nd seeing
no one. And tobacco spoilt the air of his room. In the first year the
books he sent for were principally of a light character; novels with a
complicated love plot, sensational and fantastic stories, and so on.

In the second year the piano was silent in the lodge, and the prisoner
asked only for the classics. In the fifth year music was audible again,
and the prisoner asked for wine. Those who watched him through the
window said that all that year he spent doing nothing but eating and
drinking and lying on his bed, frequently yawning and angrily talking to
himself. He did not read books. Sometimes at night he would sit down to
write; he would spend hours writing, and in the morning tear up all that
he had written. More than once he could be heard crying.

In the second half of the sixth year the prisoner began zealously
studying languages, philosophy, and history. He threw himself eagerly
into these studies--so much so that the banker had enough to do to get
him the books he ordered. In the course of four years some six hundred
volumes were procured at his request. It was during this period that the
banker received the following letter from his prisoner:

"My dear Jailer, I write you these lines in six languages. Show them to
people who know the languages. Let them read them. If they find not one
mistake I implore you to fire a shot in the garden. That shot will show
me that my efforts have not been thrown away. The geniuses of all ages
and of all lands speak different languages, but the same flame burns in
them all. Oh, if you only knew what unearthly happiness my soul feels
now from being able to understand them!" The prisoner's desire was
fulfilled. The banker ordered two shots to be fired in the garden.

Then after the tenth year, the prisoner sat immovably at the table and
read nothing but the Gospel. It seemed strange to the banker that a man
who in four years had mastered six hundred learned volumes should waste
nearly a year over one thin book easy of comprehension. Theology and
histories of religion followed the Gospels.

In the last two years of his confinement the prisoner read an immense
quantity of books quite indiscriminately. At one time he was busy with
the natural sciences, then he would ask for Byron or Shakespeare. There
were notes in which he demanded at the same time books on chemistry, and
a manual of medicine, and a novel, and some treatise on philosophy or
theology. His reading sugg