The Salt Smugglers (23 page)

Before entering his cell, he had asked his keeper to go fetch him something to drink; now left alone, he proceeded to scramble up onto the ramparts, from which he dove into the moat that surrounded the prison. He was swimming across this moat when the keeper's wife, — who had seen him from a window, — sounded the alarm, with the result that he was seized on the far side and returned to his cell exhausted and all covered with mud. This time, to be double sure, they placed him in solitary confinement.

They had a hard time rousing the poor abbé de Bucquoy from the protracted swoon caused by his plunge into the water; the words he was mumbling about Providence having abandoned him to his fate aroused their suspicions that he might be a Calvinist minister fleeing the Cévennes: it was therefore decided to dispatch him to Soissons, the prison there being more secure than the one in La Fère.

Soissons is a most interesting town, should you be free to visit it. The prison back in those days was located between the bishop's palace and the church of Saint-Jean; to the north, it abutted the town's fortifications.

The abbé de Bucquoy was placed in a tower with an
Englishman who had been captured during the Ham expedition. The turnkey who prepared their meals allowed the abbé, who continued to play the invalid as he had in Fort-l'Évêque, to take the air every evening at the top of the tower in which he was imprisoned. The fellow had a Burgundian accent, which the abbé recognized from having previously heard it in the vicinity of Sens.

One evening, he said to him: « Monsieur l'abbé, this would be a lovely evening to go have a look at the stars from the tower. »

The abbé looked at him, but without registering the man's features.

The dungeon was shrouded in fog.

The abbé made his way back down and found the door of the dungeon wall open. A sentry was walking to and fro along the battlements. He withdrew when the soldier drew close to him and whispered: « Abbé . . . It's a lovely evening, isn't it . . . to go for a little stroll: who could possibly see you in this fog? »

The abbé thought this was merely an act of kindness on the part of a good-hearted soldier who was asking the sentry to bend the rules a bit for a poor prisoner.

At the edge of the parapet he felt a rope and, testing it up with his hand, realized that it had knots in it and that it had been equipped with a sling.

The sentry had his back turned, so the abbé, who was quite adept at this kind of thing, slipped over the edge, seated in the sling like a house painter.

He found himself in a moat empty of water and choked with weeds. The exterior walls were far too high to be scaled. But while looking for some sort of crack that might provide a chimney for his ascent, he discovered a drain opening surrounded by scattered debris and freshly split stones, — an indication that it was undergoing repairs.

Out of nowhere, an unknown figure lifted his head out of the drain hole and whispered:

« Is that you, abbé?

— Why do you ask?

— Because it's such a lovely evening; but the weather is far better down here. »

The abbé immediately seized his meaning and proceeded down a ladder through this rather fetid shaft. The man silently guided him toward a spiral staircase and said: « Climb up it until your path is blocked . . . at which point, knock on the obstacle and someone will open it for you. »

The abbé climbed a good three hundred steps, then his head bumped against a trap door so heavy he could barely budge it with his shoulders.

A moment later, he felt the door lift and heard someone saying:

« Is that you, abbé? »

The abbé said: « Of course it's me; but who are you? ... »

The stranger replied with a
shush
, and the abbé found himself standing on a solid floor, surrounded by utter darkness.

As he felt his away around in the dark, the abbé de Bucquoy became aware of tables that extended for some length and felt even more unsure about where exactly he was. But the man who had previously spoken to him
soon lit a lantern that illuminated the entire room. Silverware glinted in the display cases and thousands of gold jewels and precious stones sparkled on the tables . . . which were obviously countertops. There was no mistaking it: this was a goldsmith's shop.

The abbé thought things over for a minute, then said to himself upon observing the features of the man holding the lantern: « This is surely a thief: whatever his intentions toward me, my conscience obliges me to alert the goldsmith that he is in the process of being robbed. »

And indeed, a second individual had crawled out from under one of the other counters and was rifling through the most precious jewels. The abbé shouted out: « Help! Seize the robbers! » It was in vain that they warned him to hold his tongue, clapping their hands over his mouth. But he had already made such a racket that a man in a nightshirt now appeared at the back of the room, candle in hand, frightened out of his wits.

« Sir, you are being robbed! the abbé shouted out.

— Help! Over here! Robbers! the goldsmith in turn screamed.

— Will you shut up?» said the man with the lantern, threatening him with a pistol.

The goldsmith quieted down, but the abbé started knocking frantically on the outer door while continuing to scream for help.

The measured steps of a patrol could be heard approaching on the street outside. The robbers again ducked under the counters. The clatter of rifle butts was heard right in front of the door.

« Open up! In the name of the king! » a rough voice commanded.

The goldsmith went looking for his keys and opened the door. The patrol entered.

« What's going on here? said the sergeant.

— I am being robbed, the jeweler blurted out, they are hiding under the counters . . .

— Sergeant, said the abbé de Bucquoy, persons whom I do not know and whose motives I do not understand have conspired to have me escape from the Soissons prison . . . I have now realized that these persons are indeed criminals and, seeing as I am a gentleman, I absolutely cannot consent to being their accomplice . . . I know that the Bastille is awaiting me; so arrest me . . . and take me back to prison. »

The sergeant, who was a large burly individual, turned toward his soldiers and said: « First arrest the goldsmith and then strap the scare pear on him so that he'll shut up. And then do the same with the abbé . . . he's getting on my nerves. »

The
scare pear
was a special kind of gag made of a leather bag filled with bran: you could chew on it as much as you wanted but you couldn't make a single peep.

