I asked the jailer: 

“I feel a strange sensation, as though there were the odour of cigar smoke in my cell.  Don’t you smell it?”

The jailer sniffed the air conscientiously and replied: 

“No I don’t.  You only imagined it.”

If you need any confirmation, here is a splendid proof that all I had seen, if it existed at all, existed only in the net of my eye.

CHAPTER IX

Something altogether unexpected has happened; the efforts of my friends, the Warden and his wife, were crowned with success, and for two months I have been free, out of prison.

I am happy to inform you that immediately upon my leaving the prison I occupied a very honourable position, to which I could hardly have aspired, conscious of my humble qualities.  The entire press met me with unanimous enthusiasm.  Numerous journalists, photographers, even caricaturists (the people of our time are so fond of laughter and clever witticisms), in hundreds of articles and drawings reproduced the story of my remarkable life.  With striking unanimity the newspapers assigned to me the name of “Master,” a highly flattering name, which I accepted, after some hesitation, with deep gratitude.  I do not know whether it is worth mentioning the few hostile notices called forth by irritation and envy—­a vice which so frequently stains the human soul.  In one of these notices, which appeared, by the way, in a very filthy little newspaper, a certain scamp, guided by wretched gossip and baseless rumours about my chats in our prison, called me a “zealot and liar.”  Enraged by the insolence of the miserable scribbler, my friends wanted to prosecute him, but I persuaded them not to do it.  Vice is its own proper punishment.

The fortune which my kind mother had left me and which had grown considerably during the time I was in prison has enabled me to settle down to a life of luxury in one of the most aristocratic hotels.  I have a large retinue of servants at my command and an automobile—­a splendid invention with which I now became acquainted for the first time—­and I have skilfully arranged my financial affairs.  Live flowers brought to me in abundance by my charming lady visitors give to my nook the appearance of a flower garden or even a bit of a tropical forest.  My servant, a very decent young man, is in a state of despair.  He says that he had never seen such a variety of flowers and had never smelled such a variety of odours at the same time.  If not for my advanced age and the strict and serious propriety with which I treat my visitors, I do not know how far they would have gone in the expression of their feelings.  How many perfumed notes!  How many languid sighs and humbly imploring eyes!  There was even a fascinating stranger with a black veil—­three times she appeared mysteriously, and when she learned that I had visitors she disappeared just as mysteriously.