Penny Blood Serial Cover — page 63: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ALFRED DE ROSANN. 55 zon where all else was dark—prompted him to clin to life, and to support to the utmost of his ability the horrors that might be in store for him. This philo- sophical resignation, which could even tutor his mind to see a blooming future succeed the five years of dis- tress and of infamy to which he was now doomed by the laws of his country, was only the result of long reflection and self-communion. When the awful sen- tence was first pronounced upon him, his actions, his thoughts, and his words were those of a madman: days passed away—weeks flew over his head in his dreary cell at Bicétre—and at length the clamo- rous grief became tempered down into the moody resignation and the occasional indifference to every- thing, unless some tender recollection, some softening reminiscence awoke -his better feelings, and wrung burning tears from his eyes, and bitter—Oh! good God! how bitter—sighs from his breast. : CHAPTER V. BELLE-ROSE AND CHAMPIGNON. Tue storm, which for many hours had threatened to burst above the convicts’ heads, and which was im- pelled by a north-easterly breeze in the same direc- tion pursued by them, towards midday commenced with appalling violence. Deluges of rain drenched the wretched malefactors and their guards to the skin, ere a ruined shed could afford them a partial shelter. The thunder rolled along the face of heaven in long, loud, and frequent claps ; and the lightning followed each of those celestial cannon with vivid flashes. There needed but the earthquake to have made the _ war of elements complete. : The Gendarmes and the galley-slaves huddled to- COMMicoookS.s.E©