Part 21

The gendarmes had been pursuing three fugitives, and half dead with the long ride and with the drenching rain, they had taken shelter in the inn. The three outlaws were too charitably disposed to disturb them; but one of them, touching the pockets of a sleeping soldier, called out, “This, perhaps, contains the order for our arrest; let us leave the den before the lion roars!” In spite of all the kind offers of those around, they could only procure two horses. The man walked; Ugoni rode one horse, and Scalvini and Arrivabene mounted the other as best they could. The gendarmes slept on. At daybreak the fugitives crossed the heights of the mountain called the Sapei della Briga, where they found some gendarmes quartered; but the good angel who had sent the men at Edolo to sleep, did the same for their comrades, and Arrivabene and his companions passed them unseen. There still remained the most difficult place to pass,--the frontier. They called themselves cattle drivers, going to the fair, and quietly crossed the line of Austrian custom-house officers. The fugitives uncovered their heads, but scarcely had they passed the boundary mark when they fell exhausted to the ground. The effect was indescribable. On one side the officers, blaspheming and threatening, furious at the trick played upon them; and on the other, the poor exiles, leaving country, fortune, friends, and all they held most dear; but blessing Heaven for their safety, and only answering the insults heaped on them by a quiet indifference. The innkeeper of Edolo was imprisoned for a long period; and his poor wife, whom they had told that her husband would be hanged, died suddenly of fear and grief. (_My Prisons._ Silvio Pellico.)

_MARRAST, GUINARD, GODEFROI CAVAIGNAC, AND OTHER POLITICAL PRISONERS._

JULY, 1834.

Soon after the riots of April, 1834, at Paris and at Lyons, many men, whose hostile opinions to the Government were well known, were arraigned before the court of peers, and accused of having taken part in those movements. Among those accused were MM. Guinard, Marrast, Godefroi Cavaignac, brother to the great general of that name, Berrier-Fontaine, etc.

The trial went on, but on the night of the 12th July, news was brought that twenty eight of those imprisoned at Sainte Pelagie, formerly the prison for debtors, had managed to escape.

The watch kept over them was purely nominal, they had communication with persons outside, and passed the whole of their time either in their own rooms or in the court provided for them to walk in. The door of a cellar opened on to this court, and the cellar itself extended as far as the centre of the prison, so that the end of it was only separated by a very short distance from the garden of a neighbouring house. To enter this garden they had only to pierce the wall of the cellar, and to form a gallery passing under the sentinel’s post and the two exterior walls, which they accomplished. They hollowed out a passage, about ten yards in length, by one yard in diameter, and so constructed that its extremity touched the ground of the garden, belonging to a house situated at 7, Rue Copeau. Maintaining their communications with those outside, they found everything in this house that could aid their flight, all matters being so arranged as not to compromise any person. About nine at night they pierced through the thin crust of earth that still divided their passage from the open air, posted in that way from Sainte Pelagie into the garden, and from there hurried away singly or in twos and threes. The ministerial newspapers declared that they had managed to obtain a false key for the cellar door. According to the _National_, this cellar was always given up to the prisoners. Some twenty-eight of them escaped in this way, but, about fifteen others refused to follow them from various motives, or were hindered from doing so by illness. Those, however, who were not kept to their rooms, stayed in the court, as they were accustomed to do till ten o’clock every night, and their presence in that place, their conversation, and their noise, prevented the keepers from suspecting the flight of the rest. In short, this escape was so easy, and so favoured by circumstances, that it was even said authority had lent its aid, in order to escape the difficulties of a trial very hard to terminate. Those prisoners who went abroad found very few obstacles on their way out of the kingdom. Still Armand Marrast and his travelling companions were arrested by gendarmes at only forty kilometres from the frontier, and on a cross road which they fancied very secure. For two hours they were detained by a brigadier of gendarmes, when fortunately for them, a civil officer came up. Marrast quickly addressed him: “Sir, I will make you responsible for the consequences of this delay; for two hours I have been awaiting your presence to get rid of the absurd mistakes of these gendarmes, who take me for I don’t know what.” The official, rather confused, carefully examined the passports of the two travellers, which of course were in perfect order, and allowed them to go. That same night, Marrast, guided by some smugglers, passed the frontier without difficulty. M. Guinard had the same good fortune. He went to dine at Compiegne with a friend, who, to make matters safer, brought the fugitive and the procureur de roi together at dinner. The magistrate who had within his grasp a splendid opportunity for promotion, had no suspicion whatever of his agreeable _convive_. At the close of the evening, the friend carried off his guest in a gig, conducted him to the frontier, and gave him over to the care of a smuggler, whom they had bribed, and who took him safely across the custom-house lines.

