The Salt Smugglers (27 page)

Things were proceeding quite nicely when Corbé burst onto the scene with soldiers, announcing that he was wise to their plans. One of the prisoners had betrayed them . . . none other than the abbé Papasaredo. He had hoped to obtain a pardon by acting as an informant; but the only advantage he gained in the end was to be treated a bit more leniently for a short period of time.

All the others were thrown into the hole; the abbé de Bucquoy was dispatched to the lowest dungeon of all.

It would be pointless to underscore how unpleasant the abbé comte de Bucquoy found life in this dungeon. After several days of penitence, he resorted to a strategem that had served him well on a number of previous occasions: he decided to play the invalid. The turnkey who was looking after him became quite alarmed at his condition, which alternated between a kind of feverish exaltation and a deep depression which rendered him as motionless as a corpse. He managed to fake this condition so well that the Bastille medical staff had great difficulty recognizing any signs of life in him and declared that his illness was degenerating into a state of complete paralysis. After he had undergone this examination, he pretended that half of his body was fully paralyzed and that he could only move one side of it.

Corbé came to see him and said:

« We'll have you moved elsewhere. But see where your escape plans have gotten you?

— Escape plans! exclaimed the abbé. Who possibly could hope to escape from the Bastille? Has anybody ever succeeded?

— Never! Hugues Aubriot, who had completed the construction of this fortress before being locked up in it himself, only managed to get free because of the revolution of the Maillotins. He's the only person who has left this place against the wishes of the government.

— My Lord! said the abbé, were it not for this illness that has struck me down, I would have nothing to complain about . . . except for these toads that leave tracks of slime on my face when they traverse it during my sleep.

— You see what is gained by rebellion.

— On the other hand, I am finding some consolation in educating the rats down here: I give them the king's bread which my poor state of health does not allow me to eat . . . Let me show you how intelligent they are. »

And he called out: « Moricaud? »

A rat scampered out of a crack in the stone wall and came to attention at the abbé's bedside . . .

Corbé could not help but laugh out loud, and said:

« Let's find you more appropriate quarters.

— If I had my choice, said the abbé, I'd like to share a room with the baron of Peken. I had just begun converting this Lutheran and now that my spirit is turned toward more spiritual matters because of this malady that God has visited upon me, I would be most happy to finish up the job. »

Under Corbé's orders the abbé was transported to a room on the second floor of the tower of the Bretaudière where the baron of Peken had already spent several days in the company of an Irishman.

The abbé continued to play the paralytic, even in front of his companion, for the recent events in the tower of the Corner had put him on his guard. The German got along very poorly with the Irishman who soon also got on the abbé's nerves. The baron de Peken, even more easily irritated, insulted the Irishman so grievously that the matter had to be resolved by a duel.

A pair of scissors was taken apart, the two blades were well sharpened, and the two men commenced the duel in accordance with the rules. The abbé de Bucquoy had initially thought that this was all a joke, but seeing that the situation was heating up and that blood was being shed, he started pounding on the door, hoping to attract the attention of the turnkey.

When questioned about this affair, he declared that it was the Irishman who was at fault, so that the latter was taken away, leaving him alone with the baron. It was at this point that he confided to him that he had come up with a plan of escape that was bound to be far more successful than the previous one: it involved piercing the wall that communicated with the latrines whose malodorous drainpipes in turn led down to the sewers on the rue Saint-Antoine.

They set to work with great determination, eventually breaking through the entire wall . . . But alas the baron of Peken was something of a prattler and a braggart. He had managed to establish communication with the prisoners on the floor above through the passage they had cleared, and soon both of them were conversing with these new and unidentified acquaintances.

The baron mentioned to them that he and his friend were hoping to escape and, whether out of jealousy or out of the desire to curry favor, one of the residents of the upper rooms, a certain Joyeuse, the son of a judge from Cologne, denounced them to Corbé, who in turn informed the governor of their plans.

Bernaville summoned the abbé de Bucquoy to his quarters. The latter, given his paralytic condition, had to be physically carried in; but once there, he engaged in a spirited defense, claiming that the baron of Peken, after several glasses of wine too many, had decided to regale this Joyeuse, who was something of a
simpleton
, with a number of tall tales. Besides, it would be a crying shame if an unfounded accusation of this sort should mean that he would have to be separated from the baron, whose conversion was coming along so nicely.

The baron corroborated his version of the events and Joyeuse's accusations were in the end dismissed. Furthermore, the two friends had been tipped off in advance by their turnkey, whom the abbé's money had transformed into a useful ally and had thus been able to repair the wall in time, so that nobody suspected anything.

The abbé de Bucquoy was placed in another room in the tower of
Liberty
. He continued his efforts to convert the Lutheran baron of Peken, while at the same time furthering their plans of escape.

He had been quite humiliated to hear from the turnkey just how easily a certain Du Puits had made his exit from the prison of Vincennes using a set of false keys.

