In ten days we received an order to march on the following morning. The sailors, among whom was our poor friend the midshipman of the Snapper cutter, were ordered to Verdun; O'Brien and I, with eight masters of merchant vessels, who joined us at Montpelier, were directed by the Government to be sent to Givet, a fortified town in the department of Ardennes. But, at the same time, orders arrived from Government to treat the prisoners with great strictness, and not to allow any parole; the reason of this, we were informed, was that accounts had been sent to Government of the death of the French officer in the duel with O'Brien, and they had expressed their dissatisfaction at its having been permitted. Indeed, I very much doubt whether it would have been permitted in our country, but the French officers are almost romantically chivalrous in their ideas of honour; in fact, as enemies, I have always considered them as worthy antagonists to the English, and they appear more respectable in themselves, and more demanding our goodwill in that situation, than they do when we meet them as friends, and are acquainted with the other points of their character, which lessen them in our estimation.
I shall not dwell upon a march of three weeks, during which we alternately received kind or unhandsome treatment, according to the dispositions of those who had us in charge; but I must observe, that it was invariably the case, that officers who were gentlemen by birth treated us with consideration, while those who had sprung from nothing during the Revolution, were harsh, and sometimes even brutal. It was exactly four months from the time of our capture that we arrived at our destined prison at Givet.
"Peter," said O'Brien, as he looked hastily at the fortifications, and the river which divided the two towns, "I see no reason, either English or French, that we should not eat our Christmas dinner in England. I've a bird's eye view of the outside, and now, have only to find out where-abouts we may be in the inside."
I must say that, when I looked at the ditches and high ramparts, I had a different opinion; so had a gendarme who was walking by our side, and who had observed O'Brien's scrutiny, and who quietly said to him in French, "_Vous le croyez possible!_"