FAMOUS PRISONERS. CASANOVA. Among the most noteworthy and conspicuous personages of the eighteenth century, a man that might be called a fine bird if fine feathers make one, was the Signor Giovanni Giacomo Casanova di Seingault. Arrayed in the richest garments of the picturesque period and country in which he lived, garments that were never paid for, Casanova went from court to court of Europe, delighting everybody with his airy bravado and his graceful insolence, winning the hearts of the women and borrowing the money of the men, until there remained for him no longer a theatre for the practice of his arts and the display of his attractions. In biographical writings he is mentioned as the Don Juan of his time; but the Don Juan of the dramatic or the lyric stage was a modest and retiring person in comparison with the Venetian adventurer. He went to visit Voltaire at Ferney, and Frederick the Great at Sans Souci; he saw, but does not seem to have fascinated, Catherine II. at St. Petersburg, and gained some favour with Pope Benedict XIV. at Rome; he met George III. and the Chevalier d'Eon in London, and encountered Cagliostro at Aix-Cagliostro, who, alone of all his contemporaries, was altogether as accomplished and magnificent a charlatan and beggar as himself. From his social triumphs in such illustrious company, Casanova came down often to most ignoble straits, and was forced to sorry expedients, for so great a man, to make a living. him instantly rise, dress himself, gather up all his manuscripts, and follow where he, the grand-master, should lead. Upon questioning his authority and receiving for answer that it was on the part of the tribunal—a word which almost turned Casanova into stone-that the arrest was made, our fine gentleman put on a laced shirt, and his best habit, and otherwise obeyed. They got into a gondola and were carried to the house of the grand-master, from which Casanova was presently conveyed along the Grand Canal to the quay of the prisons, where, disembarking with the guard, he was made to enter a building, ascend several flights of stairs, traverse a gallery, and cross the canal, to another building opposite, by a bridge. It was the Bridge of Sighs. On his way Casanova passed through the very hall of the council, and arriving upon the floor above it was confined in a small cell communicating with a great garret, where, with other prisoners, he was allowed at stated times to walk. It was that part of the prison which was known by the descriptive and memorable title of "Under the Leads." For It need hardly be said that with so fertile a mind and irrepressible a spirit as he possessed, Casanova entertained, from the very moment of his incarceration, the idea of escape. tune favoured him at the start. In wandering about the old garret he found an iron bolt, of the thickness of an ordinary walking-cane, and twenty inches in length, which he sharpened upon a piece of loose marble from the walls, into a sort of pike. With this he undertook to cut his way through the floor, which was of three thicknesses, into the apartment below. Perhaps the most respectable position he It was a work of great difficulty. Fearing ever occupied, until the lettered close of his that the hole to be made under his bed would remarkable carcer, was as a member of the be discovered by the servants when they came orchestra, in 1745, of the theatre of San to sweep his cell, he feigned a cough, and by a Samuele in Venice. Here he played for some cut upon the finger stained his handkerchief time, in one of his intervals of impecuniosity, with blood to corroborate his assertion of until he could refit his wardrobe and organize hemorrhage produced by the dust. In this his plans for another campaign. Such scamps way he obtained an exemption from the sweeprarely come to a good end, and yet the lasting of the cells, and went to work with a will. twelve years of Casanova's life were spent in creditable-nay, honourable employment, as the librarian of Count Waldstein of Bohemia, in whose well-stored alcoves he wrote the History of Poland, and prepared a translation of the Iliad. At daybreak on the morning of the 26th July, 1755, when Casanova was living as a man of fashion in Venice, the grand-master, acting under the orders of the much-dreaded council of ten, entered his chamber and bade It was only at night that he could proceed without fear of disturbance, and to work at night a lamp was indispensable. With a saucepan, the Lucca oil given him for his salad, and cotton wicks from the lining of his doublet, he improvised a lamp. But how to light it? Casanova was affected at times with an eruption upon his arm, and he brought it into immediate requisition for getting from the prison surgeon some flowers of sulphur. Then, under pretext of wishing a pumice stone for alleviating toothache