268 [=270]

268 Letters Historical and Galant. Vol. 5.

Letter lxxii. From Paris.

Nothing can be more obliging, Madam, than your behaviour: You give your friends pleasure with the best grace in the World, and we may say of you what is said of our Monarch, that he obliges doubly by his manner of doing it; for you follow the same Model. I own that by this means you give me a double sense of my fault, and I am confounded at the method I took to make you hasten to send me this history. Tis true, as you observe, that it has all the Air of the Legend of Some Saint; and that all those different fits of devotion, and extraordinary kinds of Life savour at least of the founder of some Monastick Order---You don't comprehend the Subject of my Curiosity upon it---You are in the right, knowing me as you to; for you know very well that I dip less into the Golden Legend and the Lives of Saints, less than into Theophrastus, Telemachus, and other Books of this Nature: Tis not therefore all this Fanaticism of the Abbot de Buquoits that gave me a taste for his Adventures, but his Escape out of the Bastille, which I heard talk'd of here, and took to be a fable: Afterwards when I was told he had got into a foreign Country. I imagined that as you were in the way of hearing news of him, You would be so good as to let me hear them, and that by means of you I might be able to know how he could attempt and even succeed in a thing that is looked upon to be impossible. This is what excited my Curiosity, and that of many more besides, to whom I promised to impart whatever you should tell me of it. I believe I desired nothing from you at first but the Account of his Escape; you are pleased to carry things much by sending me that of his Life; I am greatly obliged to you for it, and think tis so much the better, because as it gives us the better Idea of his person, we may the better be able to comprehend what he is Capable of---I hope that after carrying things so far, you will be so good as not to be obliging by halves, but resume the thread of your Narration where you left it. The place is too remarkable for you not to remember it; since tis at Bishop's fort you left the Abbot de Buquoit, all the tiresome Scenes are gone, and as we are drawing nearer the Conclusion we shall doubtless come soon to the Critical place: I expect it with impatience and am with all the acknowledgements I owe you for my present and future Obligations. Madam, Your most humble and most obedient Servant.

Letter lxxiii. From Aix-la-Chapelle.

You are right Madam, I must not stop in so fine a Road, nor leave the Abbot in Bishops for much longer, where I carried him in my former: Let us go and take him out, or rather see how he will get him self out. But we are not yet so very near the Conclusion as you think, for I must put him in the Bastille too, and we have a pretty long Journey to make before we come to that, we must go on by little and little: I can't tell whether all the tiresome Scenes be over; Let what will happen we shall go through the rest of them, I must have my share of them first you see, for I must write before you can read them. "You find in this Abbot some relation with the founders of some Monastic Orders---I think so too, for it came into his head to imitate St. Ignatius de Loyola and St. Alexis. But this is not what we are upon now.

Two Serjeants, as I told you conducted him to Bishop's fort, where he continued Eight days in the Green always beating his brains how to make his Escape; but his Examination broke all his Measure, and Contrary to Custom, after undergoing it, he was kept closer than before, spoke with no body, and was look'd upon as a lost Man. This did not discourage him, he remembred he heard heard it said that an Exempt of the Gardes des Corps could have found means by the help of his Comrade to get out of that Prison by a garret Window that look'd into the Quay of the Valley of Misery but had miss'd his opportunity by the horrour he was seized with at sight of the Precipice, and had Afterwards his head Cut off. The Abbot made use of this Lesson, and resolved to attempt what the poor Exempt durst not hazard. And first he endeavoured to discover out the Point, and the Situation of that frightful Abode, and found that the Garret in Question, served for an Antichamber to his little Cell and a Wardrobe to the whole house. After this first Idea, resolving to make sure of his Enterprise before he made any attempts he pretended to find himself unwell one day as they were carrying him up stairs, and leaning on one of the Windows of that Garret, he begg'd the Goaler that attended him to let him breath a moment; The Man consented, and putting his head out of the Window under pretence of taking the Air, he was Confirmed in his Idea, and saw it actually lay over the Quay of the Valley of Misery. Tis true the height was prodigious, and he was frightned at great number of Iron Grates that reached down to the very bottom with Sharp points, which to one that saw them from above formed the most shocking sight in the world, for one would think he saw a Forest thick set with Iron. This Sight frightened him, but did not make him give over his Enterprise, and after he had been locked up fast in his Chamber, he thought on nothing but how to put his project in Execution. All lay in his being able to get out of his Chamber, and get alone into the Garret. For this, the Door