Escapes! Read Free

his harmless toy bomb in the mail.
    Then he rushed to court and begged to be allowed to see Madame. He had overheard a plot to send her a bomb!
    The detective assigned to the strange case had his doubts about this loyal informer. He asked Latude to write down what had happened. Sure enough, the handwriting on Latude’s statement matched the writing on the package.
    No one laughed at Latude’s prank. Perhaps he really had meant to hurt Madame, but was too foolish to do it properly. And surely he hadn’t acted alone — this must be part of a larger plot. When Latude finally confessed to his little plan, no one believed him. The lettre de cachet did the rest.
    Once the Bastille’s heavy doors slammed behind him, Latude felt as if he had been buried alive. Since childhood he had heard stories of Paris’s notorious prison, and they had filled him with dread. Its eight huge towers, linked by stone walls, cast a gloomy shadow over the Saint-Antoine district. No one seemed to know what went on behind those walls: any prisoner lucky enough to be released was sworn to silence about life inside. But the rumors were enough to terrify Latude’s young imagination. It was where dangerous people — traitors, political enemies of the King — were locked away. And never heard from again.
    And so he wrote letter after letter, asking for mercy, for justice. Most importantly, he begged those on the outside — Don’t forget me! He wrote to the prison governor, to the chief of police, to ministers, to Madame de Pompadour herself. Letters were his lifeline to the outside world, and he clung to them.
    At first prison officials mailed his letters. Then as time passed — and no one answered him — Latude’s letters got stranger. He sent one minister an envelope full of cut-out letters of the alphabet, asking him to put them together himself in whatever words would move him to pity. Prison censors wondered, Is Latude going mad?
    The governor of the prison ordered that Latude’s ink and paper be taken from him. To the governor’s horror, Latude kept writing — on a torn piece of his shirt, in his own blood.

    Everything changed when Latude was given a roommate — Antoine Allègre, another troublemaker. The police hoped that putting the two men together would get them talking. Maybe they would let slip some new information about their crimes.
    The result was surprising: Allègre and Latude started behaving themselves. The flood of letters stopped, as did Allègre’s shouts and violent outbursts. Bastille officials sighed with relief.
    What they never suspected was that Latude and Allègre had given up on letter-writing and screaming at the guards for a reason. They had a new idea now, and it filled all their thoughts. Escape.
    A spark of hope Latude hadn’t felt in years took hold of him. All the same, doubts preyed on his mind. Everyone knew that escape from the Bastille was impossible — wasn’t it? Maybe I’m going mad after all, he thought.
    He kept his fears to himself, as he and Allègre went over all the possible exits. Their room was on the fourth floor of one of the Bastille’s eight towers. There was no getting out through the cell’s heavy double door. It was locked with iron bars, and guards were right outside, day and night. They had one tiny window, but it was too small for a child to squeeze through, never mind a grown man.
    And even if they could fit inside the window opening, four sets of iron grids barred their way through the six feet of stone wall. What’s more, guards constantly checked the grids to make sure they were solid.
    â€œThe only way left is up,” Latude said, half-joking.
    Latude and Allègre raised their eyes to the chimney over their fireplace — in winter it barely kept the prisoners warm in the damp tower. Guards didn’t search it often, since it was always filthy and smoke-filled.
    Allègre