by rubbing, he prevailed upon the keeper Laurent to give him instead a piece of flint, with which, and the steel buckle of his belt, he was able to produce a flame Thus provided, he went on cutting deeper and deeper into the floor, until he had almost reached the under surface, and he was able to fix upon the eve of the fete of St. Augustine, the 27th of August, as the time for his flight. But on the 25th a sad misfortune befel him. Laurent came suddenly into his cell, and informed him that he was to be immediately transferred to another cell. Casanova was in a measure consoled for the unhappy conclusion of his plan of escape in seeing that his armchair, in the bottom of which was concealed his iron pike, was to be taken to his new place of confinement. Two hours after, Laurent, having discovered the opening in the floor of the cell just left vacant, broke in upon his prisoner with the bitterest taunts, demanding to know who it was that had supplied him with the tools with which he had cut through the planks. Casanova startled Laurent by the declaration that he himself had furnished all the materials requisite for the work, and promised to reveal everything in the presence of a secretary-an offer which the frightened jailer was prompt to decline, since a revelation of this sort might have caused him to be hanged for his careless ness. Laurent was therefore to some extent in Casanova's power, and the latter, profiting by this advantage, and furthermore cajoling the jailer by presents of money to his wife, obtained many little favours, such as the loan of books belonging to other prisoners. By means of one of these books he conducted a correspondence with two gentlemen, Marin Balbi, a Venetian noble and monk, and the Count Andre Asquin, who were confined in the room immediately over his head. Their notes were secreted in the pocket formed between the parchment at the back and the body of the volume, and Casanova was even adroit enough to send his iron pike to Balbi in this way, by inducing Laurent to carry a pie to the monk in a dish which was placed upon the volume spread open in the middle, and used as a waiter. Balbi, armed with the pike, began at once to cut into the floor by way of establishing a communication with the cell of Casanova, and was making excellent progress, when a fellowprisoner was introduced into this latter apartment. The new-comer was an ill-looking wretch,. whose wife was the daughter of a secretary of the council, and had himself served as a spy in the employment of the grand-master, so that it was necessary to act towards him with great circumspection. Casanova worked upon his fears and his superstition, inducing him to believe that upon a certain night-the time agreed upon between Balbi and himself for effecting their escape—a messenger from Heaven would descend to deliver them from the prison. At length the night arrived, the monk overhead pierced the ceiling, and Casanova ascended to the next floor, taking with him his companion, who was in a condition of abject terror. At the last moment, when an opening had been easily effected from the upper cell, directly under the leads, to the roof, the courage of the Count Andre Asquin failed him, and Casanova and Balbi, leaving also behind them the trembling ex-spy, made their way to the top of the building, armed with an iron pike and carrying long ropes, made of strips of clothing, with which they hoped to effect a descent to the ground. The roof was steep, and rendered slippery by a dense mist; the moon had gone down; far below them lay Venice, and as they crawled to the ridge pole, it was at the momentary risk of sliding off and being dashed to pieces against the pavement. After vainly endeavouring to find some bolt or beam to which he might attach their cords, Casanova went on a voyage of exploration around the roof, peering across the blackness of the intervening space at the clock-tower of St. Mark's, which rose darkly above them, but finding no way by which they could get down from their dizzy elevation. When the effort seemed almost hopeless a garret window was discovered at an apparently inaccessible point below them. By means of a ladder left upon the roof, very perilously adjusted by them, the monk and the chevalier managed to gain an entrance by the window into the garret, from which they made their way, little by little, to the lower apartments, passing through the grand audience gallery, and at last, in the early morning, when the janitor came to open the building, walking leisurely down the grand staircase, unquestioned, into the open air. Casanova met with many adventures on his way to the frontier (passing one night under the hospitable roof of a high officer of the police, who had left home in search of him), but at length gaining a place of safety without the jurisdiction