Bazaine wore about his neck. Colonel Villette, who had voluntarily shared the Marshal's imprisonment, and who quitted Ste. Marguerite the day after his escape, was arrested at Marseilles and brought before the magistrates. During the investigation it became clear enough that Bazaine had not been without confederates.
The rope by which Bazaine had let himself down had been woven partly out of the cord that had tied up his boxes, partly out of a swing that his children had used, when allowed to share his imprisonment for awhile. Bazaine himself was not skilful enough to have made this rope; it was woven by Villette. The iron bar to which it was asserted that the rope had been fastened was not to be found in the drain; and it was evident that some one must have held the end when the Marshal was let down.
Marchi, the gaoler, protested that he had only allowed Bazaine the liberty he enjoyed, because the latter had given his word of honour not to attempt an escape. Bazaine's valet, Barreau, was certainly implicated in the matter; so was a Colonel Doineau, who, as head of the Bureaux Arabes in Algeria, had been sentenced to death for murder and robbery, but had been pardoned by Napoleon II. He had managed the correspondence between Bazaine and his wife. Several of the warders were guilty at least of negligence, but were let off very easily with one, two, or six months' imprisonment.
The island of S. Honorat is smaller than Ste. Marguerite. It is a poor little stony patch in the sea, a miniature of the larger isle, a bank of rocks covered with a thin bed of soil, and rising not above four feet over the sea level. And yet this isle, whose meagre
