Connected with the prison there was a garden having a raised terrace looking on to the court of the palace of justice; and, abutting on the garden wall, a shed, by the roof of which and a projecting buttress on the other side a descent into the court-yard of the palace could easily be made. The garden as a rule was kept shut, but prisoners above the common in station were permitted to use it for exercise and also for occasions of nature. Having enjoyed this privilege from the first, Servetus appears to have scrutinised everything in the afternoon of April 6, after the conclusion of his second examination. On the morning of the seventh he rose at four o’clock and asked the gaoler, whom he found afoot and going out to tend his vines, for the key of the garden. The man, seeing his prisoner in velvet cap and dressing-gown, not aware that he was completely dressed and had his hat under his robe de chambre, gave him the key and went out shortly afterwards to his work. Servetus, on his part, when he thought the coast must be clear, left his black velvet cap and furred dressing-gown at the foot of a tree, leaped from the terrace on to the roof of the outhouse and from that, without breaking any bones, gained the open court of the Palais de Justice Dauphinal. Thence he made for the gate of the Pont du Rhône, which was at no great distance from the prison and passed into the Lyonnais--these latter facts being by and by deposed to by a peasant woman who had met him. Two hours or more elapsed before his escape became known in the prison, the gaoler’s wife having been the first to discover it. She in her zeal and alarm committed a hundred extravagances; and in her vexation tore her hair, beat her children, her servants, and some of the prisoners who chanced to come in her way. Her rage that anyone should have had the audacity to break the dauphinal prison of Vienne, of which her husband was custodier, was such, that she even ran the risk of her life by clambering to the roof of a neighbouring house, in her eagerness to find traces of the fugitive. The authorities, informed of what had happened, did all that became them, ordering the gates of the town to be shut and more carefully guarded than usual through the next few days and nights. Proclamation was made by sound of trumpet and beat of drum, and almost every house not only of the town, but of the neighbouring villages, was visited. The magistrates of Lyons and other towns, in which it was thought probable their late prisoner might have taken refuge, were written to by the Vienne authorities and inquiries made whether or not he had money in the bank, or had drawn out any he might have had there. His apartments were again visited, and all his papers, furniture and effects inventoried and put under the seal of justice.