When Prince Louis Napoleon became convinced that all his efforts were unavailing, he took a resolution which he afterwards described in a letter as follows: “The desire to see my father once more in this world urged me to the most audacious enterprise I ever attempted; one that demanded more courage and determination than Strasbourg or Boulogne, since I was resolved not to endure the ridicule attaching to a man arrested under a disguise, and a failure would have been insupportable.” He confided his scheme to two persons only, Dr. Conneau and Charles Thelin. The doctor had carried his devotion to such lengths that, even during the previous year when it was proposed that he should leave the prison, he had declared: “I have elected my domicile in the prison of Ham and submit to all conditions which the authorities have seen fit to impose upon me.” Charles Thelin was fully determined never to quit his master and, as his captivity was entirely voluntary, he was treated in a special manner, and allowed to leave the fortress at times and go about the town. But for this fact, and one other, the escape of the Prince would have been impossible. Charles Thelin bought in Ham the clothes in which his master was disguised and arranged all the details of the flight. General de Montholon was not told of the plan. The general had disapproved of the Boulogne expedition, of which he had been kept in ignorance until the very moment of landing. The prince well knew that he would oppose the plan of escape, considering it a fatal absurdity and folly. When the prince acquainted Dr. Conneau with his plans the latter made every effort to dissuade him. Failure seemed inevitable; indeed, so rash seemed the attempt that the most unheard-of audacity and coolness alone could have rendered possible the miracle of success. But the improbable is sometimes true, and history furnishes greater surprises than romance. To glance at a plan of the fortress of Ham it would be hard to realize that any man had even been rash enough to make such an attempt, and without the connivance of a single jailor or soldier. The prison of the prince was on the side of the barracks near the dungeon, at the back of the court. To go out of the only door of the fortress it was necessary, in the first place, to pass in front of two jailors, cross the entire length of the court, go under the windows of the commandant who lodged near the drawbridge, then through the wicket where there was an orderly, a sergeant, a gate-keeper, a sentry, and last, a post of thirty men.