The Count de Bucquoy, who was originally an officer in the army, had become, under the combined influence of the Jesuits and the monks of La Trappe, a religious enthusiast, but had afterwards quarrelled with his priestly friends. He was of an active mind, and, if we may believe his own account of himself, he was too much addicted to the advocacy of advanced ideas. This, and his hostility to Louis XIV., caused him to be arrested at Sens, on a charge of having been heard to mutter disaffection at an inn. While he was being taken to Paris he tried to escape, but without success; and his account of the attempt shows that he did not then possess the skill in conducting that class of enterprises which he afterwards acquired.

He was sent to For-l’ÉvÊque; and from the very first day of his imprisonment he began to consider how he could recover his liberty. He remembered that one of the body-guard, who had been imprisoned in the same place, had nearly made his escape through a window of a loft, which looked out upon one of the quays, then called the Valley of Misery, and that he had failed, owing solely to his terror at the sight of the precipice on which his prison was built.

Bucquoy, however, made up his mind to repeat this attempt. He tried at first to form a clear idea of the plan of this terrible place. He discovered that the loft in question served as a kind of antechamber to his small cell, and that it was, at the same time, the lumber-room of the prison. Wishing to make sure of everything before risking his life, he one day pretended to be ill, and asked to be led upstairs to breathe the air at a small window which over-looked that part of the building. The height from the quay was appalling; and, in addition to that, every one of the numerous window-gratings to which he would have to cling in making his descent was covered with short, sharp spikes. The sight was enough to strike terror into the stoutest heart.

When he had once more been locked up in his cell, he, however, confirmed himself in his resolution to escape through the loft. All that was necessary was to find means to leave the cell unobserved, and to reach a certain part of the antechamber.

To get out without the consent of the gaoler, he would have had to break the door down; but he soon saw that it would be impossible to do this, as he was wholly unprepared with tools, and as the noise of his operations would be certain to alarm his guards. It occurred to him, however, that he might burn away the door; and with this view he obtained permission to cook for himself in his own cell. He asked for a few eggs and some charcoal, and paid liberally for both, in order the more readily to induce the gaoler to supply them. All being ready, and the whole household asleep, he placed the brasier close to the door and fanned the flame until it ignited the ponderous timbers. When he had by this means burnt a hole large enough to admit his body, he passed through, first taking care to extinguish the flames, as it was not his wish to destroy the building. In this operation he was nearly suffocated by the smoke from the smouldering beams. He was without a rope to tie to the window of the loft, but he made a substitute for it by binding together a number of strips of webbing cut from a mattrass which he found among the furniture. He then fastened this band to a bedstead, which he dragged to the window, and, gliding gently down, was fortunate enough to pass the windows without receiving any fatal injury from the spikes, and to reach the quay. It was daybreak, and the market people opening their shops did not fail to observe him, all torn and bloody as he was, for many of the spikes had entered his flesh. But a greater danger threatened him, in the unwelcome attentions of a number of young men, who had only just risen from supper, and who chased him through the streets with drunken cries. A timely shower of rain, however, dispersed them, and he was saved.

In trying to avoid them he made many turns and doubles, and at last found himself at the door of a cafÉ, near the Temple, which he entered for the purpose of making some slight changes in his appearance, in case he should meet his tormentors again. His dress, however, began to excite remark among the customers, and fearing he was already known, he hastily paid his reckoning, and went out without knowing what direction to take. He at last took refuge at the house of a relation of one of his servants, to whom he told a plausible story to excuse the negligence of his attire. The woman fetched him some food at his request, but feeling he could not confide in her discretion, he soon left the house to seek a more secure asylum.

After spending some nine months in sending petition after petition from his various hiding-places, he tried to leave the kingdom, but choosing his time badly, was arrested at La FÈre and sent to prison. He made two attempts to escape, and failed only by a hair’s breadth in the second, having scaled a wall and swum across a ditch before he was discovered. He was at length taken back to Paris, and imprisoned in the Bastille.

To enter the Bastille was almost to abandon hope, for escape seemed impossible. But even while he was passing the gates of the prison, Bucquoy was reconnoitering it to find means to effect his escape. He took particular notice of the drawbridge and the counterscarp, but he was not allowed much time for his observations; for he was at once hurried away to the BretigniÈre tower.

After passing a few days in one of the lowest dungeons of this tower, he was placed in a cell, shared by a number of prisoners in common. He proposed that they should make a joint effort to recover their liberty, but he was denounced by one of their number, an abbÉ. He was then once more shut up in his dungeon. He was suffered to leave it, however, on feigning to be ill and at the point of death. He was believed to be paralytic, and as it was thought there was no further danger of his attempting to carry out his plans, he was once more sent to the common room. In course of time he had made the circuit of nearly all the towers of the building, never failing to study the plan of each of them attentively; and he was at length sent to the BertaudiÈre, where he had for companion a German baron, whom he undertook to convert from the Lutheran faith, and whom he persuaded to aid him in his attempt to escape. They had already commenced operations on an old window which had long been closed up, when they were betrayed by another prisoner. Bucquoy was adroit enough to exculpate himself, and to throw the blame upon his betrayer, but he was removed to a cell in the tower, La LibertÉ, together with the baron, whose conversion he represented was not quite complete.