_MONSIEUR RUFIN PIOTROWSKI._

1846.

Of all the innumerable victims transported during the last century by the Russian government to Siberia, two alone were able to escape from that dreadful place; their names are Beniowski, whose escape we have already related, and M. Piotrowski. If, on one side, the adventures of the Hungarian magnate are as full of interest as any novel, on the other, the simple story of the modest and intrepid Polish soldier inspires one with quite a different feeling. There we have all the emotion excited by a pompous show; here the hidden drama, the laceration of every fibre of a heart tortured by slow and almost secret anguish. Beniowski, as a general and a prisoner of war, was treated according to his rank, and even among exiles was allowed a certain liberty and the privileges of his order. Piotrowski, the veteran warrior of 1831, being only the simple emissary of his exiled countrymen in France, was sent to Siberia, thrown into a convict’s den, and forced to obey the orders of a scoundrel himself condemned for theft. The half-savage population of the country gave the infamous appellation of “Varnak,” as well to the noble Pole transported for patriotism, as to the vilest forger and assassin. Rufin Piotrowski is in fact the Silvio Pellico of Poland. The book of Silvio Pellico raised against Austria the indignation of all civilized nations. Beaten at Solferino, annihilated at Sadowa, the jailors of Spielberg have nowhere met a look of pity. The “Memoirs of a Siberian” are a terrible witness against the jailors of Siberia.

M. Piotrowski being sent to Russia by the Polish Emigration Society, went in 1843 to Kamiéniec, in Podolia, under the supposed name and title of Catharo, an English subject. He had remained there about nine months as a professor of languages, when he was recognised as a Pole, arrested, and condemned to hard labour in Siberia. Transported in 1844 to the place of his exile, he was sent to the distillery of Ekaterininski-Zavod, three hundred kilometres north of Omsk, and for a year was obliged to perform the hardest and most repulsive labour. A word or sign on his part, or only a fit of ill temper on the part of those over him, would have exposed him to the bastinado or the knout; but being resolved on suffering everything rather than be struck, and cherishing always in his heart the hope of escape, he learnt to control himself sufficiently to show great docility, and a constant care to do thoroughly the work imposed on him. He so succeeded by this means in raising himself, that he was allowed to enter the distillery. “My office,” said he, “was the rendezvous for many travellers who came either for the sale of grains or for the purchase of spirits; peasants, townspeople, tradesmen, Russians, Tartars, Jews, and Kirghis. Of passing strangers I inquired with a curiosity that never flagged concerning Siberia. I talked with men who had been, some to Berezov, others to Nertchinsk, to the frontiers of China, to Kamtschatka, among the steppes of Kirghis, and in Bokhara, so that without leaving my office I learned to know Siberia intimately. This acquired knowledge was in the future of immense use to me in my plan of escape. A circumstance that much softened my fate was the permission I obtained from the inspector to leave the barracks; by this means I was able to quit the ordinary dwelling-place of the convicts, and live with two of my countrymen in a house belonging to Siesicki.

