“It was seven o’clock by the time these preparations were made.  Thelin called to the workmen on the staircase to come in and have a glass of wine.  On the prince’s way downstairs he met two warders.  One Thelin skilfully drew apart, pretending to have something to say to him; the other was so intent on getting out of the way of the board carried by the supposed workman that he did not look in the prince’s face, and the prince and Thelin passed safely into the yard.”

As he was passing the first sentinel, the prince let his pipe fall from his mouth.  He stooped, picked it up, and re-lighted it deliberately.

“Close to the door of the canteen he came upon an officer reading a letter.  A little farther on, a few privates were sitting on a bench in the sun.  The concierge at the gate was in his lodge, but his attention was given to Thelin, who was following the prince, accompanied by his dog Ham.  The sergeant, whose duty it was to open and shut the gate, turned quickly and looked at the supposed workman; but a movement the prince made at that moment with his board caused him to step aside.  He opened the gate:  the prince was free.

“Between the two drawbridges the prince met two workmen coming towards him on the side his face was exposed.  He shifted his board like a man weary of carrying a load upon one shoulder.  The men appeared to eye him with suspicion, as if surprised at not knowing him.  Suddenly one said:  ‘Oh! it is Berthon;’ and they passed on into the fortress.”

The prince hastened with Thelin to the place where the cabriolet engaged the day before was waiting for them.  As Louis Napoleon was about to fling away the board he had been carrying, another cabriolet drove by.  As soon as it was out of sight, the prince jumped into his own, shook the dust off his clothes, kicked off his wooden shoes, and seized the reins.  The fifteen miles to St. Quentin were soon accomplished.  The prince got out at some distance from the town, and Thelin entered it alone, to exchange the cabriolet for a postchaise.  The mistress of the post-house offered him a large piece of pie, which he thankfully accepted, knowing that it would be a godsend to his master.  A woman, whom they had passed upon the highway on entering the town, took Thelin aside and asked him how he came to be driving with such a shabby, common man that morning; for Thelin was well known in the neighborhood.

Before he rejoined the prince with the pie and the postchaise, Louis Napoleon had become very impatient.  Seeing a carriage approach, he stopped it, and asked the occupant if he had seen anything of a postchaise coming from St. Quentin.  The traveller proved afterwards to have been the prosecuting attorney of the district (le procureur du roi).

It was nine in the evening when the prince, Thelin, and the dog Ham were safely in the carriage.  They reached Valenciennes at a quarter to three A. M., and had to wait more than an hour at the station for the train.  The prince had discarded his working clothes, but still wore his black wig.  The train arrived at last.  By help of the Englishman’s passport the prince safely crossed the frontier, and soon reached Brussels.  Thence he went by way of Ostend to London.