Penny Blood Serial Cover — page 67: what you’re looking at

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

ALFRED DE ROSANN. 59 moment /Vonsetgneur departed for his maison de campagne, apprised the venerable baron’s notary of «Pierre Belle-Rose’s proceedings, and thus procured his prompt arrest. Conveyed to Bicétre a second time, to be thence transported to Toulon, he was speedily recognised as a forcat evadé (a galley-slave who. has escaped) from the prisons of Brest. This unpleasant discovery was the cause of his. person being again dragged before the court of Assize and an - extra three years were tacked on to the five which the sentence of the court had already condemned him. to passat the galleys. To be brief, he escaped a second time with a person of the name of Ledoux, and managed to elude the vigilance of the police from that moment until about the period which marks the commencement of our tale. A swindling transaction, under peculiarly aggravating circumstances, once more gave him into the grasp of justice, and we now find him on his road to Brest, doomed to reside there ten years, unless his good fortune or his cunning restore him to liberty ere the expiration of that period. In person Belle-Rose was indifferently well-form- ed, being short and sturdy. ‘ His shoulders were of an uncommon width—his neck short—his complexion florid—and a bread grin of good humour, which not un- frequently lulled asleep the eye of suspicion, was per- petually on his countenance. Like all Frenchmen he had a great deal of levity in his conversation; and often amongst his dissipated associates. at Paris had he maintained a general round of unceasing laughter, when he recounted the various exploits and espzegle- vies in which he had been the principal actor. Nerved with acertain philosophical indifference to passing events, even as prosperity or adversity affected him- self, he recked but little for the galleys of Brest, so long as health and vigour were spared him; particular- ly since he ever cherished the sanguine hope of being enabled to effect his escape within a short period. Such was the individual to whom De Rosann was shackled. Immediately in front of him, and attached COnnieooolks