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 and 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: