The said Pope was a very extraordinary fellow:  a slight fair form, pointed features, and eyes that were penetrating, despite their common shade of grey.  He was called Champenois, his real name unknown, not more than three-and-twenty, and the Lieutenant of the Chaine said, one of the most talented and extraordinary characters that he had ever met with.  He had been the prime mover of the intended insurrection, but without a proof against him, except his universal authority, unusual in so young a thief.  His physiognomy was one, which it required not a second look in order to remember for ever.

Another figure struck me, not so much as singular in itself, as in contrast with those around.  It struck me as that of an English cabin-boy, a pale, freckled, ill-conditioned lad.  On following the calling over of the register in roll, I found my conjecture too true.  He was an unfortunate young sailor, a native of England, guilty of some misdemeanour, and by name Aikin.  He understood not a word of French, but protested with a shake of his head against his being English; patriotism had in him outlived honesty and self-respect.  I spoke to him in English:  he wept, but would not reply, puckering up his poor lips in all the agony of his desolate condition.  I was glad to remark the humanity with which he had been chained to a prisoner, pensive and downcast like himself.

There were some cases certainly hard; one or two for resisting the gen-d’armerie in a riot at Rouen.  To transport a rioter, unless under aggravated circumstances, is grievous enough; but after the revolution of July, that hallowed riot, to make a galley-slave of a brave for resisting the police, must have been at least surprising to him.  The tribunal no doubt felt the necessity of severity; and we acknowledged it all in deploring the degradation of these poor devils for an act, which in so many thousand others was, at the moment, extolled to the skies as the acme of heroism.  But justice hath her lottery-wheel as well as fortune.

As the last chaine was completing, an ecclesiastic went round to collect money of the visitors.  But as there were few, so were the offerings.  The convicts at the same time produced the fruits of their ingenuity in straw work-boxes, needle-cases, carved ivory and wood.  The guardians, to do them justice, seemed humane.

The bagne at Toulon, the destination of the members of the chaine, was respectably peopled when I visited it some years ago.  It contained amongst others, Sarrazin, a famous general, who had deserted to us from Buonaparte, and whose works on the Spanish and other campaigns, are still read with interest.  The general had caught the inexcusable habit of marrying a wife in each town wherein he was quartered, and was sent to the gallies for trigintagamy.  They boasted a bishop too amongst the convicts at Toulon, a merry little fellow, that bore his fate gaily, and who still contrived to exercise a kind of spiritual supremacy over his unfortunate comrades.