne of the Stuarts, and had been doomed to witness the ruin of all his hopes at the disastrous battle of Worcester. He had displayed great courage on that occasion, but he had been compelled to take to flight, with many of his bravest and most distinguished officers. The following narrative, extracted from a fuller account in the Pepys MS., is in his own words:—

“After that the battle was so absolutely lost as to be beyond hope of recovery, I began to think of the best way of saving myself, and the first thought that came into my

head was, that, if I could possibly, I would get to London as soon, if not sooner, than the news of our defeat could get thither; and it being near dark I talked with some, especially with my Lord Rochester, who was then Wilmot, about their opinions which would be the best way for me to escape, it being impossible, as I thought, to get back to Scotland. I found them mightily distracted, and their opinions different, of the possibility of getting to Scotland; but not one agreeing with mine for going to London, saving my Lord Wilmot; and the truth is I did not impart my design of going to London to any but my Lord Wilmot. But we had such a number of beaten men with us of the horse that I strove, as soon as it was dark, to get from them; and though I could not get them to stand by me against the enemy, I could not get rid of them now I had a mind to it. So we—that is, my Lord Duke of Buckingham, Lauderdale, Derby, Wilmot, Tom Blague, Duke Darcey, and several others of my servants—went along northwards towards Scotland; and at last we got about sixty that were gentlemen and officers, and slipped away out of the high road that goes to Lancashire, and kept on the right hand, letting all the beaten men go along the great road; and ourselves not knowing very well which way to go, for it was then too late for us to get to London on horseback, riding directly for it; nor could we do it, because there were many people of quality with us that I could not get rid of.

“So we rode through a town short of Wolverhampton, betwixt that and Worcester, and went through, there lying a troop of the enemies there that night. We rode very quietly through the town, they having nobody to watch, nor they suspecting us more than we did them, which I learnt afterwards from a country fellow.

“We went that night about twenty miles, to a place called White Lady’s, hard by Tong Castle, by the advice of Mr. Giffard, where we stopped and got some little refreshment of bread and cheese, such as we could get, it being just beginning to be day. This White Lady’s was a private house, that Mr. Giffard, who was a Staffordshire man, had told me belonged to honest people that lived thereabouts.

“And just as we came thither there came in a country fellow, that told us there were three thousand of our horse just hard by Tong Castle, upon the heath, all in disorder, under David Leslie and some other of the general officers; upon which there were some of the people of quality that were with me, who were very earnest that I should go to him and endeavour to go into Scotland, which I thought was absolutely impossible, knowing very well they would all rise upon us, and that men who had deserted me when they were in good order would never stand to me when they had been beaten.

“This made me take the resolution of putting myself into a disguise, and endeavouring to get a-foot to London in a country fellow’s habit, with a pair of ordinary grey cloth breeches, a leathern doublet, and a green jerkin, which I took in the house of White Lady’s. I also cut my hair very short, and flung my clothes into a privy-house, that nobody might see that anybody had been stripping themselves, I acquainting none with my resolution of going to London but my Lord Wilmot, they all desiring me not to acquaint them with what I intended to do, because they knew not what they might be forced to confess; on which consideration they with one voice begged of me not to tell them what I intended to do.

“So all the persons of quality and officers who were with me—except my Lord Wilmot, with whom a place was agreed upon for our meeting in London if we escaped, and who endeavoured to go on horseback, in regard, as I think, of his being too big to go on foot—were resolved to go and join with the three thousand disordered horse, thinking to get away with them to Scotland. But, as I did before believe, they were all routed by a single troop of horse; which shows that my opinion was not wrong in not sticking to men who had run away.

“As soon as I was disguised I took with me a country fellow, whose name was Richard Penderell, whom Mr. Giffard had undertaken to answer for to be an honest man. He was a Roman Catholic, and I chose to trust them, because I knew they had hiding-places for priests, that I thought I might make use of in case of need.

“I was no sooner gone out of the house with this country fellow (being the next morning after the battle, and then broad day) but as I was in a great wood, I sat myself at the edge of the wood, near the highway that was there, the better to see who came after us, and whether they made any search after the runaways, and I immediately saw a troop of horse coming by, which I conceived to be the same troop that beat our three thousand horse; but it did not look like a troop of the army’s, but of the militia, for the fellow before it did not look at all like a soldier.

“In this wood I stayed all night, without meat or drink, and by great good fortune it rained all the time, which hindered them, as I believe, from coming into the wood to search for men that might be fled thither; and one thing is remarkable enough, that those with whom I have since spoken, of them that joined with the horse upon the heath, did say that it rained little or nothing with them all the day, but only in the wood where I was—thus contributing to my safety.

