[Vidocq returns to Lille, where he is taken by two gendarmes, and
concerts the following stratagem for escape:--]
This escape, however, was not so very easy a matter as may be surmised,
when I say that our dungeons, seven feet square, had walls six feet
thick, strengthened with planking crossed and rivetted with iron; a
window, two feet by one, closed with three iron gratings placed one
after the other, and the door cased with wrought iron. With such
precautions, a jailor might depend on the safe keeping of his charge,
but yet we overcame it all.
I was in a cell on the second floor with Duhamel. For six francs, a
prisoner, who was also a turnkey, procured us two files, a ripping
chisel, and two turnscrews. We had pewter spoons, and our jailor was
probably ignorant of the use which prisoners could make of them. I knew
the dungeon key; it was the counterpart of all the others on the same
story; and I cut a model of it from a large carrot; then I made a mould
with crumb of bread and potatoes. We wanted fire, and we procured it by
making a lamp with a piece of fat and the rags of a cotton cap. The key
was at last made of pewter, but it was not yet perfect; and it was only
after many trials and various alterations that it fitted at last. Thus
masters of the doors, we were compelled to work a hole in the wall, near
the barns of the town-hall.
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