During the years Louis Napoleon was imprisoned at Ham, he received constant marks of sympathy, especially from foreigners.  He was known to favor the project of an interoceanic canal by the Nicaragua route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and the Government of Nicaragua proposed to him to become president of a company that would favor its views, expressing the hope that he would make himself as great in America by undertaking such a work, as his uncle has made himself by his military glory.

The illness of his father in Florence gave Prince Louis Napoleon a good reason for asking enlargement on parole from the French Government.  Louis Philippe was willing to grant this; but his ministers demurred, unless Louis Napoleon would ask pardon loyalement.  This Louis Napoleon refused to do; and having by this time managed to extract a loan of L6,000 from the rich and eccentric Duke of Brunswick, he resolved to attempt an escape.

Here is the story as he told it himself when he reached England.  The governor of Ham, it must be premised, was a man wholly uncorruptible.  He was kind to his prisoner, with whom he played whist every evening, but he was bent on fulfilling his duty.

This duty obliged him to See the prince twice a day, and at night to turn the key upon him, which he put into his pocket.

The fortress of Ham forms a square, with a round tower at each of the angles.  There is only one gate.  Between the towers are ramparts, on one of which the prince daily walked, and in one corner had made a flower-garden.  A canal ran outside the ramparts on two sides; barracks were under the others.  Thelin, the prince’s valet, was suffered to go in and out of the fortress at his pleasure.  On the 23d of May, 1845, Thelin went to St. Quentin, the nearest large town, and hired a cabriolet, which was to meet him the next day at an appointed place upon the high-road.  The prince’s plan depended on there being workmen in the prison, and he had been about to make a request to have his rooms papered and painted, when the governor informed him that the staircase was to be repaired.  The day before the one chosen for the attempt, two English gentlemen, probably by a previous understanding, had visited the prisoner, and he asked one of them to lend his passport to the valet Thelin.

“Very early on the morning of May 25th, the prince, Dr. Conneau, and Thelin were looking out eagerly for the arrival of the workmen.  A private soldier whose vigilance they had reason to dread had been placed on guard that morning, but by good luck he was called away to attend a dress parade.

“The workmen arrived.  They proved to be all painters and masons,—­which was a disappointment to the prince, who had hoped to go out as a carpenter.  But at once he shaved off his long moustache, and put over his own clothes a coarse shirt, a workman’s blouse, a pair of blue overalls much worn, and a black wig.  His hands and face he also soiled with paint; then, putting on a pair of wooden shoes and taking an old clay pipe in his mouth, and throwing a board over his shoulder, he prepared to leave the prison.  He had with him a dagger, and two letters from which he never parted,—­one written by his mother, the other by his uncle, the emperor.