ays that as the prince swam towards the steamer,
still fired on by the National Guard stationed on the heights, a
custom-house boat headed him off. But in Boulogne it was reported
and believed that he was captured and brought to land in a bathing
machine.

The prisoners were tried by a royal decree. No one was sentenced
to death, but the prince, Count Montholon, Count Persigny, Colonel
Voisin, Major Parquin, and another officer were sent to the fortress
of Ham, on the frontier of Belgium, where they occupied the same
quarters as Prince Polignac and the other ministers of Charles X.
had done. Count Montholon, four months after, made piteous appeals
to be let out on parole for one day, that he might be present when
the body of Napoleon was brought back to the capital.

The prince passed five years in prison, reading much, and doubtless
meditating much on the mistakes of his career. Many plans of escape
had been secretly proposed to him, but he rejected all of them,
fearing they were parts of a trap laid for him by the authorities.
It has always been believed, however, and it is probably true, that
Louis Philippe would have been very willing to have the jailers
shut their eyes while Louis Napoleon walked out of their custody,
believing that the ridicule that had attended his two attempts at
revolution had ruined his chances as a pretender to the throne.

During the years Louis Napoleon was imprisoned at Ham, he received
constant marks of sympathy, especially from foreigners. He was known
to favor the project of an interoceanic canal by the Nicaragua
route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and the Government
of Nicaragua proposed to him to become president of a company that
would favor its views, expressing the hope that he would make himself
as great in America by undertaking such a work, as his uncle has
made himself by his military glory.

The illness of his father in Florence gave Prince Louis Napoleon
a good reason for asking enlargement on parole from the French
Government. Louis Philippe was willing to grant this; but his ministers
demurred, unless Louis Napoleon would ask pardon _loyalement_.
This Louis Napoleon refused to do; and having by this time managed
to extract a loan of L6,000 from the rich and eccentric Duke of
Brunswick, he resolved to attempt an escape.

Here is the story as he told it himself when he reached England.
The governor of Ham, it must be premised, was a man wholly
uncorruptible.