That the Prince should conceive the idea of going out alone, in broad daylight, in sight of everybody, was a contingency so strange, so incredible, that not even the most suspicious jailor would have admitted its possibility. That the prisoner himself should have thought of it was due, altogether, to a peculiar condition of circumstances. The commandant of the fortress had asked for and been granted a sum of money for the purpose of making some indispensable repairs in the apartment of the prince and the stairway leading to it. There was a continual coming and going of workmen in the court and the prince remarked that they were very carefully searched on coming in but much less so on going out. This was an illumination to him and he determined that, disguised as a workman, he would, in the presence of all, leave the fortress in open daylight. That a man who had for five years, on this very spot, been subjected to the closest scrutiny; whose every look, movement, expression, had been closely studied, should undertake to challenge the alert watchfulness of this strict guard, certainly indicated a daring self-control which a writer of romance would scarcely expect thoughtful readers to accept as a characteristic of even a very daring knight of the middle ages, a hero of marvelous and incredible adventures. That this should have occurred within our own prosaic generation, that many of those still living should have looked upon this man of gentle, quiet dignity, brings to mind how immeasurably below the strong realities of truth fall the portrayals of romance upon the mimic stage. The dress of a workman was secured by Charles Thelin and successfully brought into the fortress; a blue blouse soiled with plaster; a black wig with long hair, a peaked cap rubbed threadbare with pumice stone, a pair of wooden sabots to make the prince look taller. Many years afterwards when the splendors of the second empire, no longer a dream but a magnificent pageant, had dazzled mankind; after the fatal day of Sedan and the revolution of September which drove the lovely Eugenie from Paris, among the papers found at the Tuileries was a bill for the articles used in this disguise. It amounted to twenty-five francs. Upon so small a sum rested an empire. Through all those years of imperial magnificence, this man, with a heart full of sentimental longings, preserved in his palace this little paper memento of the hour which tried his soul. On May 26th, the workmen would have completed their task; it was settled that on the 25th the attempt should be made. On the 24th, in bidding General Montholon and his wife good night, the prince embraced them with an emotion which came near betraying him; but neither of them suspected what was going on.