“This man had succeeded little by little in building for himself a small wood cabin; thanks to his long stay at Ekaterininski-Zavod, and to the savings made out of his small pay. The house was not yet completed; in fact there was then no roof, but we nevertheless carried in our goods and chattels. The wind entered by every crack, but wood costing very little, we lit a large fire on the hearth every night. In spite of these inconveniences, we felt ourselves at home, and were relieved of the disagreeable companionship of the convicts; the soldiers alone, whom we had to pay, never leaving us. We spent the long winter evenings in thinking about those dear to us, and even in making plans for the future. Ah, if that house still exists, and if it shelters some unfortunate exiled brother, let him remember he is not the first who has wept in it, and invoked his absent country! I had quickly risen from the lowest to the highest degree which a convict of our establishment on the banks of the Irtiche could attain. In 1846, I could almost fancy myself a simple recruit, banished to distant shores, and under an inclement sky. How different was this to that terrible winter of 1844, when I swept out gutters, carried or split wood, and lived under the same roof with the scum of humanity! How many of my brethren, alas! were now groaning in the mines of Nertchinsk! How many even who had been condemned to a less severe punishment than mine, would have thought themselves happy in my position, though I had resolved on flying from it even at the risk of the knout, and the mysterious dungeons of Akatouïa!

“In 1845, the Emperor Nicholas had issued a decree, by which the situation of those exiled to Siberia was considerably aggravated. Commissions visited the penitentiary establishments with the object of proposing new measures of severity. The forced residence of all the convicts in the barracks was the first point conceded to the suspicious despotism of the czar. All this necessarily made me persist in a plan conceived long ago.

“During the summer of 1845, I had already made two attempts, rather hasty and thoughtless ones, and both having the same result, though neither, fortunately, creating any suspicions. In the month of June I had noticed a small skiff often left by carelessness on the banks of the river; I had thought of using this skiff to carry me down the river to Tobolsk; but scarcely had I loosed the boat, one dark night, and rowed a little way, when the moon shone out, lighting the country most dangerously, and at the same time I heard from the shore the voice of the inspector who was walking with some employés. I landed with as little noise as possible, thinking how fruitless that attempt had proved. The following month I perceived that the same boat had been left in a more advantageous place, on a lake leading, by a canal and the Irtiche, to a rather distant point of our establishment. A phenomenon pretty frequent on the waters of Siberia during this season formed an insurmountable barrier to this second attempt of mine. Caused by the sudden chill of the air at nightfall, there rise from the earth great columns of vapour, so thick as to make even the nearest things quite indistinguishable. It was in vain that I kept pushing my boat in all directions during the long mortal hours of that night of anxiety; the fog prevented my finding the canal which would have led me to the Irtiche. It was only at day-break that I at last discovered the long-sought issue, but it was already too late to proceed, so I returned home, rejoiced to be able to do that without mishap. From that time I gave up all thought of flight by the inclement waves of the Irtiche, and began in earnest to ripen my first plan of escape.”

After long and due meditation on all the different and possible ways of quitting the Russian empire, he resolved on effecting his escape by the north, the Oural Mountains, the steppe of Petchora, and Archangel.

“Slowly and with great difficulty I collected the necessary things for a journey, the first and chief of which was a passport. There are two kinds of passports for the Siberians; one being a sort of pass ticket, granted for a very limited time, and for places not far distant from each other; the other being a much more important document, given by the high authorities on stamped paper. I succeeded in forging both. I managed slowly also to get the clothes and other things necessary for my disguise. I endeavoured to transform myself into a native, ‘a man of Siberia’ (Sibirski tchèlovieck), as they say in Russia. Ever since my departure from Kiow, I had purposely allowed my beard to grow, and it had then reached quite a respectable and orthodox length. By great perseverance, I also became possessor of a wig,--a Siberian wig, that is a wig made of sheepskin turned inside out. Thanks to these various means, I was pretty sure of not being recognised. I had also 180 roubles (about 200 francs) left, a small enough sum for so long a journey, and which was destined by a fatal accident to become still much smaller. I was in no way blind to the difficulties of my enterprise, nor to the many dangers to which I was exposed at each step. One thing alone sustained me, and while aggravating my situation, at all events eased my conscience: it was the oath I had sworn to myself never to reveal my secret to any one till I was in a free country; to ask neither help, nor protection, nor advice of any living being, so long as I had not passed the limits of the czar’s empire; and rather to give up my own liberty than to endanger any one of my brethren. I might have brought my own sad fate on many of my poor countrymen by my stay at Kamiéniec, when I imagined I was fulfilling a mission of general interest. Now, my own personal safety was the only thing in question, therefore I ought to look to none but myself. God gave me grace to keep this resolution to the last, which after all, was simply an honest one; and who knows that it is not in consideration of this oath, which I swore on the outset of my attempt, that He has always stretched over me His protecting arm!

