en a breakfast of bread and cocoa which he ate with his
guardians, and then, as they had to take up their outdoor duties, he
was conducted to the backyard and informed he could walk about there
and that he might smoke until he was black in the face. The policemen
severally presented him with a pipe, a tin of tobacco, two boxes of
matches and a dictionary, and then they withdrew, leaving him to his own
devices.

The garden was about twelve feet square, having high, smooth walls on
every side, and into it there came neither sun nor wind. In one corner a
clump of rusty-looking sweet-pea was climbing up the wall--every leaf
of this plant was riddled with holes, and there were no flowers on it.
Another corner was occupied by dwarf nasturtiums, and on this plant,
in despite of every discouragement, two flowers were blooming, but its
leaves also were tattered and dejected. A mass of ivy clung to the third
corner, its leaves were big and glossy at the top, but near the ground
there was only grey, naked stalks laced together by cobwebs. The fourth
wall was clothed in a loose Virginia creeper every leaf of which looked
like an insect that could crawl if it wanted to. The centre of this
small plot had used every possible artifice to cover itself with grass,
and in some places it had wonderfully succeeded, but the pieces of
broken bottles, shattered jampots, and sections of crockery were so
numerous that no attempt at growth could be other than tentative and
unpassioned.

Here, for a long time, the Philosopher marched up and down. At one
moment he examined the sweet-pea and mourned with it on a wretched
existence. Again he congratulated the nasturtium on its two bright
children; but he thought of the gardens wherein they might have bloomed
and the remembrance of that spacious, sunny freedom saddened him.

"Indeed, poor creatures!" said he, "ye also are in gaol."

The blank, soundless yard troubled him so much that at last he called to
the red-haired policeman and begged to be put into a cell in preference;
and to the common cell he was, accordingly, conducted.

This place was a small cellar built beneath the level of the ground. An
iron grating at the top of the wall admitted one blanched wink of light,
but the place was bathed in obscurity. A wooden ladder led down to the
cell from a hole in the ceiling, and this hole also gave a spark of
brightness and some little air to the room. The walls were of stone
covered with plaster