This Du Puits had been the secretary of M. de Chamillard and was known as
the golden quill
because of the excellence of his handwriting. He was no less adept at duplicating keys, which he forged by melting down the tin plates on which his meals were served.

With the keys that he had thus fashioned, this Du Puits used to leave his room at night to pay visits to his fellow prisoners, and even to some of the female inmates, who received him with as much astonishment as largesse.

He finally succeeded in escaping from Vincennes and took refuge in Lyon with a certain Pigeon, his cell-mate. « Never, observes Renneville in his memoirs, never was Doctor Faustus deemed as great a magician as this Du Puits. »

As fate would have it, he was rearrested in Lyon where, in order to come up with quick cash, he had forged a number of official treasury bonds issued in the name the king.

At the Bastille Du Puits had less luck escaping than at Vincennes. He had succeeded in climbing down into a moat where they were mowing weeds and had noticed that when the workers went home in the evening they left the gate open behind them. He therefore hid out near this gate but it still being daytime, a sentry took a shot at him with his harquebus and he was taken back to the Bastille where, after a long illness, he was reduced to limping around with a
bracket
under his arm.

The end of this story was far from reassuring. Nonetheless, when it came to his own escape plans, the abbé de Bucquoy remained undeterred. He was careful to strip all the bottles he was served of their wicker casings, assuring his turnkey that he needed these to light his fire in the mornings. He spent his days weaving the wicker into ropes, using thread he had extracted from his bed sheets, his towels, and from the canvas cover of his mattress, and being careful to sew all these back up so nothing would be suspected.

For his part, the baron of Peken occupied himself with the fabrication of tools with bits of iron that he
picked up here and there, or the odd nail or kitchen utensil. Having heated up all this metal in the fireplace, they then sharpened it on the stoneware pots in which their water was kept.

The wicker ropes were extremely bulky. The abbé de Bucquoy pried up a number of floor tiles and succeeded in creating a hiding place for all this material. One day, however, he dug so deeply under the floor that its joists, which were rotten with age, suddenly collapsed, causing him and the baron of Peken to plummet into the room directly below, which was occupied by a Jesuit priest . . . who, already a bit soft in the head, now went completely out of his wits.

The abbé de Bucquoy and his accomplice escaped with a few minor contusions. The Jesuit priest was shouting for help so frantically that the abbé enjoined him (in Latin) to kindly shut up, while promising to include him in their future escape plans. The Jesuit, feeble of mind as he was, thought that his life was being threatened and bellowed all the louder as a result.

The turnkeys arrived on the scene and the abbé de Bucquoy and the baron in turn started screaming and yelling, complaining to high heaven about the rotten floor that had caused their fall.

Upon being returned to their room, they quickly hid the rope ladders and iron hooks that they had stored under the floor. All was going well until one day a workman arrived, informing them that he had been ordered to create a grate in the door . . . The abbé asked him why this was being undertaken and he replied that the grate would be used to slide in food to the mad Jesuit who was to be soon moved into this cell. As for them, they were going to be transferred to a better room . . . This did not sit well with our two friends, for they had already managed to saw through the window bars and had prepared everything for an imminent escape.

The abbé requested an interview with the governor and informed him that he was most happy with his current quarters; besides, if he were to be separated from the baron of Peken, the latter's conversion would become impossible, seeing as he had not yet been able to gain the Lutheran's full confidence . . . But the governor would have none of it: and upon his return the abbé informed the German of their dilemma.

On the abbé's advice, the latter pretended that the mere threat of changing rooms had rendered him so melancholy that he was being driven to suicide. The baron played his part so well that instead of just shedding a few drops of blood, he opened the veins of his arms and, terrified at the sight of this blood spurting all over the place, the abbé called out for help. The sentries alerted their superiors, and even the governor made a visit to their cell, manifestly moved.

If the governor had displayed this level of sympathy, it was because he had been recently instructed to set the baron free . . . But, to further profit from his prison fees, he had delayed his liberation for as long as possible.

After this adventure, the abbé de Bucquoy was transported not to the dungeons but to one of the top floors of the towers called
calottes
. Previous prisoners in the room had taken it upon themselves to cover its walls with frightening images and quotations from the Bible that allowed them « to prepare them to meet their maker ».

Other prisoners, less religious than political in inspiration, had written satires of the following ilk on the wall:

Another prisoner had been so bold as to scrawl the following doggerel on the wall:

The abbé was not at all happy to find himself all alone in this octagonal room with its ogival vaults. They offered him the company of a Capuchin called Brandebourg, but the abbé soon complained that this priest put on too many airs and insisted on being treated like royalty. He asked that the governor place him with some
decent Protestant lad
so that he might devote himself to his conversion. He even mentioned a certain Grandville about whom he had already heard from his previous cellmates.

This Grandville was a very enterprising fellow, less interested in conversion than in making his escape; he proved to be an excellent match for the abbé de Bucquoy.