firing, we set rungs to our rope, which now became a ladder some twenty feet long, enabling us to move from place to place in the chimney while we were removing the iron bars.

"For we now came to this-the most painful and trying part of our task; and its execution cost us six months of agony that to this day I shudder to think of. We never struck a dozen strokes without covering our hands with blood; and our bodies were so bruised in

the chimney that often we had to rest an hour for very anguish. The bars were fixed in extremely hard cement, on which we could make no impression till we had moistened it with water, and the water had to be carried up in our mouths. So slow was our progress that we were satisfied if we could remove a single square inch of cement in one night. As soon as we had loosened a bar we left it in its place, for fear the chimney should be examined before

the moment of our escape.

66

(p. 203).

This hateful toil completed, we set to work to build a wooden ladder of twenty feet, to reach from the trench to the parapet, that would lead us into the governor's garden. To make this, we set apart the pieces of wood sent up for firing. But our two hinges were not suitable for the work I had in view, so I managed to rig up an excellent saw out of an old iron candlestick, and notched it with my penknife. With this and our knives, we began to shape our billets of wood to make first a kind of pole, fastened together with bits of metal and bolts of wood; and then to fit into this a series of rungs passing through holes and sticking out about six inches on either side. The whole could be taken to pieces easily, so we had no difficulty in hiding it beneath the flooring.

"As the officers and turnkeys often entered our chamber by day, when we least expected them, we were forced to hide not only our tools but also the rubbish down to the smallest chip; and to prosecute our work by night only. Still, guards have ears as well as eyes; and as we could not avoid discussing

our projects together, we had to invent a language intelligible only to ourselves. This was easily done. The saw was called Faunus; the hinges, Tubal Cain; the hole in the floor, Polyphemus; the wooden ladder, Jacob; the ropes, doves (from their whiteness); the pocket-knife, puppy, and so on. When any

person came near, he who was next the door whispered, Cain!' or 'Dove!' &c.; and the other would throw his handkerchief over whatever was to be concealed, or removed it. We were always on our guard.

"We now began to think about the ropes of our great ladder, which (we now calculated) must be at least 180 feet long. To find the material we sacrificed shirts, towels, stockings, flannels-nearly the whole of our underclothing, in short. As fast as we unravelled a clew of a certain length, we hid it in Polyphemus. When we had a sufficient number, we spent a whole night in twisting our main rope; and (for its size) I would defy any ropemaker to produce a stronger.

To

"At the top of every tower of the Bastille projects a ledge, or 'entablature,' of some four feet. This, we felt sure, would thrust our ladder out in the air and cause us at every step of the descent to vibrate from side to side. We should probably lose our hold from giddiness and fall to the ground. steady this ladder, then, we made a second rope, 360 feet long (or twice the height of the tower), by which, though the working was too complicated to describe here, either one of us, whether above or below the tower, might steady his comrade during the descent. We also fashioned smaller ropes,

to fasten to our ladder, to tie it to a cannon, and to meet other possible exigencies.

When these ropes were all ready, we found them to measure 1,400 feet. Our ladders had 208 rungs, all counted; and to prevent the steps of the ropeladder from rustling against the wall as we descended, we covered them with the linings of our bedgowns and under-waistcoats. These preparations cost

eighteen months of toil, and yet the work was not complete.

"You know now our plans for ascending our chimney to the top of the tower; for descending to the trench; for climbing thence to the parapet of the governor's garden; for crossing this garden and coming to the great moat or ditch of the Porte St. Antoine. It was at this point that two further difficulties would meet us.

"To begin with, the parapet between the garden and the ditch was always guarded by sentinels. We should choose a dark night, of course, and a stormy. But it might rain while we were leaving the chimney and yet be perfectly fine before we came to the parapet and the sentinels. And, besides these sentinels, there would be the guard going the grand rounds. To be seen by them was to be lost. Yet we must risk it.

"The second point was less of a danger but more of a difficulty. Let it be granted we gained the ditch: there was still a wall on the far side, separating it from the Porte St. Antoine, i.e. from our liberty.

Reflecting on this wall, I resolved that we must bore a passage through it. I told D'Alègre that since the building the Seine had overflowed at least 300 times; that its waters must have dissolved the salts held by the mortar, to the depth, perhaps, of half an inch at each overflow; and therefore that to perforate the wall could not be extremely difficult. To do so would be a thousand times less hazardous than to climb it before the very eyes of the sentinels.

"So we pulled out a screw from our bedstead, and made a gimlet of it. With this we hoped to make some holes in the interstices of the mortar, which would allow us, with a couple of iron bars thrust in for levers, to lift as much as five tons weight.