“As I was in the wood I talked with the fellow about getting towards London, and asking many questions about what gentlemen he knew. I did not find he knew any man of quality in the way towards London. And the truth is my mind changed as I lay in the wood, and I resolved on another way of making my escape; which was, to get over the Severn into Wales, and so to get either to Swansea or some other of the sea towns that I knew had commerce with France, to the end I might get over that way, as being a way that I thought none would suspect my taking; besides that I remembered several honest gentlemen that were of my acquaintance in Wales.

“So that night as soon as it was dark, Richard Penderell and I took our journey on foot towards the Severn, intending to pass over a ferry half way between Bridgenorth and Shrewsbury. But as we were going in the night, we came up by a mill, where I heard some people talking (memorandum that I had got some bread and cheese the night before at one of the Penderells’ houses, I not going in) and as we conceived it was about twelve or one o’clock at night, and the country fellow desired me not to answer if anybody should ask me any questions because I had not the accent of the country.

“Just as we came to the mill, we could see the miller, as I believed, sitting at the mill door, he being in white clothes, it being a very dark night. He called out, ‘Who goes there?’ Upon which Richard Penderell answered, ‘Neighbours going home,’ or some such like words, whereupon the miller cried out, ‘If you be neighbours, stand, or I will knock you down.’ Upon which we believing there was company in the house, the fellow bade me follow him close, and he run to a gate that went up a dirty lane, up a hill; and opening the gate the miller cried out, ‘Rogues, rogues.’ And thereupon some men came out of the mill after us, which I believed were soldiers. So we fell a-running both of us, up the lane as long as we could run, it being very deep and very dirty, till at last I bade him leap over a hedge, and lie still to hear if anybody followed us, which we did, and continued lying upon the ground about half an hour, when hearing nobody come, we continued our way on to the village upon the Severn, where the fellow told me there was an honest gentleman, one Mr. Woolfe, that lived in that town, where I might be with great safety, for that he had hiding-holes for priests. But I would not go in, till I knew a little of his mind whether he would receive so dangerous a guest as me, and therefore stayed in a field, under a hedge, by a great tree. Commanding him not to say it was I, but only to ask Mr. Woolfe whether he would receive an English gentleman, a person of quality, to hide him the next day, till we could travel again by night—for I durst not go but by night.

“Mr. Woolfe, when the country fellow told him it was one that had escaped from the battle of Worcester, said that for his part, it was so dangerous a thing to harbour anybody that was known, that he would not venture his neck for any man, unless it were the King himself. Upon which Richard Penderell, very indiscreetly, and without my leave, told him it was I. Upon which Mr. Woolfe replied, he should be very ready to venture all he had in the world to secure me. Upon which Richard Penderell came and told me what he had done, at which I was a little troubled; but then there was no remedy, the day being just coming in, and I must either venture that or run some greater danger.

“So I came into the house by a back way, where I found Mr. Woolfe, an old gentleman, who told me he was very sorry to see me there, because there were two companies of the militia sort at that time in arms in the town, and kept a guard at the ferry to examine everybody that came that way; and that he durst not put me into any of the hiding-holes of his house because they had been discovered, and consequently if any search should be made, they would certainly repair to these holes, and that therefore I had no other way of security but to go into his barn, and there lie behind his corn and hay. So after he had given us some cold meat that was ready, we, without making any bustle in the house, went and lay in the barn all the next day, when towards evening, his son who had been prisoner at Shrewsbury, an honest man, was released, and came home to his father’s house. And as soon as ever it began to be a little darkish, Mr. Woolfe and his son brought us meat into the barn, and then we discoursed with them whether we might safely get over the Severn into Wales, which they advised me by no means to adventure upon, because of the strict guards that were kept all along the Severn where any passage could be found, for preventing anybody escaping that way into Wales.

“Upon this I took resolution that night the very same way back again to Penderell’s house, where I knew I should hear some news what was become of my Lord Wilmot, and resolved again upon going for London.

“So we set out as soon as it was dark, but we came by the mill again; we had no mind to be questioned a second time there, and therefore asking Richard Penderell whether he could swim or no, and how deep the river was, he told me it was a scurvy river, not easy to be passed in all places, and that he could not swim. So I told him the river being but a little one, I would undertake to help him over. Upon which we went over some closes by the river-side and I entering the river first to see if I could myself go over, who knew how to swim, found it was but a little above my middle, and thereupon taking Richard Penderell by the hand, I helped him over. Which being done, we went on our way to one of Penderell’s brothers (his house not being far from White Lady’s), who had been guide to my Lord Wilmot, and we believed might by that time be come back again, for my Lord Wilmot intended to go to London upon his own horse. When I came to this house I inquired where my Lord Wilmot was, it being now towards morning, and having travelled these two nights on foot.

