“I was the first to mount the chimney. I was suffering from rheumatism in the left arm, but I paid very little attention to that. I was nearly suffocated, however, with the soot accumulated in the upper part of the chimney beyond the bars, and the rough brickwork tore open my elbows and my knees, and made them run with blood. I was in this state when I reached the roof; I nevertheless, without thinking of my wounds, dropped a rope down the chimney, and drew up the portmanteau, which Alègre had fastened to the end of it. In the same manner we conveyed the wooden ladder, the crowbars, and the other packets to the top of the roof. Alègre made the ascent more easily than I, thanks to my having lowered the rope ladder for him. We then slid down from the top of the chimney on the outside, and stood both together on the roof of the Bastille.
“We lost no time in preparing for our descent. Doubling up our rope ladder till it formed a kind of ball, we rolled it along the roof till we came to the Treasury Tower, where we tied one end of it to a cannon and let the other fall gently into the ditch. I then fastened the single rope round my body, and Alègre holding it, to steady me, I stepped on to the ladder. But I swayed about dreadfully, nevertheless, and became so giddy that once or twice I felt myself on the point of losing consciousness, and gave up all for lost. I reached the ditch, however, without serious accident; and when Alègre had lowered the things to me, I was lucky enough to find a little eminence to place them on, so that they did not get wetted. My companion then made the descent, but he had one advantage over me--I was at the bottom to hold the ladder for him, so that he did not suffer from giddiness nearly so much as I had done. When we had both reached the bottom we could not suppress a sigh of regret at being obliged to leave behind us the ladder it had cost so much pains to make.[D]
“It was not raining, and we could distinctly hear the footfall of a sentinel, at the distance of a few paces. We were obliged therefore, to give up the idea of reaching the parapet, and to turn our steps towards the governor’s garden. We accordingly shouldered our crowbars, and went straight to the wall between the ditches, where we began to work. But unfortunately, just at the spot we were obliged to choose, the ditch was deepest, so that we were up to our armpits in water, instead of being up to our breasts. There had been a thaw but a few hours previously, and the ditch was full of lumps of ice, yet we had to endure all this for more than nine hours, our strength exhausted by labour of the most fatiguing kind, and our limbs more than half frozen. Hardly had we began to work, when I saw on