“About the end of January, 1846, I had finished my preparations, and the opportunity seemed all the more favourable to me from the fact of it being near the time for the large fair of Irbite, at the foot of the Oural Mountains,--one of those fairs only seen in eastern Russia. I thought I should be lost among such a migration of people, and hastened to profit by the occasion.

“On the 8th February, I started. I had on three shirts, one of which, a coloured one, was put over the trousers of thick cloth, and over all, a small burnous (armiack) of sheepskin, well greased with tallow, and coming down to my knees. Large riding boots, well tarred, completed my costume. Around my waist I wore a large sash of white, red, and black wool, and on my wig a round cap of red velvet, trimmed with fur, such as is worn by a well-to-do peasant of Siberia on holidays, or by a travelling merchant. I was moreover well wrapped in a large pelisse, the collar of which being turned up and fastened by a handkerchief tied round it, had as much the effect of keeping out the cold as of hiding my face. A small bag which I carried contained a second pair of boots, a fourth shirt, a pair of blue summer trousers, according to the custom of the country, some bread and some dried fish. In the leg of the right boot, I had concealed a large dagger. The money, which was in notes of five or ten roubles, I placed in my waistcoat, and in my hands, which were covered with large skin gloves, with the hair outside, I carried a formidable, knotty stick.

“So rigged out, at night I quitted the establishment of Ekaterininski-Zavod, by a small by-path. It froze very hard, and the flying sleet glistened in the moonbeams. I had soon passed my Rubicon, the Irtiche, and hurrying rapidly forward, I took the road to Tara, a village twelve kilometres distant from my place of detention. ‘Winter nights,’ I thought to myself, ‘are very long in Siberia: how far can I go before day-break, and before my escape is signalled? What will become of me afterwards?’

“I had scarcely passed the Irtiche, when I heard behind me the sound of a sleigh. I shivered, but resolved on waiting for the nocturnal traveller, and, as it has happened to me more than once during my dangerous peregrination, what I most dreaded as a peril, became a quite unexpected means of escape.

“On the peasant asking me where I was going, I replied ‘To Tara.’

“‘Where are you from?’

“‘The village of Zalivina.’

“‘Give me sixty kopeks (ten sous), and I will take you to Tara, where I am going myself.’

“‘No, it’s too much; fifty kopeks if you like.’

“‘Very well; get up at once.’

“I took my place next to him; we started at a gallop, and in half an hour were at Tara. Left alone, I asked, according to the Russian custom, at the first house I saw, if I could get any horses.

“‘Where for?’

“‘For the fair at Irbite.’

“‘There are some.’

“‘A pair?’

“‘Yes, a pair.’

“‘How much the verst?’

“‘Eight kopeks.’

“‘I wont give so much. Six kopeks. What do you say to that?’

“‘Very well, then.’

In a short time the horses were ready and harnessed to the sleigh.

“‘And where are you from?’ was asked of me.

“‘From Tomsk. I am the employé of N. (I gave the first name that occurred to me); my master has gone on before me to Irbite. I had to stay behind for some small matters, and am horribly late; I fear he will be angry. If you will take me there quickly, I will give you something more for yourself.’

