stone (and the difficulty of it is inconceivable), we had succeeded in making a breach through the wall, which was four and a half feet thick.

"I bade D'Alègre crawl through and await me on the other side; and told him that should I meet with any mishap in fetching the portmanteau, he must flee at once. By Heaven's grace I fetched it without disaster. D'Alègre drew it through the breach, and I followed, leaving the rest of our now useless baggage behind us.

"For we were now in the trench of the Porte St. Antoine, and thought ourselves out of danger. Our souls were already lifted with joy, when we experienced a new and unforeseen mischance.

"D'Alègre was holding one end of the portmanteau, and I the other. In this fashion we began to wade the ditch in order to gain the road to Bercy. But hardly had we advanced twenty steps in the water, when we tumbled into the aqueduct, in the middle of the trench, with about ten feet of water above our heads. To make matters worse, we had underfoot some two feet of thick filtering deposit (for the most part salt) on which walking was impossible. But for this latter difficulty we might easily have gained the opposite bank, for the aqueduct was only six feet in breadth.

As it was, D'Alègre, finding himself beyond his depth, was foolish enough to drop the portmanteau and clutch me convulsively. This, I saw, must infallibly end us both; for if we fell into the salt mud, we should never have strength to raise ourselves again.

"I therefore dealt my companion a heavy blow with my fist, which forced him to drop his hold; and thus disentangled, I managed by a vigorous push to gain the further side of the aqueduct, where for a moment I hung, clinging. Then, plunging my hand into the water, I drew him towards me by the hair of his head; and afterwards caught and saved my portmanteau, which luckily floated on the surface.

"It struck five as we clambered up and out of the trench, which, after a declivity of thirty paces, brought us to dry ground. The sound of the bell had hardly died out, when we stood side by side on the main-road-free men!

"We embraced each other, and dropped on our knees to thank God, who indeed had watched over us. Our rope-ladder had proved so exact as not to be a foot too short or too long: not an inch of it had we found out of place. The clothes on our back were wet through; but those in the portmanteau, having been carefully packed and covered with linen, were quite dry.

“Our hands were galled and bruised by pulling out the stones to make the breach; and, oddly enough, we felt the cold more severely now we stood on dry ground than we had in the ditch when up to our necks in water.

"With shivering hands we began to dress. But each of us had so little control over his fingers that I was forced to act as my comrade's valet de chambre, and he in return performed the same office for me.

'We were ready at last, however; and, walking briskly along the road, found a

hackney coach: we jumped inside, and were driven straight to the house of M. de Silhouette, Chancellor of the Duc d'Orléans. Unfortunately he had gone to Versailles, so we hurried on to the Abbey of St. Germain-des-près.”

Here we may drop Latude's narrative. He and D'Alègre found friends at the Abbey, and there lay in concealment for a month, waiting till the hue and cry had died out. They then, to avoid suspicion, separated, and departed for Brussels by different ways. D'Alègre adopted the disguise of a peasant, and having reached Brussels in safety, sent word of his success to Latude, who prepared to follow.

Furnishing himself with a parish register of his host, who happened to be about Latude's age, and a bundle of old law-papers, our hero dressed himself up as a servant and set out. At first he walked; but having put a league or two between himself and Paris, he took the diligence for Valenciennes. Several times stopped, questioned, and even searched, he yet managed, by sticking to his story that he was carrying law-papers to his master's brother in Amsterdam-to reach Valenciennes at last and get into the stage for Brussels. As they approached the post that marked the Netherland frontier, he descended and walked towards it. My feelings," says he, "overcame my prudence; I prostrated myself on the ground and kissed it with transports. At length,' thought I, I can draw a free breath!' My fellow-travellers, in astonishment, demanded my reasons for this extravagant behaviour. I told them that it was the anniversary of my escape from a serious peril, and that I always expressed in this way my gratitude to Heaven as the day came round." D'Alègre was to await his comrade in the Hôtel de Coffi, in Brussels. Thither Latude at once directed his steps-only to meet with an overwhelming disappointment. At first the host denied all knowledge of D'Alègre, but, on being pressed, grew embarrassed. Latude began to suspect. D'Alègre must have been seized! Or else how had he failed-knowing the probable hour of Latude's arrival-to keep his appointment? And if D'Alègre had been arrested, he himself could not remain in this territory without sharing a like fate.

Terribly dejected, Latude resolved to fly yet further from the vengeance of the implacable Marquise. He took his passage in a canal boat, which was that same evening to start for Antwerp. During the voyage, in conversation One of two daring criminals (said of the Bastille had been arrested,

with the captain, the whole truth came out. the man) who had managed to break out three days back, at the Hôtel de Coffi, and transported to Lille under a strong escort. "Moreover," added the unsuspecting informant, "all this was kept very secret, in order not to alarm the other convict, who would be bound sooner or later to come inquiring for his fellow."

Latude's heart flew into his mouth. He remembered with a pang his inquisitiveness in the presence of the landlord of the hotel. The whole country seemed full of eyes and ears. He felt convinced that police-officers were

waiting at every halting-place to seize him. Leaving the canal boat, he fled to Bergen-op-Zoom.

Here fresh tribulation befell him. His money was at an end. At Brussels he had missed a remittance that his father was to have sent, and afterwards learnt it had fallen into the hands of the police who were employed to hunt him down. He paid the rent of his garret at Bergen, and his passage on a boat to take him to Amsterdam, and had but a shilling or two left in his pocket. For some time he endeavoured to live on grass and wild herbs; finding this impossible, he supplemented the diet with black rye-bread.

