ships, but now
solitary and deserted. Gloomy lagoons stretched along its low coasts
exhaling a pestilent odour, while fever hovered over its sleepy waters.
Here, on the borders of the sea, there was built a high square tower,
like the old Campanile at Venice, from the side of which, close to the
summit hung an open cage which was fastened by a chain to a transverse
beam. In the times of the Draconides the Inquisitors of Alca used to
put heretical clergy into this cage. It had been empty for three hundred
years, but now Pirot was imprisoned in it under the guard of sixty
warders, who lived in the tower and did not lose sight of him night or
day, spying on him for confessions that they might afterwards report
to the Minister of War. For Greatauk, careful and prudent, desired
confessions and still further confessions. Greatauk, who was looked
upon as a fool, was in reality a man of great ability and full of rare
foresight.

In the mean time Pyrot, burnt by the sun, eaten by mosquitoes, soaked
in the rain, hail and snow, frozen by the cold, tossed about terribly by
the wind, beset by the sinister croaking of the ravens that perched upon
his cage, kept writing down his innocence on pieces torn off his shirt
with a tooth-pick dipped in blood. These rags were lost in the sea or
fell into the hands of the gaolers. But Pyrot's protests moved nobody
because his confessions had been published.

III. COUNT DE MAUBEC DE LA DENTDULYNX

The morals of the Jews were not always pure; in most cases they were
averse from none of the vices of Christian civilization, but they
retained from the Patriarchal age a recognition of family, ties and
an attachment to the interests of the tribe. Pyrot's brothers,
half-brothers, uncles, great-uncles, first, second, and third cousins,
nephews and great-nephews, relations by blood and relations by marriage,
and all who were related to him to the number of about seven hundred,
were at first overwhelmed by the blow that had struck their relative,
and they shut themselves up in their houses, covering themselves with
ashes and blessing the hand that had chastised them. For forty days they
kept a strict fast. Then they bathed themselves and resolved to search,
without rest, at the cost of any toil and at the risk of eve danger,
for the demonstration of an innocence which they did not doubt. And how
could they have doubted? Pyrot's innocence had been revealed to them in
the same way that his guilt ha