IMPUDENT ADVENTURER

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11653, 18 October 1923, Page 8

IMPUDENT ADVENTURER

DEVIL’S ISLAND ESCAPEE SECRETARY TO A DUKE. A remarkable tale of a convict’s life o! adventure was told at Toulouse Assize Court, when Pascal Barrie, who escaped from the notorious penal settlement -in Devil’s Island, French. Guiana, in 1917, was charged with obtaining £6O by fraud from a girl of He was acquitted, as the girl, when she went into the witness box. tearfully declared that she still loved him, though he i.id deserted her, and that 6he gave h in the money. . ... Answerir -j. the judge. Bams stated that- he bail been sentenced to 10 years in a penai settlement for holding np and robbing the judge's own predecessor on the bench, but escaped from Devil’s Island after lie bad served four years there. He went to Venezuela, where he practised as a French doctor, and later, after a short visit to Mexico, he went to Spain, where he became private secretary to the Duke oi Alva.. Afterwards, said Barrie, he lived aa ail adventurer in England and Egypt, and eventually he returned with plenty of money to Spain. "1 will not disclose where I lived lr Spain,” he added, when he was tola that he would have to go back to Guiana to finish his sentence, “because I expect soon to escape again, and j shall then return to my house, which i-s well furnished, and live in comfort.”