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.
“My first day’s march after leaving Irbite was very hard, and at night I
found myself quite worn out. The heavy clothes I wore added to my
fatigue, and still I did not dare throw them off. At nightfall I ran to
the thickest part of the forest and began to prepare my bed. I knew the
method used by the Ostiakes to shelter themselves in their deserts of
ice; they simply hollow out a deep hole under a great heap of snow, and
in that way find a bed--a hard one in truth, but a good warm one. I did
the same, and soon found the repose of which I stood greatly in need.”
On the morrow he lost his way, and after wandering about almost the
whole of the day, he found himself at nightfall on a road which
fortunately happened to be the right one. Seeing a small house not far
from a hamlet, he resolved on asking shelter there: it was not denied
him. He gave himself out for a workman seeking employment in the iron
works of Bohotole, in the Oural. He played his part to the best of his
ability, but was thought to be too well clothed and furnished with linen
for a workman, and was woke from his first sleep by peasants asking for
his passport. With the greatest coolness he showed them the pass ticket,
the only one he had left; fortunately the sight of the seal was
sufficient for these self-appointed gendarmes, who begged his pardon for
having taken him for an escaped convict.
“The rest of the night I spent very quietly, and the next day took leave
of those whose hospitality was so near growing fatal to me. This
incident carried a sad conviction to my mind that I could never ask
shelter for the night of any human being without exposing myself to the
greatest risks, and the Ostiake bed must be, until further notice, my
only place of repose. I had, in short, to put up with this Ostiake style
of sleeping during the whole of the time I was crossing from the Oural
mountains to Veliki-Oustioug; that is, from the middle of February to
the beginning of April. Three or four times only dared I beg hospitality
for the night in some isolated hut, worn out by fifteen or twenty days’
march in the forest, almost exhausted, and scarcely knowing what I did.
Every other night I was satisfied with digging out a hole to lie in, and
by degrees became accustomed to that way of sleeping. Sometimes at
nightfall I even found myself going towards the thick part of the wood,
as to a well-known inn; at other times I confess this savage kind of
life became intolerable to me. The absence of any
[Illustration: The sight of the seal was sufficient.]
human habitation, the want of hot food, and even of frozen bread, my
only nourishment for whole days sometimes, made me face in all their
terrible reality those two hideous spectres called cold and hunger. In
moments like these I dreaded specially the fits of drowsiness that
suddenly came over me, for they were evident invitations to death,
against which I fought with the little strength I had left. And now and
then the craving for hot food became so strong in me, that it was with
the greatest difficulty I resisted the temptation of begging in some hut
for a few spoonfuls of the root soup of Siberia.”
After slowly climbing the heights of the Ourals, he at last crossed them
on a fine night; but his troubles were precisely the same on the western
side of the mountains. On one occasion, during a snowstorm he lost his
way, passed a horrible night in the agonies of hunger, and at daybreak,
while trying to find the path, he fell exhausted at the foot of a tree.
The sleep, which in these regions is the forerunner of death, had
already fallen on him, when he was saved by a trapper who was crossing
the forest. This kind man gave him a little brandy and a few mouthfuls
of bread, told him to take heart, pointed out to him a house of refuge,
and disappeared in the woods.
“When I saw the house in the distance, my joy was beyond all
description; I would have gone to it, I think, even had I known it to be
full of gendarmes. I got as far as the door; but no sooner had I crossed
the threshold, than I fell down and rolled under a wooden bench.”