“Penderell’s brother told me he had conducted him to a very honest gentleman’s house, one Mr. Pitchcroft[A], not far from Wolverhampton, a Roman Catholic. I asked him what news. He told me that there was one Major Careless in the house, that was that countryman whom, I knowing, he having been a major in our army, and made his escape thither, a Roman Catholic also, I sent for him into the room where I was, and consulted him what we should do the next day. He told me that it would be very dangerous for me to stay in that house or go into the wood—there being a great wood hard by Boscobel; that he knew but one way how to pass the next day, and that was to get up into a great oak, in a pretty plain place, where we might see round about us; for the enemy would certainly search at the wood for people that had made their escape.

“Of which proposition of his, I approving, we (that is to say Careless and I) went, and carried up some victuals for the whole day; viz., bread, cheese, small beer, and nothing else, and got up into a great oak, that had been topped some three or four years before, and being grown out again very bushy and thick, could not be seen through, and here we stayed all the day. I having in the meantime sent Penderell’s brother to Mr. Pitchcroft’s, to know whether my Lord Wilmot was there or no; and had word brought me by him at night that my lord was there; that there was a very secure hiding-hole in Mr. Pitchcroft’s house, and that he desired me to come thither to him.

“Memorandum.—That, while we were in this tree we saw soldiers going up and down in the thicket of the wood, searching for persons escaped; we saw them now and then peeping out of the wood.

“That night Richard Penderell and I went to Mr. Pitchcroft’s, about six or seven miles off, when I found the gentleman of the house, and an old grandmother of his, and Father Hurlston, who had then the care, as governor, of bringing up two young gentlemen, who, I think, were Sir John Preston and his brother, they being boys. Here I spoke with my Lord Wilmot, and sent him away to Colonel Lane’s, about five or six miles off, to see what means could be found for my escaping towards London; who told my lord, after some consultation thereon, that he had a sister that had a very fair pretence of going hard by Bristol, to a cousin of hers, that was married to one Mr. Norton, who lived two or three miles towards Bristol, on Somersetshire side, and she might carry me there as her man, and from Bristol I might find shipping to get out of England.”

After various adventures, some of them attended with great danger, they arrived safely at the house of Mr. Norton, the king passing as the servant of Mrs. Lane. The next day while he was dining with the servants, one of them gave so accurate a description of the battle of Worcester, that Charles took him to be a soldier of Cromwell. He turned out, however, to have been a soldier of the royal army, and one of the regiment of guards. “I asked him what kind of man the King was, and he gave me an exact description of the clothes I wore at the battle, and of the horse I rode, adding that the King was at least three inches taller than I. I left the place hastily, being much alarmed to find that the man had been one of my own soldiers.” Charles learnt soon after that Pope, the butler, had recognised him, and having previously heard that the man was honest, and incapable of treason, he thought it best to confide in him, and accordingly mentioned his real name and rank. Pope at once put himself under his orders, and was of the greatest service to him.

Just at the very moment when the King was setting out for the house of one of his partisans, Mrs. Norton was taken with the pains of labour, and as she was cousin to Mrs. Lane, whose servant Charles pretended to be, that lady found it difficult to invent a pretext for quitting her. A letter written to announce that Mrs. Lane’s father was dangerously ill, however, answered this purpose, and the fugitives set out for the house of Frank Wyndham at Trent.

When they arrived there the bells were ringing merry peals, and inquiring the cause, they learned that one of the soldiers of Cromwell’s army had entered the town, boasting that he had killed the King. Wyndham, however, had provided a boat, and Charles, accompanied by that loyal gentleman and by Lady Coningsby, went to a place appointed for his reception. But as no vessel appeared, he set out for the neighbouring town. On arriving there he found the streets filled with red coats, the town being in possession of fifteen hundred of Cromwell’s troops. This sight somewhat alarmed Wyndham, “and he asked me,” says the King, “what we should now do? ‘We must go boldly,’ I said, ‘to the best inn, and ask for the best room,’ and we accordingly did so. We found the courtyard of the inn full of soldiers, and as soon as I alighted, I thought it would be best to walk boldly amongst them, and to take my horses to the stable. I did this, and they grew very angry at my rudeness.” When he arrived in the stable, Charles found himself confronted by a new danger. The ostler pretended to recognise him as an old acquaintance whom he had met at Exeter, but Charles had sufficient presence of mind to turn this to his own account. “True,” he replied, “I have been in the service of Mr. Potter, but I am just now in a great hurry, for my master is going straight to London; when he comes back we will renew the acquaintance over a mug of beer.” Shortly afterwards the King and his suite joined Lord Wilmot outside the city, but the master of the ship they had hired, yielding to the fears of his wife, refused to fulfil his engagement with them; Charles then once more took the Trent road.