of Venice, whence he went not long afterwards to Paris, and recounted his hair-breadth 'scapes with great eclat in the drawing-rooms of that wonder-loving capital. BARON TRENCK. Frederick Baron Trenck was the son of a high officer in the Prussian army, and cousin german of the famous Trenck, colonel of Pandours in the service of Maria Theresa. At the age of eighteen the baron became an officer of the body-guard of Frederick II., and was greatly in favour with that sovereign. Young, handsome, of approved courage, he had many enemies, among whom, unfortunately, he had soon to number the king himself. One reason that was given for the change in the royal disposition towards Trenck was that he had made himself acceptable in the eyes of the Princess Amelia, the king's sister. Carlyle altogether discredits this affaire du cœur; and, indeed, throughout his life of Frederick II., mentions Trenck only in most contemptuous Carlylese, as a fraud, a babbling, conceited, empty fellow, who had not quite got his deserts. Whatever may have been the cause of Frederick's dislike, it is certain that it was manifested in a very decided way. An imprudent correspondence with his cousin, the Austrian, was made the pretext of his earliest imprisonment in the castle of Glatz. Trenck, who could not conceive that a man of his rank and distinction should remain long in duress, wrote a somewhat bold letter to the king, demanding to be tried by a military tribunal. Frederick did not respond, and Trenck, seeing that his place in the royal body-guard had been given to another, after peace had been concluded, began to meditate upon escape. himself, from this day forward he was more narrowly guarded. But years afterwards the villain who had sold them, meeting Trenck at Warsaw, received the chastisement he deserved, and, desiring satisfaction with weapons, was left dead on the spot. The king was greatly irritated at the discovery of this plot, which seemed to him to confirm the imputations against the prisoner. Solicited a short time before by Trenck's mother to set her son at liberty, he had replied in terms that gave her reason to hope for his pardon after a year spent in prison. Trenck had not been advised of this, and his more rigorous treatment drove him to fresh efforts to gain his freedom; efforts which the good nature or the well-paid complicity of his keepers greatly favoured. But Our hero's second attempt covered him at once with mud and ridicule. He was confined in a tower looking out upon the town. By making a saw of a pocket-knife the baron was enabled to cut through three bars of his window-grating. An officer then procured him a file, with which he severed five more. Then, with a rope made of strips of leather cut from his portmanteau and of the coverlet of his bed, he slid down without accident to the ground. The night was dark and rainy, and all things favoured the fugitive. But an unexpected difficulty presented itself in a sewer, which he was compelled to cross in order to reach the town, and there the luckless baron floundered, being neither able to advance nor to retire, and was at last fain to call upon the sentinel to extricate him. Eight days only had elapsed after this most absurd and unfortunate adventure, when Trenck, with unparalleled audacity, had nearly gained his liberty in a way wholly unpremeditated. The commandant of the castle made him a visit of inspection, and improved the opporHis first attempt ended quickly in mortify-tunity of giving this desperate young fellow ing failure. He had won over many of the guards of the castle by a liberal use of money, with which he was abundantly supplied. Two of them agreed to aid him and accompany him in his flight, but the three most imprudently desired to carry off with them an officer who had been condemned to ten years' imprisonment in the same fortress. When all their preparations had been made, this scoundrel, whom Trenck had loaded with favours, betrayed them, and received his pardon as the price of his perfidy. One of the officers was warned in time to save himself, and the other got off with a year's confinement, by dint of Trenck's money. As for the baron a lecture on his frequent attempts at escape, by which he said his crime had been seriously aggravated in the king's estimation. The baron fired up at the word crime, and demanded to know for how long a term he had been consigned to the fortress. The commandant replied that an officer who had been detected in a treasonable correspondence with the enemies of his country could never expect the pardon of the king. The hilt of the commandant's sword was within easy and tempting grasp; there were only a sentinel and an officer of the guard in attendance; it seemed a golden moment; Trenck seized it, in seizing the sword, rushing rapidly from the room, hurling the