“At last, one murky night, an autumn night, he finished cutting through the bars, tied the cord firmly to the stump, and perched himself on the sill outside, holding on by one hand to the piece of iron remaining.  Then he waited for the darkest hour of the night, when the sentinels would probably be asleep; this would be not long before dawn.  He knew the hours of their rounds, the length of each watch, every detail with which prisoners, almost involuntarily, become familiar.  He waited till the moment when one of the men-at-arms had spent two-thirds of his watch and gone into his box for shelter from the fog.  Then, feeling sure that the chances were at the best for his escape, he let himself down knot by knot, hanging between earth and sky, and clinging to his rope with the strength of a giant.  All was well.  At the last knot but one, just as he was about to let himself drop, a prudent impulse led him to feel for the ground with his feet, and he found no footing.  The predicament was awkward for a man bathed in sweat, tired, and perplexed, and in a position where his life was at stake on even chances.  He was about to risk it, when a trivial incident stopped him; his hat fell off; happily, he listened for the noise it must make in striking the ground, and he heard not a sound.

“The prisoner felt vaguely suspicious as to this state of affairs.  He began to wonder whether the Commandant had not laid a trap for him —­but if so, why?  Torn by doubts, he almost resolved to postpone the attempt till another night.  At any rate, he would wait for the first gleam of day, when it would still not be impossible to escape.  His great strength enabled him to climb up again to his window; still, he was almost exhausted by the time he gained the sill, where he crouched on the lookout, exactly like a cat on the parapet of a gutter.  Before long, by the pale light of dawn, he perceived as he waved the rope that there was a little interval of a hundred feet between the lowest knot and the pointed rocks below.

“‘Thank you, my friend, the Governor!’ said he, with characteristic coolness.  Then, after a brief meditation on this skilfully-planned revenge, he thought it wise to return to his cell.

“He laid his outer clothes conspicuously on the bed, left the rope outside to make it seem that he had fallen, and hid himself behind the door to await the arrival of the treacherous turnkey, arming himself with one of the iron bars he had filed out.  The jailer, who returned rather earlier than usual to secure the dead man’s leavings, opened the door, whistling as he came in; but when he was at arm’s length, Beauvoir hit him such a tremendous blow on the head that the wretch fell in a heap without a cry; the bar had cracked his skull.

“The Chevalier hastily stripped him and put on his clothes, mimicked his walk, and, thanks to the early hour and the undoubting confidence of the warders of the great gate, he walked out and away.”