trifle, but you are losing three or four of the best
years of your life. I say three or four, because you won't stay longer.
Don't forget either, you unhappy man, that voluntary confinement is a
great deal harder to bear than compulsory. The thought that you have
the right to step out in liberty at any moment will poison your whole
existence in prison. I am sorry for you."

And now the banker, walking to and fro, remembered all this, and asked
himself: "What was the object of that bet? What is the good of that
man's losing fifteen years of his life and my throwing away two
millions? Can it prove that the death penalty is better or worse than
imprisonment for life? No, no. It was all nonsensical and meaningless.
On my part it was the caprice of a pampered man, and on his part simple
greed for money...."

Then he remembered what followed that evening. It was decided that the
young man should spend the years of his captivity under the strictest
supervision in one of the lodges in the banker's garden. It was agreed
that for fifteen years he should not be free to cross the threshold of
the lodge, to see human beings, to hear the human voice, or to receive
letters and newspapers. He was allowed to have a musical instrument and
books, and was allowed to write letters, to drink wine, and to smoke.
By the terms of the agreement, the only relations he could have with the
outer world were by a little window made purposely for that object. He
might have anything he wanted--books, music, wine, and so on--in any
quantity he desired by writing an order, but could only receive them
through the window. The agreement provided for every detail and every
trifle that would make his imprisonment strictly solitary, and bound the
young man to stay there _exactly_ fifteen years, beginning from twelve
o'clock of November 14, 1870, and ending at twelve o'clock of November
14, 1885. The slightest attempt on his part to break the conditions, if
only two minutes before the end, released the banker from the obligation
to pay him two millions.

For the first year of his confinement, as far as one could judge from
his brief notes, the prisoner suffered severely from loneliness and
depression. The sounds of the piano could be heard continually day
and night from his lodge. He refused wine and tobacco. Wine, he wrote,
excites the desires, and desires are the worst foes of the prisoner; and
besides, nothing could be more dreary than drinking good wine a