The manner of Le Chevalier’s escape is strange enough to be described.  By reason of his excited condition, “which threw him into continual transports, and which had seemed to the concierge of the prison to be the delirium of fever,” he had been lodged, not in the tower itself, but in a dependence, one of whose walls formed the outer wall of the prison, and overlooked the exterior courts.  He had been ill for several days, and being subject to profuse sweats had asked to have his sheets changed frequently, and so was given several pairs at a time.  On December 13th, at eight in the morning, the keeper especially attached to his person (Savard) had gone in to arrange the little dressing-room next to Le Chevalier’s chamber.  Returning at one o’clock to serve dinner, he found the prisoner reading; at six in the evening another keeper (Carabeuf), bringing in a light, saw him stretched on his bed.  The next day on going into his room in the morning, they found that he had fled.

Le Chevalier had made in the wall of his dressing-room, which was two yards thick, a hole large enough to slip through.  They saw that he had done it with no other tool than a fork; two bits of log, cut like wedges, had served to dislodge and pull out the stones.  The operation had been so cleverly managed, all the rubbish having been carefully taken from within, that no trace of demolition appeared on the outside.  The prisoner (Vandricourt) who was immediately below had not noticed any unwonted noise, although he did not go to bed till eleven o’clock.  Le Chevalier, whose cell was sixteen feet above the level of the court, had also been obliged to construct a rope to descend by; he had plaited it with long strips cut from a pair of nankeen breeches and the cover of his mattress.  Having got into the courtyard during the night by this means, he had to wait till the early morning when bread was brought in for the prisoners.  The concierge of the Temple was in the habit of going back to bed after having admitted the baker, and the gate remained open for “a quarter of an hour and longer, while bread was being delivered at the wickets.”

People certainly escaped from the Temple as much as from any other prison.  The history of the old tower records many instances of men rescued by their friends in the face of gaolers and guard, but confederates were necessary for the success of these escapes.  Given the topography of the Temple in 1807, it would seem impossible for one man alone, with no outside assistance, to have pierced a wall six feet thick in a few hours, and to have crossed the old garden of the grand prior, where in order to reach the street he would either have had to climb the other wall of the enclosure, or to pass the palace and courts to get to the door—­that of the Rue du Temple—­which, as stated in the official report, remained open every morning for twenty minutes during the baker’s visit.  The impossibility of success leads us to think that if Le Chevalier triumphed over so many obstacles, it was because some one made it easy for him to do so.