« Sir,

« Allow me to correct a small detail in your installment of December 8th. — This may have little effect on the whole history of the abbé de Bucquoy, but it will be of interest to those whose primary concern is historical exactitude.

« You say that de Bucquoy was taken to Fort-l'Évêque, situated on the quai de la Vallée.

« Readers of today might well recognize the quai de la Vallée as the stretch on the left bank of the Seine that runs from the Saint-Michel bridge to the Pont-Neuf, the location of the poultry market, known as the marché de la Vallée.

« But the
For
-l'Évêque (and not
Fort
, given that the name derives from the Latin
forum
) was situated on the right bank; to be exact, it occupied the house numbers 65, 67, etc. of the rue Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, and reached as far as the rue de l'Arche-Marion. This means that it also gave onto the quai de la Mégisserie, the portion of which that was closest to the Châtelet was called the
Vallée de Misère
. It is this latter place name that no doubt caused your confusion. Of For-l'Évêque nothing remains but its underground vaults and a steep gable roof on the rue de l'Arche-Marion.

ONE OF YOUR READERS. »

The author must confess that he was misled by the following words in the German edition: «
Die Mauer von dem
Vallée, etc. » The events therefore clearly must have taken place on the opposite side of the river. How simple it would have been to go to the National Library and consult the street atlas, — all twenty folio pages of it, — of Paris during the reign of Louis XIV. But public access to it is restricted to two days a week and it takes three days to get a library card. Not to mention that historians are not born overnight.

As to the word Fort-l'Évêque, it is indeed spelled this way in the books of the period.

The abbé, gagged as he was by the scare pear, could not for the life of him understand why the goldsmith who had been robbed was being submitted to the same treatment as he was. His surprise only increased when he noticed that the soldiers of the patrol were helping the two robbers clean out the store. A few phrases in argot that they exchanged finally made things crystal clear to him. The patrol was a fake patrol.

The sergeant, a hulk of Herculean proportions, was recognized by the abbé as none other than the captain of the salt smugglers with whom he had conversed back in Morchandgy, near Sens.

They had finished stuffing everything into sacks when they heard a major commotion, rifle shots and all, out on the street. « Let's get everything loaded up », said the captain.

They made quick work of all the sacks and even the abbé, who had been tied up like a bundle, found himself slung over the back of one of the robbers. They all rushed out of the shop onto the rue de l'Intendance.

The glow of a major fire was visible over toward the gate of Compiègne . . . some sort of battle was going on across the way. The small band of robbers forced the garden gate of the bishop's palace and, slipping in among the trees, met up with a larger detachment of men who were all carrying sacks on their backs and who were entering the city while others, exchanging the occasional sign of acknowledgment, climbed down the ramparts on ladders and then fled across the opening created by the crumbling counterscarp. From that point on they had to ford the river Aisne in order to reach the heights of Cuffy and the outer edges of the forest.

The author of this serial, — who has made every effort at historical veracity, — feels he should pause here for reflection. What worries him is that certain ill-disposed individuals might well question his right, — always interpreting the Riancey amendment in the narrowest of terms, — to engage in the
mise en scène
(or
mise en dialogues
) of certain portions of his narrative, the overall factual base of which can of course not be challenged.

They may be reassured, however, to learn that yesterday's newspaper was not seized by the authorities, — which would tend to corroborate the intelligence of those bureaucrats who work as
readers
for the Stamp Office. But would it not be possible that the censors were simply waiting for the issues to pile up so that they could levy an all the more weighty fine? This is the sword that Damocles imagined in his dream.

On the other hand, we writers can reassure ourselves with the knowledge that when it comes to history, there are several ways of skinning the cat. Froissart and Monstrelet filled their narratives with dialogues whose authenticity they would certainly have trouble proving. Old Daniel and Mézeray followed the trick perfected by Titus-Livius, Tacitus, and others of having their characters deliver long harangues in Roman fashion, — while Péréfixe was not adverse to peppering his history of Henri IV with witticisms.

In our own day, Alexis Monteil has written a
History of the French
in dialogue form. M. de Lamartine has indulged in a number of novelistic techniques in his
History of the Girondists.
— As for MM. de Barante, Guizon, Thiers, etc., the licenses they take with their material should also reassure us.

But there is still one point that leaves us uneasy. When we inserted the rectification that was so kindly addressed to us yesterday, — we had not yet realized the extent to which this detail destroyed a crucial element in our narrative of the abbé du Bucquoy's escape from the
Fort
-l'Évêque. Our documents indicating that he had fled in the direction of the neighborhood of the Temple, we thought it was entirely legitimate to have him cross over the Pont-Neuf. — Under the given circumstances, he could have taken another bridge . . . but it proved necessary to
bind together
the narrative by indicating his supposed movements.

Now that it has been proved that Fort or For-l'Évêque was located on the right bank of the Seine, it follows that our abbé could not possibly have crossed a bridge to reach the Temple quarter. To admit this error is to demonstrate the sincerity of our whole enterprise.