‘Otto, amused at the man’s cleverness and impudence, complied, and Dufresne in a few days alighted from the London coach at Fareham, walked over to Portchester, but was refused admission by the guard, until, to the amazement of the latter, he produced the passport by which he had travelled. He was soon after this exchanged. ‘Sheer devilment and the enjoyment of baffling his custodians seems to have been Dufresne’s sole object in escaping. For a trifling wager he would scale the walls, remain absent for a few days, living on and among the country folk, and return as he went, so that he became almost a popular character even with the garrison.’ Much romance which has been unrecorded no doubt is interwoven with the lives of the foreign prisoners of war in Britain. Two cases associated with Portchester deserve mention. The church register of 1812 records the marriage of Patrick Bisson to Josephine Desperoux. The latter was one of a company of French ladies who, on their voyage to Mauritius, were captured by a British cruiser, and sent to Portchester. Being non-combatants, they were of course not subjected to durance vile in the Castle, but were distributed among the houses of the village, and, being young and comely, were largely entertained and fêted by the gentry of the neighbourhood, the result being that one, at least, the subject of our notice, captivated an English squire, and married him. The second case is that of a French girl, who, distracted because her sailor lover had been captured, enlisted as a sailor on a privateer on the bare chance of being captured and meeting him. As good luck would have it, she was captured, and sent to the very prison where was her sweetheart, Portchester Castle. For some months she lived there without revealing her sex, until she was taken ill, sent to the hospital, where, of course, her secret was soon discovered. She was persuaded to return to France on the distinct promise that her lover should be speedily exchanged.