Penny Blood Serial Cover — page 62: what you’re looking at

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

& 54” ALFRED DE ROSANN. low! I suppose he is still at Toulon, and I should’nt be at all surprised if he endeavoured to raise a mort- gage on his chains. He’s ingenious enough for any- thing. Do you not think it was a most glorious trick, De Rosann ??? demanded Belle-Rose, after a mo- mentary pause, and turning abruptly round towards the unhappy Alfred, who was too much absorbed in his own woes, and too deeply disgusted at all that was passing around him, to wear a countenance which in- vited conversation. He was accordingly about to have replied somewhat bitterly to his companion; but an in- stant’s salutary reflection showed the folly and useless- ness of irritating one who might perhaps aid him to make his escape hereafter, and at all events initiate him in the ways and habits of the dagne. But this circum- stance brought the sense of his own wretchedness a thousand times more forcibly than ever to his mind ; for it not only exemplified to him the villany,the hypo- crisy, and the deceit of which his companions were ca- pable ; it also compelled him to acknowledge within himself the disagreeable and repugnant truth that he ‘would be condemned to become a partner in their vices, and often the actual agent of their turpitude. To one, who has been brought up with the feelings of a gentle- man, who has been educated in the schools of honour, of integrity, and virtue, and whose soul knows not how to descend to such petty instances of larceny or vulgar dissimulation as were hourly practised by the members of the chain, a situation like De Rosann’s must be the most insupportable. Cutoff from all intercourse with _ the polite portion of society, linked to murderers, bur- glars, and robbers, guarded by ruthless soldiers whose uncompassionating dispositions expelled all sympathy or even lenity, and on the road to the sink of every vice, the receptacle of ruined characters—nature’s out- laws, as they might be called,—De Rosann would have yielded himself up entirely to despair, and have eree- dily seized the means of putting an end toa miserable existence if such means presented themselves, had not a distant hope—shining like a single star in a hori- >’ COMME OOOKS, Conn 4