At length he summoned courage to embark for Amsterdam. During the voyage he kept, as far as possible, aloof from his fellow-passengers. There happened, however, to be travelling on the boat a certain Jan Teerhost, who kept a tavern in Amsterdam. This honest man took pity on the povertystricken wanderer, approached him, learnt by degrees his history, and, on arriving at the capital, gave him a hiding in his own cellar.

But Latude was not to escape. The spies of the Pompadour were on his track. By means of a letter from his father, containing a draft on an Amsterdam banker, they decoyed him to his ruin. He was walking from his hidingplace to the bank; the Dutch police pounced upon him, and in a moment he was fettered. A large crowd gathered, and the policemen, dragging their prey along, cleared a path to the Town Hall with their bludgeons. One of these blows fell on Latude's neck and stretched him senseless.

Here we will leave him, promising to pursue his adventures at some future time, and tell a tale no less stirring than has been given in these pages. But two small details may be added here.

Fifteen years later, Latude (then a prisoner at Charenton) learnt that his old friend D'Alègre was an inmate of the same gloomy building. So earnestly did he entreat permission to see his former comrade, that his gaolers at length gave way. He found D'Alègre in an iron cage, his hair matted, his eyes sunken, his flesh shrunk around his bones. Latude ran towards him. The man growled and broke into a yell. He was a maniac! In vain did his old fellow-prisoner plead for a sign of recognition. D'Alègre looked at him with blazing eyes. "I know you not!" he screamed; "be off! I am God!" He had been ten years in Charenton. On such horrors rested the charming edifice of the Pompadour's

sway.

On the 15th of July, 1789-the day after the capture of the Bastille, when the said charming edifice had come down with a crash, dragging after it so much that was base, and so much that was noble-Latude, a free man, visited the prison from which, thirty-three years before, he had escaped. Among the archives he found the rope-ladder he had left dangling from the Treasury tower, and with it a procès-verbal, dated the 27th of February, 1756, giving a description of the escape, and signed by the Major of the Bastille and the Commissary Rochebrune.

SAILED from Liverpool for Jamaica, and, after a pleasant voyage, arrived at my destination and discharged my cargo. My vessel was called the Lively Charlotte, a tight brig, well found for trading, and navigated by thirteen hands. I reloaded with sugar and rum for Halifax, intending to freight from that place for England before the setting in of winter. This object I could only achieve by using double diligence, allowing reasonable time for accidental obstacles.

"My brig was built sharp, for sailing fast; and I did not trouble myself about convoy (it was during war), as I could run a fair race with a common privateer: And we trusted to our manoeuvring, four heavy carronades, and a formidable show of painted ports and quakers (dummy guns, so called because they will not fight), for escaping capture by any enemy not possessing such an overwhelming superiority of force as would give him confidence to run boldly close alongside and find out what were really our means of defence.

"I speedily shipped what provisions and necessaries I wanted, and set sail. A breeze scarcely sufficient to fill the canvas carried us out of Port Royal Harbour. The weather was insufferably hot; the air seemed full of fire, and the redness of the atmosphere, not long before sunset, glared as intensely as the flame of a burning city. Jamaica was very sickly; the yellow fever had destroyed numbers of the inhabitants, and three-fourths of all new-comers speedily became its victims.

"I had been fortunate enough to lose only two men during my stay of three or four weeks (Jack Wilson and Tom Waring), but they were the two steadiest and healthiest seamen in the brig. The first died in thirty-nine hours after he was attacked, and the second on the fourth day. Two hands besides were ill when we left, which reduced to nine the number capable of performing duty. I imagined that putting off to sea was the best plan I could adopt to afford the sick a chance of recovery, and retard the spreading of the disorder among such as remained in health; but I was deceived. I carried the contagion with me, and on the evening of the day on which we lost sight of land, another hand died, and three more were taken ill.

"Still I congratulated myself I was no worse off, since other vessels had lost half their crews while in Port Royal, and some in much less time than we had remained there. We sailed prosperously through the windward passage, so close to Cuba that we could plainly distinguish the trees and shrubs growing upon it, and then shaped our course north-easterly, to clear the Bahamas and gain the great ocean.

"We had seen and lost sight of Crooked Island three days, when it became all at once a dead calm. Even the undulation of the sea, commonly called the ground swell, subsided; the sails hung slackened from the yards; the vessel slept like a turtle on the ocean, which became as smooth as a summer millpond. The atmosphere could not have sustained a feather: cloudless and clear, the blue skies above and the water below were alike spotless, shadowless, and stagnant.

"Disappointment and impatience were exhibited by us all, while the sun, flaring from the burning sky, melted the pitch in the rigging till it ran down on the decks, and a beef-steak might have been broiled on the anchor-fluke. We could not pace the planks without blistering our feet, until I ordered an awning over the deck for our protection; but still the languor we experienced was overpowering.

"A dead calm is always viewed with an uneasy sensation by the seamen, but in the present case it was more than usually unwelcome. To the sick it denied the freshness of the breeze, that would have mitigated in some degree their agonies; and it gave the healthy a predisposition to imbibe the infection, lassitude and despondency being its powerful auxiliaries. Assisted by the great heat, the fever appeared to decompose the very substance of the blood; and its progress was so rapid that no medicine could operate before death closed the scene of suffering.

"I had no surgeon on board, and from a medicine-chest I in vain administered the common remedies. But what remedies could be expected to act with efficiency, where the disease destroyed life almost as quickly as the current of life circulated?

"I had now but five men able to do duty, and never can I forget my feelings when three of these were taken ill on the fourth day of our unhappy