[Illustration: I told him I was going to bury him.]
crowbar in hand, he extorted six sequins. He passed the night at a farmhouse. In the morning he bought some old clothes and an ass, and on its back he passed the frontier, without being even asked his name. He arrived early at Borgo, where he found the monk, who told him, by way of welcome, that he had not expected him.
Masers de Latude was born in 1725, at the castle of Craiseih, near Montagnac, in Languedoc. His father, the Marquis de Latude, was an officer in high rank, and the young Latude was destined for the military profession. While, however, he was studying at Paris, in 1749, he unfortunately conceived the idea of having recourse to subterfuge, in order to attract the notice of Madame de Pompadour, and to obtain her protection. He accordingly placed a small cardboard box in the post containing a harmless powder, and addressed to the marchioness, and then went straight to Versailles with the information that two individuals wished to poison the royal favourite, and that he had discovered their secret. The marchioness at first thanked him in the warmest terms; but he had scarcely left her presence when she began to suspect that she had been the victim of a shameful fraud. She obtained a few lines in his own handwriting from her pretended preserver; and comparing them with the address on the box, had her suspicions confirmed. Some few days after that, Latude found himself in the Bastille.
When he had remained there four months, he was taken to the castle of Vincennes, and he had every reason to fear that his imprisonment was to last for life, for the enraged woman proved inexorable to every appeal in his favour.
“I kept up my courage,” he says in his “Memoirs,” “with the hope that I should one day obtain my liberty, and that I should owe it to my own exertions alone, not to the favour of my gaolers. I was constantly forming plans. Among my fellow-prisoners I noticed an aged ecclesiastic, who appeared at a particular time every day in the garden of the chateau. He had been deprived of his liberty a long while on account of Jansenism. He was frequently visited by the abbé of St. Sauveur, and he devoted a great deal of his leisure to teaching the children of the officers to read and write. He was allowed to go almost wherever he pleased when in the company of his little pupils. He usually took his walk at about the time when I was led into a small garden adjoining the one I have spoken of--an indulgence granted me through the kindness of M. Berryer, the lieutenant of police. Two turnkeys used to accompany me on my leaving the cell, and on my return; but sometimes the elder of the two would wait for me in the garden, while the younger came up alone to let me out. I gradually accustomed the latter to see me run down the stairs in advance of him, and join his comrade in the garden, so that he always moved in the most leisurely manner when he came to fetch me.