Penny Blood Serial Cover — page 96: what you’re looking at

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

$§ ALFRED DE ROSANN. CHAPTER VIII. THE ARRIVAL. Ir would be encroaching on the reader’s time and patience, minutely to detail every event that occurred during the march of the convicts. Suffice it to say, that Belle-Rose played his usual tricks in the various public houses at which they stopped ; that De Rosann kept up his spirits with sanguine hope; and that Champignon vaunted his gastronomical acquirements whenever an opportunity presented itself. The other convicts amused themselves with licentious conversa- tion, and wiled away the tedious hours with ribald -songs, or disgusting anecdotes of immorality and mis- deed ; and not unfrequently did they disguise their meaning in a certain slang, called argot, which is a common language at the dagne, but is altogether un- intelligible to those who are not initiated in the mys- teries of that school. We will not, however, inflict _any of it upon the reader: on the contrary, we will pass over the remainder of the journey in silence, and resume our narrative at the moment when the massive gates of the prison at Brest closed upon the-chain, which was now arrived at the place of its destination. It musi not be thought, however, that the galleys of France resemble the hulks at Portsmouth or Ply- mouth: years have passed away since the convicts dwelt in ships at Toulon, Brest, and Rochefort ; and spacious prisons, built near the harbours, have be¢ome the receptacles of those who still bear the name of galley-slaves. In courts of justice the words galeres and galeriens are now used but seldom ; they are al- most obsolete in the mouths of the Procureurs de Rot: and travaux forces and forcats have replaced them, The town clock had struck five in the afternoon of \ > CORNICLOO KS.)