Escapes from Cayenne

7 The trial began on the 16th of March and lasted five days.

I addressed the jury, but was interrupted fourteen times by the Attorney General. Tassilier had addressed the public, and his pathetic speech had much excited the auditors ; many of them, including barristers, were weeping.

Michel (de Bourges) made the most magnificent speech I ever heard in my life; he proved not only our innocence, but also the culpability of our accusers. His thundering voice so far intimidated our persecu­ tors, that no one dared to answ er him.

Forty-three questions were put to the j u r y ; all were unanimously negatived, and we were acquitted.

When we left the Court House a crowd of people saluted us with enthusiastic hurrahs, and we were brought to our prison under the arms of our friends and covered with flowers.

But Louis Napoleon Buonaparte, then President, had reck­ oned without his host.

Thinking we should be found guilty, he had transported our companions and sent them to Africa under the pretext of our culpability.

Being solemnly pro­ claimed innocent, the President's duty was to repeal the unjust law of transportation ; but he preferred to do a new injustice— he sent us to join our companions in French Africa.

In the middle of the night we were taken by a company of grenadiers, assisted by gendarmes, and removed to an adjoining town called Auray ; but there our friends were waiting our arrival, and we were immediately sent to the fortress of Port Louis.

When, soon after, we left this place, two thousand persons wished us farewell, in such terms that we could not help our tears, and the remembrance of that day excites me much now, after seven years of incredible sufferings.

W e made the passage from Port Louis to Toulon, six hun­ dred miles distant, in a cellular wagon, our bodies covered with irons. From Toulon we went to Algiers, and thence to Bone, where we met our companions at the Casbah, or Citadel.— There, envy poisoned our triumph over our calumniators. Envy is the plague among the oppressed, as selfishness is the plague among oppressors. Which is the worst, Envy or Selfishness ?

Those abler than I may tell, but I cannot.

I published, then, the history of our confinement; when the first number went out, they put me in a cell; upon the appear­ ance of the second number they sent me to the military prison of Bone.

Six weeks afterwards I returned to the Casbah.

I introduced newspapers into the citadel, and, for this reason I was put in a cell where physicians declared that a man could not live more than three months.

I remained there four months and two days and I was alive. The Commander of the Citadel paid me a visit, and told me he would kill me if I con­ tinued to publish the treatment I endured.

T