The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-08-21
FRENCH PRIsoN-BREAKERs.

Vos l should have the luck to gain the
 held beyond, they might blaze away
 With their alarm-guns until all was
 blue, for, as both cannon play the same
 tune, Who would know one from the
 other? All right! I'll have Q birthday
 with his Majesty" Surely enough,
 when the day arrives the guns of the
 bagne were banging unnoticed for Co.,
 chot, who was quietly trotting through
 the fields. One of the escapes of Victor
 Desbois from Brest attested at once his
 audacity and his address. An inspec-
 tor came to make his official tour of the
 bagne, and it did not seem to strike the
 sentry on duty at the gate that he had been very quick about it, for he was
 out again almost before he had been passed in. But the 'inspector," who
 walked out with his nose In the air, was Victor Desbois. Having filed
 through his anklet, he had donned in an instant the full uniform of inspector which he had confected out of paper, ! and with a wig and moustaches, also
 of his own manufacture, his disguise
 was perfect, Effrontery such as this
 seldom fails to reward,
 Opportunity of change of costume | presented itself on another occasion to the nimble Hautdebont, engaged in the | convict tailor's shop. On a nail above his head hung a newly finished ward CTS suit, which, as the warder was in hospital, was not to be delivered for a
 week to come Measuring it with his eye, Hautdebont reckoned it a fair fit for himself. Missing, only warder's
 cap. This, in the course of a night or two, the prisoner put together out of q hundred little bits of cloth, distracted at odd moments from the tailor's shop With the cap in his pocket on the fol- lowing day, when the foreman tailors back Is turned, Hautdebont whips the warder's suit from the nail, slips it on, and glides from the scene. Unluckily ! the foreman a minute later misses the 1 new suit from the nail the alarm is given, and Hautdebont's brief term of office as garde- -chiourme is ended. He lost his privileged place among the tail ors, and was sent to the chain-gang.
 Piercy, condemned a perpetuite for
 murder, saw some scaffolding erected for repairs, which seemed to offer a
 means of escape ideal in it's simplicity | IL SlpOl csSuillSI tA1N " Siii | That ought to bear me" thought Pier l cy, and in a twinkling he found himself | on the right side of the wall in Bour- | bon street Toulon But there was a, wander who could climb almost as well as Piercy, and who laid hands on him | at the corner of the street. Another l prisoner, equally adroit. was equally
 unfortunate in his affair A rope
 served him for scaling the wall, but, l loosing his hold on the other side with
 the expectation of dropping into a quiet l lane, he fell plump into a hand-cart in which a warden was taking his midday
 siesta. You never know your luck, :" l as the poet sang. It came to the ward
 CT en dormant hringing him the legal 1 bonus Of fifty francs for. an arrest eff 1 fected within the limits of the town.
 l An old forcat Comet by name, and | sixty-eight years of age became so fa-
 nous by reason of his failures that his
 maladresse passed into a proverb; and a botched escape was known in the l bagne of Toulon as a gonette. Pa i tience and toll, long sustained and re-
 newed after discovery had made them 1 fruitless, did not always triumph in the
 end. Andre Fanfan, who had found or l fought his way out of every prison in l France. and who, whenever he was in l durance, had the honor of guard | specially appointed to watch him, was | brought back to Rochefort after one of | his most brilliant triumphs over jus | tice. In his communings with himself one day, Andre said: Now suppose,
 my boy, there was an underground passage, running the length of the
 yard, with a nice little opening into the port. Couldn't you make nice little opening in the wall and find it? Of
 course you could!" There proved to be l one difficulty, and only one. The un- derground passage was not there.
 Dig one, my boy!" said Andre
 1 It needs strenuous effort of the inn
 agination to put ones self for mo-
 ment in Andre Fanfan's place-con-
 stantly watched, a solid mass of ma-
 sorry to reduce, and no tools to his
 hand worth speaking of. A few grains 1 of plaster or chips of stone undisposed
 of after the nights work were enough
 to betray the affair. Fanfan admitted
 a few pals" in the gang to his confi-
 dence, but took the direction upon him.
 self, and with his own hands did the 1 main part of the work Night by
 night, after the gang had been chained
 upon the guard-bed, he wrenched his
 anklet off and with his nails and a
 rusty bolt he bit his way inch by inch l through stone and earth. He worked
 with the strength, swiftness and silence l of mole. and never by a tap of the
 bolt or the scratching of nail be- i trayed himself. He seemed to swallow
 the stone and the earth which he dis placed, for he left never a trace behind
 him. He was always on his plank, 1 sound asleep, when the whistle gave
 the signal to turn out in the morning,
 his ankle safe in the ring. When the tunnel was within yard or two of completion the plot was disclosed. One of Andres subordinates, con- | demned for breach of the rules to the black hole, begged an interview with
 the governor, and "blew the gaff." The 1 governor, accompanied by an orderly
 with a dark lantern, made a round of
 surprise" the next night. and the bulls eye was flashed upon Andre borrowing
 in his tunnel. He had an interview
 with the flogger, and it was noticed that he smiled at the last stroke but i one. An inspiration had come to him under the lash. He was three weeks in
 the hospital, and went to work again on th night of his release. A second
 time he was betrayed, and Jean de 1 BOurreau Dioued that Andre had Sn