h country town, or to be without the means of showing courtesies
and attentions to those ladies whom I should attract. It was for these
reasons that I preferred to be buried in the dreadful prison of
Dartmoor. I wish now to tell you of my adventures in England, and how
far Milor Wellington's words were true when he said that his King would
hold me.

And first of all I may say that if it were not that I have set off to
tell you about what befell myself, I could keep you here until morning
with my stories about Dartmoor itself, and about the singular things
which occurred there. It was one of the very strangest places in the
whole world, for there, in the middle of that great desolate waste, were
herded together seven or eight thousand men--warriors, you understand,
men of experience and courage. Around there were a double wall and a
ditch, and warders and soldiers; but, my faith! you could not coop men
like that up like rabbits in a hutch! They would escape by twos and tens
and twenties, and then the cannon would boom, and the search parties
run, and we, who were left behind, would laugh and dance and shout
'Vive l'Empereur' until the warders would turn their muskets upon us in
their passion. And then we would have our little mutinies, too, and up
would come the infantry and the guns from Plymouth, and that would set
us yelling 'Vive l'Empereur' once more, as though we wished them to hear
us in Paris. We had lively moments at Dartmoor, and we contrived that
those who were about us should be lively also.

You must know that the prisoners there had their own Courts of Justice,
in which they tried their own cases, and inflicted their own
punishments. Stealing and quarrelling were punished--but most of all
treachery. When I came there first there was a man, Meunier, from
Rheims, who had given information of some plot to escape. Well, that
night, owing to some form or other which had to be gone through, they
did not take him out from among the other prisoners, and though he wept
and screamed, and grovelled upon the ground, they left him there amongst
the comrades whom he had betrayed. That night there was a trial with a
whispered accusation and a whispered defence, a gagged prisoner, and a
judge whom none could see. In the morning, when they came for their man
with papers for his release, there was not as much of him left as you
could put upon your thumb-nail. They were ingenious people, these
prisoners, and they had their o