Penny Blood Serial Cover — page 49: what you’re looking at

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

ALFRED DE ROSANN. 41 tional guarantee for their safety. Of the impossibility of overcoming such a force the malefactors were well aware; and if they cherished any scheme towards li- berating themselves from the ignominious shackles that confined them, it was procrastinated until their arrival at Brest should furnish them with a better op- portunity of putting the design into execution, and a less distant prospect of success. For singular as it may appear to the reader, it is however a notorious fact, that few criminals have outwitted the cunning or defeated the diligence of the Gendarmes on their road to the walls of Brest and Toulon; whereas a month seldom passes without witnessing the escape of a con- vict from one of those towns. , Kew spectators were present on this occasion to glut their selfish curiosity with the sight of human degradation: there was but little novelty attached to the mournful ceremony; and in France the public journals seldom take notice of the days fixed for exe- cuting criminals, or transporting a chain of galley- slaves from one place to another. Apart from the scanty crowd of idlers, and drawn thither by motives far different from those that attracted the rest, stood the two individuals we have hefore alluded to. They were as motionless as statues—one clung to the other’s arm—but the eyes of both. were turned to- wards the same point—their looks dwelt upon the youngest, the most dejected, and the most remark- able as to form and feature, of the convicts. ‘Tears trickled down their cheeks, as they gazed upon the youth whom misfortune had condemned to so sad a destiny. But they spoke not a word, uttered not a syllable—grief with them was dumb as to ejaculation, although it were proclaimed by a thousand tongues on their death-like features—and that internal sorrow which their countenances betrayed, was more acute than can be described. | . The object of their solicitude, whom the reader has doubtless recognised to be Alfred de Rosann, was one of the handsomest of God’s creatures. . Bowed down 4* (GO) (COmMMIELOOOKS