During his campaign of Guaita, in 1820, the Count Giovanni Arrivabene had had the hardihood to receive Pellico, his two pupils, and their father, Count Porro, men who, to use the expression of Lamennais, had dared to pronounce the word country. This crime incurred the penalty of death, though the tender mercy of Austria sometimes commuted it to fifteen or twenty years of hard labour. Porro being pursued, and Pellico arrested, their host could not expect less; and he was, in fact, seized and arraigned. He was, however, released, but shortly after he found out that the Austrian police regretted their clemency. He accordingly left his home one day in the greatest secrecy, crossed Brescia, and came to the house of his two oldest and most devoted friends, Camillo Ugoni and Giovita Scalvini, whom he informed of his determination to fly, and of their own state of insecurity, offering them at the same time places in his carriage. They did not hesitate a moment, but their preparations for departure occupied some little time, and they were, of course, anxious to maintain the greatest secrecy. It being then four in the afternoon, they decided to wait till daybreak. Scalvini took Arrivabene home with him, and put him in the bed usually occupied by his mother. The good lady, from whom they wished to conceal the real state of affairs, was so effectually kept in the dark, that, without knowing anything of their secret, she was made instrumental in giving the alarm in case of a visit from the police. On the 10th of April, 1822, the fugitives and one of Arrivabene’s servants left Brescia; and choosing the roads along the valley, they soon dismissed the carriage, and pursued their way on horseback. They passed three days and three nights in the labyrinth of valleys, constantly changing guides, and they were received everywhere with the attention and respect worthy of the most ancient times. At Edolo, a village on the Adda, twelve hours from Tirano, they saw the uniforms of some gendarmes hung over a large fire in an inn. “What’s this?” “Hush! they are asleep! poor wretches, it would be a pity to wake them!”
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.