A few months later, the cannon of the 27th of July was belching in the streets of Paris. On the 28th, the doors of the "commercial Bastille" were thrown open, and the prisoners went out. Colonel Swan, who went out with them, died on the 29th. ------- There were a few clever escapes, _evasions_ as the French call them, from Sainte-Pélagie. What was known as the _procès d'Avril_, 1835, resulted in the condemnation of Guinard, Imbert, Cavaignac, Marrast, and others, who were lodged in the political wing. Forty of them joined in a scheme of evasion, and a subterranean passage was dug from the north-east angle of the prison into the garden of No. 9, Rue Copeau. The tunnel, nearly twenty yards in length, was completed on the 12th of July, and of the forty prisoners twenty-eight made good their escape from Sainte-Pélagie the "insupportable." The excitement of a well-conducted escape is contagious, and in September of the same year the Comte de Richmond, who gave himself out as the son of Louis XVI., with his two friends in durance, Duclerc and Rossignol, broke prison ingeniously enough. By bribery or some other means, Richmond procured a pass-key which gave admission to the sentry-walk; and, head erect and a file of papers under his arm, he walked boldly out, followed by Rossignol and Duclerc. To the sentinel who challenged them, the Count with perfect _sang-froid_ introduced himself as the director of the prison; "and these gentlemen," he added, "whom you ought to know, are my chief clerk, and my architect." The sentry saluted and let them pass, and M. de Richmond and his friends opened the door and walked out. In 1865, an Englishman named Jackson, condemned to five years' hard labour, managed to get himself transferred to Sainte-Pélagie. On a wet wild night in the last week of January, he squeezed out of his cell, crawled over the roof to a convenient wall, and by the aid of a cord and grappling iron let himself down into the street. The night was pitchy black, rain was falling in torrents, the sentry was in his box, and Jackson footed it leisurely home. Better than these, however, was the escape of Colonel Duvergier, one of the State prisoners of Charles X. Colonel Duvergier had been condemned to five years' "reclusion" for no apparent reason except that he was one of the most distinguished soldiers of his day. The story of his escape is one of the happiest in the romantic annals of prison-breaking, but the credit of the affair rests principally with a young littérateur, a certain Eugène de P——.