It was during the dark days of the revolution. Poor Sylvie Lafitte was detained in the highest tower of the Bastille. I say "poor" but in truth there was no need to waste sympathy on the able seamstress, who was no more in danger than, say, a pain au chocolat during Lent.
For starters, there was that miscreant of a guard, Citizen Menard, who stared at her all day long, with his hair like baled hay and his one bulging eye. Odious man! He harbored wild and imprudent fantasies toward the girl, each one beginning with an escape in which he smuggled Sylvie out of the tower by disguising her as a common scullery maid.
It was not likely he would find in Sylvie a willing accomplice, however. The pretty seamstress was no more willing to give up her brightly colored clothes than a peacock would part with its feathers! And besides, Sylvie had her own reasons for staying in the clink: Georges Delamouche, the royal tutor and irresistibly doomed pale, slim youth. It was for him she remained, and him alone!
Delamouche was locked in the cell adjacent to her own, and with her trusty sewing needle Sylvie had scraped away at the stone wall until a tiny passageway revealed itself between the two rooms. Just enough for the two lovers to gaze mournfully at one another and from time to time reach until their fingers almost clasped. It was all terribly romantic!
If it were up to Georges Delamouche, the story would have certainly ended in tragedy. His family was the useless, bookish sort, the type who exclaimed with pleasure over a nicely turned phrase, and clapped their hands when someone spoke in iambic pentameter. But what are books against the cold, cruel blade of the guillotine? He couldn't exactly rhyme his way out of this pickle, now could he?! Franchement!
Sylvie Lafitte, on the other hand, descended from a long line of pickpockets and thieves, so that a stint on death row was little more than a rite of passage, a minor setback, a temporary retreat.
How was it to be accomplished, then, this daring escape? With a little sleight of hand, some fancy needlework, and of course, a come hither stare that, when properly employed through the eyes of a capable Frenchwoman, may for all intents and purposes be considered the equivalent of a laser guided missile.
And this was how the foul Citizen Menard came to find himself inexplicably bound, gagged and locked away in the former cell of one Mlle. Lafitte, with his keys and revolutionary uniform altogether missing, while two so-called enemies of the people, looking very much like a pale, literate prison guard and a scullery maid with pink stockings, went for a lovely stroll that very day through the thick and imposing gates of the prison known as Bastille.
*****
I must mention, dear reader, how delighted Sophie was by your reactions to her story. She was so sweetly surprised and bemused, and she cannot wait to write the sequel. Thank you for that. Herald the hawk! I smile every time I think of it.