Alluding to this custom, Charles Dickens, jun. (_Gent. Mag._ 1869, New Series, vol. ii. p. 543), says: A prince of the house of Lorraine, confined in one of Louis XIII.’s prisons, made his escape on the 1st of April by swimming across the moat, and is accordingly commemorated as a _poisson d’Avril_ to this day. Why this should be so is not very clear, inasmuch as the gaolers and not the prince would have been the April fools on the occasion. A later version of the same story would appear to be the correct one. Here the prince and his wife, escaping in the disguise of peasants on the 1st of April, were recognised by a servant-maid as they were passing out of the castle-gates. She immediately made for the guard-room, giving the alarm to a sentinel by the way, but, unfortunately for her, yet happily for the fugitives, although she may have forgotten that it was All Fool’s Day, the soldiers on guard had not. The information was treated with the utmost contempt, the soldiers declining to be made game of, and while the royal prison-breakers got clear off, it is said that the luckless informer was soundly buffetted by the guard for her ill-timed jocularity. This version of the story, however, goes to prove nothing beyond the fact that the custom of making April fools was well known in the time of Louis XIII., but in nowise accounts for the curious expression _poisson d’Avril_; while the swimming story explains the fish, but leads one to believe that the incident was the origin of the dedication of the 1st of April to fools. Another curious explanation of this peculiar custom, giving it a Jewish origin, has also been suggested. It is said to have begun from the mistake of Noah sending the dove out of the Ark before the water had abated on the first day of the Hebrew month, answering to our month of April, and to perpetuate the memory of this deliverance it was thought proper, whoever forgot so remarkable a circumstance, to punish them by sending them upon some sleeveless errand similar to that ineffectual message upon which the bird was sent by the patriarch.--_Public Advertiser_, April 13th, 1769. Maurice, in his _Indian Antiquities_ (vi. 71), says that the custom prevailing both in England and India had its origin in the ancient practice of celebrating with festival rites the period of the vernal equinox, or the day when the new year of Persia anciently began.