a great age.  A villain who died whilst I was under the Leads had passed thirty-seven years in The Wells, and he was forty-four when sentenced.  Knowing that he deserved death, it is possible that he took his imprisonment as a favour, for there are men who fear nought save death.  His name was Beguelin.  A Frenchman by birth, he had served in the Venetian army during the last war against the Turks in 1716, under the command of Field-Marshal the Count of Schulenbourg, who made the Grand Vizier raise the siege of Corfu.  This Beguelin was the marshal’s spy.  He disguised himself as a Turk, and penetrated into the Mussulman quarters, but at the same time he was also in the service of the Grand Vizier, and being detected in this course he certainly had reason to be thankful for being allowed to die in The Wells.  The rest of his life must have been divided between weariness and hunger, but no doubt he often said, ’Dum vita superest, bene est’.

I have seen at Spiegelberg, in Moravia, prisons fearful in another way.  There mercy sends the prisoners under sentence of death, and not one of them ever survives a year of imprisonment.  What mercy!

During the two mortal hours of suspense, full of sombre thoughts and the most melancholy ideas, I could not help fancying that I was going to be plunged in one of these horrible dens, where the wretched inhabitants feed on idle hopes or become the prey of panic fears.  The Tribunal might well send him to hell who had endeavoured to escape from purgatory.

At last I heard hurried steps, and I soon saw Lawrence standing before me, transformed with rage, foaming at the mouth, and blaspheming God and His saints.  He began by ordering me to give him the hatchet and the tools I had used to pierce the floor, and to tell him from which of the guards I had got the tools.  Without moving, and quite calmly, I told him that I did not know what he was talking about.  At this reply he gave orders that I should be searched, but rising with a determined air I shook my fist at the knaves, and having taken off my clothes I said to them, “Do your duty, but let no one touch me.”

They searched my mattress, turned my bed inside out, felt the cushions of my arm-chair, and found nothing.

“You won’t tell me, then, where are the instruments with which you made the hole.  It’s of no matter, as we shall find a way to make you speak.”

“If it be true that I have made a hole at all, I shall say that you gave me the tools, and that I have returned them to you.”

At this threat, which made his followers smile with glee, probably because he had been abusing them, he stamped his feet, tore his hair, and went out like one possessed.  The guards returned and brought me all my properties, the whetstone and lamp excepted.  After locking up my cell he shut the two windows which gave me a little air.  I thus found myself confined in a narrow space without the possibility of receiving