In the first place, I had so much confidence in myself, that I was quite convinced that I could escape.  In the second, my family, though of good repute, has never been wealthy, and I could not bring myself to take anything from the small income of my mother.  On the other hand, it would never do for a man like me to be outshone by the bourgeois society of an English 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 own way of managing.