With this slender consolation the luckless prisoners endeavoured to cheer themselves; but meanwhile, as Stanhope points out, they existed "a thousand people of different characters, ranks and habits collected together in one town, without any occupation to divert the tedium of their lives." Nor were there wanting additions to their society of an undesirable character, men who had voluntarily fled across the Channel to escape the consequence of nefarious dealings in horse-racing and gambling. One of these, indeed, was described by the French Minister of War as "the worst monster which England in her wrath has yet vomited across the Channel"; and the enforced idleness to which the prisoners were subjected, rendered them for the most part ready victims to the designs of such unscrupulous villains, while it tended to make the life of the town peculiarly demoralising. One source of satisfaction alone did Stanhope find in his altered conditions. His family, who for many months had believed him to be dead, were now overjoyed to hear of his safety, and to find themselves once more able to communicate with him; none the less it was impossible to ignore the constant danger to which his position still exposed him. At any moment he or his fellow _détenus_ might be sacrificed to the vindictiveness of Napoleon or to the exigencies of some political situation, and he had not been long at Verdun before a recognition of this fact was unpleasantly brought home to him. Lord Blayney, [7] an Irish friend of his, was suddenly arrested one day in the streets of Verdun and hurried off to the citadel. There he was informed that by order of the French Government he was to answer with his life for the safety of a French prisoner in England, who, having been detected in some treasonable intrigue, was condemned to close confinement and likely to be shot. Thus for a long time subsequently Lord Blayney remained a prisoner in hourly peril of instant death. There were also other evils to be reckoned with. The governors in whose charge the prisoners were placed were too often unscrupulous men, who, so long as they were secure from detection, did not hesitate to employ tyranny or fraud in the endeavour to further their own advancement, either by the pretended discovery of imaginary plots, thus giving a fictitious impression of their own zeal to the ministers, or by extorting money through terrorism from their defenceless victims. A story in this latter connection is told by John Stanhope. It appears that a certain General Wirion, who had at one time been attached to Moreau's party, had succeeded in getting into favour with Napoleon, who made him Governor of Verdun. Forthwith, the General's principal object was to devise some means of extracting money from the prisoners resident there, towards whom his conduct, on all occasions, was peculiarly atrocious.