sentinel and the officer down the stairs, and cutting his way out of the building. He leaped the first rampart and fell upon his feet in the fosse; he leaped the second rampart, a yet more daring and perilous venture, and again fell upon his feet, without so much as losing hold of the major's sword. There was not time for the garrison to load a piece, and no one was disposed to pursue the baron along the steep way he had chosen. It was a considerable detour from the interior of the castle to the outer rampart, and Trenck would have had a good half-hour's start of his pursuers had fortune, so far propitious, continued to favour him. A sentry with a fixed bayonet opposed him in a narrow passage; the baron cut him down. Another sentry ran after him; Trenck attempted to jump over a palisade, but caught his foot between two of the timbers beyond all hope of extrication, seeing that the unreasonable sentry held on to it with dogged persistence until aid arrived, and thus our hopeful runaway was carried back to the castle and put under stricter surveillance than ever. mised him every assistance, and the next day he brought to him Lieutenant Schell, saying, "Here's your man." Schell vowed perfect devotion, and the two immediately began to concert measures for getting off. Their project was precipitated in consequence of Schell's having discovered that he had been betrayed to the commandant. A fellow-officer, Lieutenant Schroeder, gave him the intelligence in full time for him to have saved himself, and even offered to accompany him; but Schell, faithful to Trenck, refused to abandon him. Unwilling to risk an arrest by delay, however, he went at once to Trenck's room, carrying him a sabre, and said to him: "My friend, we are betrayed; follow me, and do not permit my enemies to take me alive." Trenck tried to speak, but he seized his hand, repeating, "Follow me, we have not a moment to lose." Schell passed the sentinel with Trenck, saying to that soldier, "Remain here; I am to take your prisoner to the officers' quarters." They went rapidly in that direction, but suddenly turned off in quite the opposite one, hoping to pass under the arsenal as far as the outer work, and then leap the palisades; but meeting two officers, they were compelled to Lieutenant Bach, who every four days mounted guard near him, was a very quarrelsome fellow, and was always challenging and slashing his comrades. One day this terrible man, seated on Trenck's bed, was recount-jump from the parapet, which at that point ing to him how he had pinked Lieutenant Schell the evening before, when Trenck said to him: "If I were not a prisoner, you should not wound me with impunity, for I know how to handle a sword myself." Bach immediately had foils brought, and Trenck touched him on the chest. He left the room in a fury without saying a word, and presently came back with cavalry sabres, offering one of which to Trenck, he said: "Now, my hectoring blade, we shall see what you can do." The baron protested against it; Bach insisted; they fought, and the baron gave Bach a wound in the right arm. Throwing aside his sabre, the disabled man instantly embraced Trenck, crying out: "You are my master, friend Trenck; you shall have your liberty as sure as my name is Bach." Talking the matter over with him afterwards, he told the baron that it would be impossible for him to get away safely unless the officer of the guard went with him; that for himself he was ready to make any sacrifice for him short of his honour, and that to desert, being on guard, would be dishonourable. But he pro was not very high. Trenck alighted with only a scratch of the shoulder. Schell was less fortunate, and sprained his ankle. Upon gaining the country the two fugitives were in a wretched case indeed. There was a thick fog and a frosty air; the ground was covered with a deep snow crusted over with ice. Schell soon began to experience great pain, and already they heard behind them the alarm-gun of the castle, and knew that the stir of pursuit was going on. Trenck managed to carry or drag his companion along, and swam with him across the freezing river Neisse, where, for a short distance, it was out of ford, and then for many weary hours they wandered in the cold and darkness, until morning found them on the verge of perishing from hunger and the frost. There was no help for it but to apply at the nearest farm-house for food and some means of transportation. Accordingly, they invented a story that Trenck, whose hands Schell tied behind him, and who had smeared his face with blood, was a culprit Schell desired to take without delay to the nearest justice. He had killed Schell's horse, so the lieutenant's fiction ran, and caused him to sprain his ankle, notwithstanding which Schell had given him some sabre cuts, disabling him, and had succeeded in