"We were now ready, and fixed on Monday, the 25th of February, 1756, for our flight. The river had overflowed its banks, and the ditches of the Bastille held water to the depth of four feet. Besides my trunk, I had a large leathern portmanteau; and not doubting that every stitch of our clothing would be soaked as we worked in the water, we packed this portmanteau with a complete change of clothes, picking out the best of the garments that still remained to us.

"Next day, immediately after our dinner, we took our rope-ladder from its hiding-place beneath the floor, and having looked to the rungs and found them in order, hid it again beneath the bed, ready for instant use. We then adjusted our wooden ladder, made up the rest of our tools into several bundles, bound our crowbars in rags, as well to prevent the metal from knocking against the wall as to handle them more conveniently, and furnished ourselves with a bottle of usquebaugh to keep us warm during the nine hours that we were to pass for the most part in the ditches. And this proved a very needful precaution.

"This done, we sat down to wait, as patiently as we could, the hour of supper. It came at length, and our gaolers left us for the night.

"They were scarce out of the room when we started. I was the first, in spite of a rheumatic pain in my left arm, to set about climbing the chimney, and had a tough struggle to reach the top. I was almost suffocated with the soot, and, not being aware that chimney-sweepers wear pads on their loins and elbows, as well as a strip of sacking over their heads, was pretty near flayed as well against the brickwork. By the time I reached the top my knees and elbows were streaming with blood.

"At last I gained the top of the chimney, where, without thinking of my wounds, I placed myself astride, and thence unwound a ball of thread, to the end of which my comrade was to fasten the strongest rope. This I pulled up, and lowered for my portmanteau, which I pulled out at the chimney-top and let down to the roof. I now returned the rope and drew up, first the wooden ladder, and, in the same manner, the two iron bars and the rest of our packages.

"When I had these, I again lowered my pack-thread for the rope-ladder,

He

drawing most of it out at the chimney-top, but leaving enough for D'Alègre, who was to make the ascent by its means. At his signal I fastened it. came up with ease; and pulling the end after him, we hung the whole across

of the Bastille, with luggage enough to tax two horses to move all together. We began by doubling up the rope-ladder till it formed a sort of bale, five feet in height, and a foot thick, and trundled this millstone (as I may call it) along the roof till we came to the Treasury tower, where we thought our descent would be easiest. Here we

tied one end of the rope-ladder to a cannon, and let the other drop gently down into the ditch below. Next we made a journey to fetch our parcels; and then I got ready for the descent.

"I tied my thigh securely to the steadying-rope, got on the ladder, and went down step after step, holding my breath for terror. In proportion as I descended, my comrade let out the steadying-rope. But, notwithstanding his precautions, I swayed about horribly. Every time I moved, my body resembled a kite dancing in the wind. I became so giddy that once or twice I felt myself on the point of losing consciousness, and gave myself up for lost. Had this occurred by daylight, of a thousand persons who might have seen not one would have doubted my destruction. Yet I reached the ditch without mishap.

"At once D'Alègre lowered my portmanteau, the crowbars, the wooden ladder, and all our equipment; and, finding a little bank that rose above the water by the foot of the tower, I placed them there, high and dry. He then fastened his end of the steadying-rope above his knee, and prepared to follow me.

"So as soon as he began, I steadied him from below as he had steadied me from above, only in this case with more success, as I managed to rest the weight of my thighs on the last rung of the ladder, and, sitting on it, to prevent any considerable vibration. He reached the bottom safe and sound.

"Now all this time the sentinel could not have been thirty feet from us, and I heard his steps distinctly as he tramped-for it was not raining-along the top of the parapet that shut us off from the governor's garden; which for a moment upset our plans, for it prevented our climbing into the garden as we had intended.

"We accordingly resolved to wade the ditch, and try the wall lower down, where it parts the trench of the Bastille from that of the Port St. Antoine. But, unfortunately, just at the spot which we were obliged to choose, the ditch was deeper, so that we were wetted up to our armpits instead of up to our breasts.

"A thaw had set in some hours before, and the ditch was full of lumps of ice. At the moment when I began with my gimlet to bore a hole for our levers, the grand round passed us. I saw the soldiers on the parapet, twelve feet above us. Their great lantern lit up the place where we hid. There was no way to avoid discovery but to bob down in the water up to our chins.

"As soon as they had passed, I set to work again, and in a short while had bored two or three small holes with my gimlet. We inserted our crowbars and took a large stone out: after which we attacked a second and a third stone. The second round of the watch now passed us, and down we slipped again up to our chins an operation we were obliged to repeat at each visit-that is to say, every half-hour-during nine weary hours.

"Before midnight, however, we had loosened and removed two barrows-full of large stones; and after the ninth hour of toil and terror, by picking stone from