Another vessel which had been procured at Southampton, had been seized by the authorities for the transport of troops, and certain mysterious rumours which began to circulate in the neighbourhood, made it dangerous for the King to stay any longer with Colonel Wyndham, at Salisbury; however, he found an asylum where he remained for five days, during which Colonel Gunter hired a boat at

New Shoreham, and Charles set out in haste for Brighton. While he was at supper there, with his attendants and with Tattershall, the owner of the boat, the latter fixed his eyes, upon the King, and took occasion after the meal to draw one of the royal attendants aside, and complain of his having been deceived. “The gentleman in the grey dress was the King; he knew him well, having been with him in 1648, when he was Prince of Wales, and commanded the royal fleet.” This information was promptly conveyed to Charles, who thought it the more prudent course to keep his companions drinking with him all night, in order to make sure of their holding no conversation that he did not overhear.

Just before their departure, and while he was alone in his room, Tattershall came in, and kissing his hand, which was resting on the back of a chair, said, “I suppose, if I live I shall be a lord, and my wife will be a lady.” Charles laughed, to show that he understood him, and joined the company in the other room. At four in the morning of the 16th of October they set out for Shoreham. When Charles and Wilmot, his sole companion, had entered the vessel, Tattershall fell upon his knees and swore to the King that whatever might be the consequence he would land him safe and sound on the coast of France.

The boat made for the Isle of Wight, that being its ordinary course; but towards six o’clock in the evening, Charles, having previously arranged the matter with Tattershall, addressed the crew. He told them that his companion and himself were merchants, who were running away from their creditors, and asked them to join him in begging the captain to take them to France, backing his entreaties, at the same time, with a present of twenty shillings for drink. Tattershall raised a great many objections; but at last, with apparent repugnance, he turned the vessel’s head towards France. At daybreak they sighted the city of Fécamp. At the same time they discovered a suspicious-looking sail which they took for an Ostend pirate. Without waiting to test the truth of their suspicions, the two fugitives took to the ship’s boat and arrived safely in port. (Guizot: Memoirs of Charles the Second; Lingard: History of England.)

BLANCHE GAMOND.
1687.

Blanche Gamond belonged to a Protestant family of Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux. After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, when the Protestants were subjected to the most rigorous persecution, Mademoiselle Gamond, whose piety was of the most fervent and exalted kind, resolved to fly the kingdom. The city of Saint-Paul was closely invested, and the dragoons overran all the neighbouring country in search of the Protestants. Blanche left the city and wandered about for some time alone, and afterwards with her parents, who had joined her. At times they were exposed to all the hardships of forest life, and it was only at intervals that they could venture to show themselves in towns. In this manner they travelled through the greater part of Dauphiné; but they were obliged to separate at last, to escape the more easily from the dragoons; and our poor heroine was about to pass the frontier with her brother and her mother and sister, when she was taken near Goncelin. Her brother escaped from the soldiers, but her mother and her sister were brutally ill-treated by these wretches, and were taken to Grenoble and thrown into a horrible dungeon. Blanche Gamond was then twenty-one years of age. She was subjected for a long time to the most terrible tortures; but insulted, mercilessly beaten, dying of hunger, and sinking under a lingering illness, as she was, she bore all with the courage and the resignation of a martyr.

The following is her account of her attempt at escape, the consequences of which were most disastrous to her:—

“We were told to get ourselves ready in three days for a voyage to America; ‘and when,’ it was added, ‘you are once on shipboard you will be made to walk the plank, and will be thrust into the sea, so that the detested race of the Huguenots may perish with you.’

“ ‘It concerns me little,’ I replied, ‘whether my body be eaten by the fish in the sea or by the worms in the earth.’

“When they had left us alone, Susan de Montélimart said, ‘We might make our escape by this window if we could only break the bars.’

