Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 1.djvu/174

 time quietly. These utensils were two wooden bowls, a wine keg, straps to support my fetters, and a small mattress stuffed with oakum. It was Thursday, the sixteenth day of my confinement at the Bagne, and on the Saturday evening I obtained sailor's clothes, which I immediately put on under my convict's frock. On paying the seller of them, I saw that he had about his wrists round cicatrices of deep burns, and I learnt, that being condemned to the gallies for life in 1776, he had been put to the torture at Rennes, without confessing the robbery of which he was accused. On the promulgation of the code of 1791, his sentence was commuted to twenty-four years' labour at the gallies.

The next day, my division went out, at the cannon's signal, to work at the pump, which was always in motion. At the wicket they examined, as usual, our manacles and clothing; knowing this practice, I had pasted over my sailor's garb a bladder painted flesh-colour. As I purposely left my frock and shirt open, none of the guards thought of examining me more closely, and I got out unsuspected. Arrived at this basin, I retired with my comrade behind a pile of planks, and my fetters having been cut the previous evening, soon yielded. Having got rid of these, I soon threw off my galley-frock and trowsers, and putting on under my leathern cap a wig which I had brought from Bicêtre, and having given my comrade the trifling recompense which I had promised him, I disappeared, cautiously gliding behind the piles of timber.