It was a clever and most original plan. On a certain day, a party of the Cardinal's friends, mounted as for a desperate ride, were to assemble under the walls of the keep, and at a given signal were to whirl away in their midst a man attired at all points like the Cardinal himself. A rope hanging from a severed bar in the window of the cell was to give his guards to suppose that the prisoner had escaped that way; but all this while the Cardinal was to lie _perdu_ in a hole which he had discovered on the upper terrace of the prison. When the excitement over the imaginary flight had subsided, and the vigilance of the sentries was relaxed, the Cardinal was to issue from his hiding-place, disguised as a kitchen-man, and walk out of the dungeon. It might have succeeded, but the elements played into the hands of Anne d'Autriche. A storm blew up on the night that the Cardinal was to have quitted his chamber, and the wind closed a heavy door on the staircase that led to the terrace. All the Cardinal's efforts to wrest it open were unavailing, and he was forced to return to his cell. He was removed to the château of Nantes, and the imaginative daring of his flight from that place has ranked it high in the annals of prison-breaking. ------- One echo more shall reach us from these lugubrious caverns. Towards the beginning of the eighteenth century, a young man, Du Puits by name (victimised by an Italian Abbé into forging orders on the King's treasury), received as cell-companion the Marquis de la Baldonnière, a reputed or suspected alchemist. Du Puits, a laughing philosopher now on the verge of tears, recovered his spirits when he learned the new-comer's name. "I heard all about you, sir, before I came here," he said. "I was secretary to M. Chamillart, the minister, and you were often talked of at the bureau. I told M. Chamillart that if you could turn iron into gold, it was a pity you were not appointed manager of the iron mines. But it is never too late to turn one's talents to account, monsieur le marquis, and as a magician of the first water you shall effect our escape."