They then began to renew their preparations, this time with the view of reaching the ditch of the Porte Saint Antoine. They made a hole in the wall by means of certain jagged pieces of iron and brass, old nails and knife-blades, which the abbÉ had carefully collected in the course of his long sojourn in the prison; and which, by the aid of the fire in the room, they fashioned into tools. At the same time they began to make a ladder, using for this purpose the strips of osier in which their wine bottles were enveloped, and telling the gaoler they were collecting them to serve as fuel. A hole which they had scooped out under the flooring of their cell served to conceal all these things.

Working steadily every day, and never losing sight of their design, they contrived in a short time to make a tolerable ladder. All was now nearly ready, and they were on the very point of making their attempt, when on visiting their subterranean cupboard one day, it gave way beneath them, and precipitated them into a room on the floor below occupied by a jesuit. The poor man’s mind was ill at ease, and this terrible accident made him quite mad. The abbÉ was taken back to his cell by a gaoler, but he was not allowed to remain there long, and he was thus doomed to lose almost in a moment the fruits of long months of most trying exertion. He found means, however, to get rid of his German baron, who was no further use to him, as he could not be persuaded to embark in another attempt. But the baron had abjured his religion, and this gained the abbÉ such a reputation as a converter of heretics, that he was sent to attempt the reformation of a certain Protestant, named Grandville, who was considered a very excellent boon companion by his fellow prisoners, and who was known to be most anxious to make his escape.

Two other prisoners were placed in the same cell with them, and the abbÉ soon found means to come to an understanding with all his companions in misfortune. After he had bound them to him by the most solemn oaths, he informed them that he had a small file concealed in his clothes, which had hitherto escaped the closest search, and he proposed that they should cut through the bars of their windows with it, and make their way into the courtyard. He had managed to keep some pieces of osier that he and the German had plaited, and by the aid of his new confederates, he soon added largely to his store. They laboured together like the workmen of the tower of Babel, for they were almost as much hindered by differences of opinion, as the others were by differences of speech. At last they made up their minds to take the only course possible to them: viz. to descend by the ladder into the ditch. Once there, it was agreed that each should look after himself.

On the appointed day—or, rather, night—they removed the bars as soon as they found all was silent in the fortress. Fearing that their suspended bodies might be seen from the other cells, they first let down a long white sheet, which covered all the windows between their cell and the ground. As it was necessary to prevent the ladder from falling close to the wall, the abbÉ had some days previously erected a kind of sundial at the end of a long pole, and the sentinels had already learned to regard it without suspicion. After they had taken all these precautions, and had smeared the white ropes of their ladder with soot, the abbÉ asked to be allowed to be first to make the descent, promising to await his companions in the ditch. He was, at the same time, to warn them of the approach of the sentinels by pulling a smaller rope, falling from the window to the ground. When all had been thus arranged he got out of the window, and reached the ditch in safety; but he remained there two hours without receiving a sign from his companions. He pulled the rope repeatedly, to no purpose, and he began to fear they were engaged in some new dispute, when he saw them lowering some cumbrous machine they had constructed to aid them in their flight. Two of them came down, but the rest had not at first been able to pass through the window, and this had been the cause of the delay. When they found, at length, they could force themselves through, they were still willing to stay with the unfortunate Grandville, whose obesity compelled him to remain behind, but he generously refused to allow them to make this useless sacrifice on his behalf.

Their sad story ended, the abbÉ urged them, with all the eloquence of which he was master, to follow his plan of escape; but not being able to persuade them he began to look to his own safety. He had only a small osier ladder; with this he contrived to gain the top of the ditch as soon as the sentinel’s back was turned; he then climbed the counterscarp and reached a deep gutter, and passing over another wall and ditch, finally dropped into the Rue St. Antoine, nearly lacerating his arm on a hook outside a butcher’s shop in his fall. Before leaving the wall he looked round for his comrades, and hearing the cry of a half-strangled person, followed rapidly by a musket-shot, he concluded that they had tried to carry out their intention of seizing the guard but had been overpowered; and as he never heard of the unfortunate creatures again he remained all his life confirmed in this impression. Not caring to await a similar fate, he ran rapidly from the Rue St. Antoine to the Rue des Journelles; and after making half the circuit of Paris he arrived at the house of some friends, who furnished him with the means of leaving the country.