“The peasant whistled, and the horses started like arrows. All at once the clouds gathered, the snow began to fall thickly, and the peasant lost his way, and after wandering about a good deal, we were obliged to halt, and pass the night in the forest. I pretended to be greatly enraged, and my guide humbly begged my forgiveness. It would be impossible to describe the terrible anxiety of that night, spent in a sleigh in the midst of a snowstorm, scarcely four miles distant from Ekaterininski-Zavod, and expecting every minute to hear the bells of the _kibitkas_ sent in pursuit of me. At last the day began to dawn.

“‘We will return to Tara,’ I said to the peasant, ‘where I shall engage another sleigh. As for you, fool, you may expect nothing. I will take care, moreover, to give you up to the police for making me waste my time.’ The poor peasant, quite ashamed, started to return to Tara, but scarcely had he gone a verst, when he stopped, looked round, and showing the vestige of a pathway under the drifts of snow, said, ‘That is the road we should have taken!’ ‘Follow it then,’ I said, ‘and God speed us.’ He then did his utmost to make up for lost time. A most horrible idea struck me just then; I remembered how our unhappy Colonel Wysocki was, like me, detained in the forest for a whole night, and was given up to the gendarmes by his guide. Vain terrors! The peasant took me to a friend’s house, where I managed to get tea and some fresh horses. So I went on, changing my horses at very moderate prices; when having arrived late one night at a village called Soldatskaïa, and not having sufficient money to pay my guide, I went with him to an inn filled with a number of drunken wretches. I had taken from under my waistcoat a few notes, intending to have one or two changed by the landlord, when a movement of the crowd, done purposely or not, I cannot tell, pushed me from the table where I had spread my papers, which were quickly seized by some clever hand. In vain I made my loss known: I never could discover the thief, nor seriously think of calling in the gendarmes; so I resigned myself to my misfortune. I was in that manner deprived of forty-five roubles in notes; but what greatly increased my regrets, and even my terror, was the fact that the thief had taken at the same time two papers of the greatest worth to me: a small sheet on which I had inscribed the towns and villages I must pass through on my way to Archangel, and my passport, the one on stamped paper, the making of which had cost me so much pains. Thus at the outset I lost almost a quarter of the modest allowance for my journey, the note that was to have been my guide, and the only paper capable of satisfying any curious people. I was in despair.”

Still the fugitive was obliged to go on: each step taken brought him nearer to freedom; but whether he was taken at only a few miles’ distance from the place of his exile, or on the Russian frontier, his fate would be the same. Lost in the immense morass which covered the road to Irbite he did not reach the gates of that town, till the third day of his escape, having travelled, thanks to the celerity of sleigh-riding, 1000 kilometers since his departure from Ekaterininski-Zavod.

“‘Halt, and show your passport!’ shouted the sentinel; fortunately he added in a low tone, ‘Give me twenty kopeks, and be off with you.’ I yielded with great satisfaction to the exigencies of the law so opportunely modified in my favour.”

Having passed one night at Irbite, M. Piotrowski hastened to leave it next morning; but the expenses of his journey, and his losses by theft having reduced his purse to seventy-five roubles (about eighty francs), he could only proceed on foot.

“The winter of 1846 was extremely severe; still on the morning I left Irbite the atmosphere softened, but then the snow fell so thickly that it quite obscured the light. Walking became almost impossible among these white masses, which grew higher and thicker at every step. About midday the sky cleared a little, and my journey grew easier. I generally avoided villages, if possible; but when I found myself obliged to cross one, I went straight along as if I belonged to the neighbourhood, and needed no directions. Only at the last house of a hamlet did I venture sometimes to ask a few questions, and then not until I had great doubt as to which road I was to take. When I felt hungry, I took from my bag a piece of frozen bread, and ate it while walking, or sitting at the foot of a tree in some retired spot in the forest. To appease my thirst I looked eagerly out for the holes made in the ice by the people of the country to water their cattle. I was sometimes obliged to content myself with letting snow melt in my mouth, although that means was far from satisfactory.