pinioning him, and now what he wanted was a vehicle to convey them to town. The story Schell told with great gravity to two peasants at the door of their house, when the elder of them, a man advanced in years, called the lieutenant by name, informing him that they were well known for deserters, as an officer, the evening previous, had been at the house of a farmer near by, and had given their names and a description of the clothes they wore, narrating, at the same time, all the circumstances of their flight. But the old peasant, who had known Schell from having seen him often at the village when he was there in garrison, and who besides had a son in the lieutenant's company, had no thought of informing upon them, and though he begged hard for his horses, he yet permitted the runaways to take two from the stable. And now behold them mounted upon frantic steeds, bareback, without their hats, which they had lost in leaving the castle, and flying across the country at full speed. Their garments, their bare heads, their whole appearance told what they were; but it was Christmas Day, and the inhabitants were all at church as they galloped along through the villages, and thus they escaped observation. On the very confines of Bohemia they ran a narrow risk of capture by a corps of hussars stationed upon the frontier; but a friendly brother officer, recognizing Schell, warned him of their danger, and they turned off upon another road. It was not long before they passed the boundary, and Trenck was at last free. His courage and resolution had at last been rewarded. man. But the baron was far from being a happy Pursued by the vengeance of Frederick, and sorely beset by Prussian spies, who tried to kidnap him, he wandered miserably about for many months, and subsequently took service in the Austrian army. Finally, after many wonderful adventures, he was basely given up by the governor and authorities of the town of Danzig to the Prussian king. This sad mischance completely demoralized Trenck. Though many opportunities were afforded him to get away from the escort that convoyed him to Prussia, he had not the spirit to do so. Again he was consigned to prison. This time they took him to Magdeburg and locked him up in the citadel. His subsequent life in the fortress of Magdeburg was but a repetition of his previous unremitting efforts at escape; but he never again left the prison until he was released by order of the king. He lived many years after his liberation, and was guillotined at Paris in the Revolution, at the same time with André Chenier. J. R. THOMPSON. THE PRISONER OF CHILLON. [Lord Byron wrote this poem at a small inn in the village of Ouchy, near Lausanne, where the weather detained him for a couple of days. François de Bonnivard, the subject of the poem, was born in 1496. He studied at Turin, and in 1510 his uncle resigned to him the priory of St. Victor, on the outskirts of Geneva, He became the defender of the independence of Geneva against the Duc de Savoye and the bishop. The duke descended upon the town with five hundred men; Bonnivard fled, but was betrayed and imprisoned at Grolée for two years. His zeal was undaunted; he continued the struggle for liberty, and again in 1530 he was thrown into the prison of Chillon, where he remained for six years. He was then released by the victorious Bernois; the republic of Geneva heaped honours upon him as the defender of their liberties, and he died in 1570. During the latter and happier days of his life he established various important institutions; the col lege and library of Geneva are monuments to his memory; but Lord Byron's poem is the noblest monument that could be raised to a hero.2] My hair is gray, but not with years, Nor grew it white In a single night, As men's have grown from sudden fears: And mine has been the fate of those 1 The information contained in these sketches is for the most part obtained from a French work on the subject by M. F. Bernard. 2 The Chateau de Chillon is situated between Clarens and Villeneuve, which last is at one extremity of the Lake of Geneva. On its left are the entrances of the Rhone, and opposite are the heights of Meillerie and the range of Alps above Boveret and St. Gingo. Near it, on a hill behind, is a torrent; below it, washing its walls, the lake has been fathomed to the depth of 800 feet (French measure); within it are a range of dungeons, in which the early Reformers, and subsequently prisoners of state, were confined. Across one of the vaults is a beam black with age, on which, it is said, the condemned were formerly executed. In the cells are seven pillars, or rather eight, one being half merged in the wall; in some of these are rings for the fetters and the fettered; in the pavement the steps of Bonnivard have left their traces-he was confined here several years. |