ESCAPE FROM THE BASTILLE!

 

Marcel Ratatouille was hurled, roughly, into his cell.  "We'll try to be more accurate next time", laughed the toothless crone who was his jailer.  As his eyes became accustomed to the dim light, they darted around the cell and then returned to his face.  He surveyed this filthy, rat-infested hovel and longed for home.  He thought of his wife - Madame Fifi La Tour de France.  He pictured her bending over the kitchen sink by the window clipping her toenails and singing Tiptoe Thru The Tulips in the wrong key - her enormous bottom blocking out the light.  He remembered her thunderous snoring which nightly left him gripping the edge of the bed for dear life lest he be blown out the window.  He saw her teeth grinning hideously at him as they floated in a glass of water beside the bed. Suddenly this place didn't seem so bad.

So it had come to this.  Tomorrow the guillotine would give him his last ever short back and sides.  And for what?  A crust of bread!  Yes, he had stolen it! He couldn't help it - he only liked the crust.  He sat on the rotten straw and cursed his fate.

Ratatouille, once an eminent physician, was reduced to stealing when his lucrative practice ended in disgrace.  It wasn't his fault - not everyone understood the finer points of medicine.  Take, for example, Madame de Riz, whose husband, the rich and fat banker, Gaston de Riz, had died of heart disease.  Marcel, who had diagnosed corns, tried to explain.  "The problem with heart disease", he told her, "is that the first symptom is often death."  And what about the plague?  He had seen one of the first victims and confidently told him "Take two leeches and call me in the morning."  Wasn't he entitled to be wrong once in a while?

Next morning he awoke to the smell of burning flesh - his.  An angry mob had set fire to his house and even now were outside screaming abuse and singing dirty rugby songs.  "Sacre bleu!", he muttered.  "And also sacre red, green, blue and yellow!"  Well, at least he wasn't colour blind.  But he WAS on fire.  Quickly, he knotted his bed sheets into the shape of a horse and galloped away over the rooftops.

A month on the run had reduced him to a living skeleton - bald, toothless and clad in rags.  After he was reduced to stealing bread to stay alive he became the ten most wanted men in Paris.  When the mob finally caught up with him he dived, in desperation, into the river and pretended to be a fish.  It worked!  However, when the rabble had dispersed, he realized he couldn't swim and floundered in the water.  "A flounder!", cried a near-sighted fisherman, reeling him in, only to be amazed and disappointed when the fish punched him in the nose and took off with his boat.

His thoughts were interrupted by a scratching sound on the other side of his cell wall and, as he watched, a brick rattled loose and a hand appeared through the hole.  "Hello", whispered the hand, "is anyone there?"  "Mon dieu!", thought Marcel, "a talking hand!  Who would believe it!"  They struck up a conversation.  "I'm a writer", explained the hand.  "I have been thrown in here because all of my stories are too long and have a happy ending."  Marcel was horrified.  "Oh, it's really not that bad", the hand continued.  "The citizens of the revolution have assured me that once I write a novel with a sad ending, I'm to be set free, so I'm working on it night and day."

"But how do you survive in this hell hole?", Marcel asked.  "I use a book to put myself to sleep", said the hand.  "Every night, about nineish, I hit myself on the head with a bound copy of War and Peace, that usually does the trick.  Why, last night I slept like a baby."  And to prove this, the hand produced a wet diaper.  

"What are you calling the book", Ratatouille asked.  "You know, I've come up with everything", sighed the hand.  "The background, the characters, the plot.  But for the life of me I can't think of a good title."  "How about A Tale Of Two Cities?", Marcel suggested, off the top of his head.  "You know, that's not half bad", said the hand.

Just then Marcel could hear the sound of running feet outside his door.  "I wonder what an Indian is doing in a place like this", he thought.  But he would never know.  A voice in the next cell said "Mr. Dickens!  It is I, the Scarlet Pimpernel!  Quick, get into this Indian costume and we can get out of here!"  And with that the hand was gone and Marcel was, once more, alone.

Suddenly, he got a brilliant idea.  He would tunnel to freedom!  Pulling his swiss army knife from his sock, he whittled a human form out of the straw and cunningly covered it with his own rags.  Then, naked, he began digging with his spoon.  Down, deeper and deeper he tunneled.  He thought of his jailers and he dug.  He thought of Madame la Guillotine and he dug.  He thought of his wife and he dug.

Like a man possessed, spoonful by spoonful, he tunneled beneath the English Channel and on past England.  He emerged once in a potato field in Co. Clare.  "Holy Mother o' God, 'tis the divil himself!", gasped Rory O'Malley, beating him back into the soil with his spade.

Finally, many miles later, he emerged again in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and found himself, once again, drowning.  Miraculously, a ship approached out of the fog.  "Help!", he yelled.  "Captain", said a voice from the deck, "there's a man out there who appears to be drowning!"  "Well, is he or isn't he?", snapped the Captain.  The first mate grabbed a pair of binoculars and peered into the fog.  "Yes", he confirmed.  "He's most definitely drowning."  

"Well, don't just stand there, man!", barked the Captain.  "Drop him a line!" "Is this really a good time to send him a letter?", asked the first mate.  "You're right!", agreed the Captain.  "He might not even reply."  So they threw out a net and hauled Marcel on board.  "Sanctuary at last!", gasped the little Frenchman, as he was pulled onto the Titanic.

In Paris it was night and a drunken crowd departed for home, having executed Ratatouille's straw substitute.  And miles away, in London, Charles Dickens was writing "It is a far, far better thing..."