As may be imagined, the Sunday before their departure was a very anxious day. The smallest accident might bring failure, and with it all hope of liberty and the certainty of universal ridicule; for people would have all shaken their heads, and said a man must have been destitute of the most common sense to believe he could walk out of prison, through men who had known him for a half a dozen years, in the flimsy disguise of a journeyman carpenter. The friendly ostrich would have been severely laid under contribution to point innumerable morals and adorn no end of tales.
A passport had been procured from Paris by which the prince was to travel, of course under an assumed name; and the fact of the faithful Thelin not being similarly supplied, caused much anxiety to the little circle; but the accident of the English visitors’ arrival, was turned to good account in this matter. Telling his friends that he wished his valet to take a journey, the prince begged that one of them would be good enough to let his courier give the man his passport, which was immediately done. It is curious to note that afterwards, when in power, as if the emperor had remembered this small favour, he passed a law to the effect that English people might travel through France without a passport.
Very early on the Monday morning, the prince, Dr. Conneau, and Charles Thelin stood, without their shoes, watching the courtyard from behind the window curtains, for the arrival of the workmen. “St. Monday” is kept in France as religiously as it is here by certain classes of operatives; and to their great vexation they saw but very few of the men come in, and those were in cleaner blouses than the “Saturday” one which was to form the prince’s disguise. Again: by an unfortunate chance, the only sentinel they were particularly anxious to avoid happened to be on duty just outside. The prince had noticed that this man had been extremely zealous in his inspection and cross-examination of the workmen, every one of whom, as he was a keen, eagle-eyed fellow, he knew at sight. However, this man was relieved at six o’clock, and one who was considered less active took his place. The danger of discovery was, of course, chiefly to be apprehended from two sources--from the soldiers and keepers, and from the workmen themselves, who, seeing a stranger among them, would be sure to give an alarm. To lessen the chances from the latter, as soon as the workmen were all in, Thelin, having clipped his master’s moustaches, went out and invited them into the dining-room to have a morning dram; and while he was pouring it out and detaining them with light conversation, the prince slipped down the first stairs, and picking up a plank, waited coolly for his man to rejoin him; for as the two keepers at the bottom of the stairs knew him well, it was necessary for Thelin to be there to take off the attention of one, while his highness’s face was covered from the other by the plank on his shoulder. Here another difficulty arose. The prince being much below the middle stature, and therefore smaller than any of the workmen, his friends had provided a pair of high-heeled boots, which gave him the appearance of being four inches taller than he really was, and the feet of these were hidden from observation by being placed in a pair of clumsy-looking sabots. But as it was Monday, and the weather was fine, it was noticed that not one of the men had sabots on, so that at the last moment a whispered consultation became necessary upon the subject of sabots or no sabots. The prince was for kicking them off; but Thelin insisted upon their retention. So, with plank and sabots, and a much-soiled blouse, with a short, common clay pipe between his lips, the future Emperor of the French marched out of Ham.