“ ‘We are at such a height from the ground,’ I replied, ‘that we should either kill or lame ourselves; and then we should only be recaptured and treated worse than before. If that should happen, I could never survive my sufferings. I prefer death, therefore, and will rather set out for America. God will deliver us, as he delivered the victims of La Rapine.’ ”

La Rapine, or D’Herapine, who had been formerly condemned for robbery, under his real name of Guichard, had become director of the hospital of Valence, where he was told to employ all the means in his power for the conversion of the Protestants—a commission which he executed with all the cynicism and the ferocity of one of the worst of scoundrels.

“Susan replied, ‘If they had done to me what they have done to you I should have died ere this; but they are killing us of hunger; and, besides, they are going to take us to America, and we shall be half dead when they throw us in the sea. We might get out of this window. We seem to be despising the means which God has placed within our reach; but, for my part, I mean to attempt to use them.’

“At length, by her persuasion, I joined her in cutting a piece of cloth into shreds, and sewing it together; and when we had made a long band in this manner we tied a piece of stone to the end of it and lowered it, to ascertain the height of the window from the ground. We were on the fourth storey, and we found that our band was too short; but we lengthened it, and finally the end touched the ground. I then put my head out of the window and said to my dear sisters, ‘Alas! we shall kill ourselves, for it almost frightens me to death to look down.’

“That same evening, when our guards were asleep, we crept to the window with bare feet, for we were afraid that the priest, whose chamber was beneath ours, would hear our footsteps. Susan was the first to get out, and she was followed by Mademoiselle Terrasson de Die, then by me and by Mademoiselle Anne Dumas, of La Salle, in Languedoc. When I got outside and began to lay hold of the band, my strength failed me, and I heard the bones of my arm crack. My dress caught in a hook outside the window, and I was obliged to support myself with one arm while I disengaged myself with the other. I no longer felt either strength or courage, and I cried, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!’ But I seized the band with my teeth, and joining my two hands over it, I fell, rather than lowered myself, to the ground, striking against the stones with such violence that I cried, ‘Mercy! My God, I am either killed or maimed for life!’

“The dear sisters who were waiting for me ran up to me and asked me where I was hurt.

“ ‘Everywhere,’ I replied; ‘I am sure that I have broken my thigh,’ and I begged of them to tie it up for me with my apron. I then limped away, my two sisters supporting me on either side. I made sixty or seventy steps in great pain, and reached the gate of the Faubourg de Valence: but it was closed. They helped me to get upon the wall, but when I stood upon the top of it, and saw how high it was, I said to my three dear sisters, ‘This is a second precipice, and I am not brave enough to attempt to descend. Leave me and go alone.’

“They let me down from the wall and left me there, and then they tried to get down themselves, and succeeded after great trouble. When they had reached the other side, Mademoiselle Dumas cried out to me, ‘We are going. We are very sorry to leave you behind. God preserve you from our enemies. I wish you prosperity, and give you my blessing, and I beg of you to give me yours in return.’

“ ‘Who am I,’ I replied, ‘to give you my blessing? but I pray that God will give you his. I pray fervently that he will lead you in all his ways; and I conjure you to leave this place as quickly as you can, or all of us may be recaptured.’

“I was thus left quite alone, still suffering the cruel and violent pains which had never left me from the moment of my fall. It was not yet daybreak, and I lifted up my heart to God. But I fainted in the midst of my prayer, and did not come to myself for, at least, a quarter of an hour. I had no one to console me, or even to offer me a single drop of water; but as soon as I came to myself I cried out, ‘Lord, do not abandon me.’ I lay for a time without being able to make any movement, and then I thought that at daybreak they would be sure to find me, and then I should be recaptured and taken to the hospice. ‘O God,’ I prayed, ‘grant me this mercy that this day may see the last of my troubles, for death is better than life. I have lived enough. Take my soul to thee, O God. Oh grant, if it please thee, that I may be taken to the tomb, and not to the hospice this day.’

“Day then began to break. I had not enough strength to raise myself, so that those who passed by did not know that I was lamed. I was only just able to hide my face from them by covering it with my tappeta. I was interrupted during my prayers by the agony which I suffered from my broken thigh and dislocated ankle. After a time a gentleman came by, and said, ‘It would be better, mademoiselle, for you to be at your own house than to remain here, and it would certainly be more becoming.’

“ ‘If you knew who I was, sir,’ I replied, ‘you would not address me in such language.’

“In another moment they opened the gate of the Faubourg and the passers-by said very hard and cruel things about me, seeing me lying at full length in the road so early in the morning.”

She begged one of them to fetch Mademoiselle Marsilière, a Protestant converted to Catholicism, whom she knew, and she prayed God that this early friend might turn out a good Samaritan, but this prayer was not heard.