His confinement was to endure twenty-four hours.  He shortly chose his day, and sent me word.  I started immediately.  When I reached the University Place, I saw two gentlemen talking together, and, as they had portfolios under their arms, I judged they were tutors or elderly students; so I asked them in English to show me the college jail.  I had learned to take it for granted that anybody in Germany who knows anything, knows English, so I had stopped afflicting people with my German.  These gentlemen seemed a trifle amused—­and a trifle confused, too—­but one of them said he would walk around the corner with me and show me the place.  He asked me why I wanted to get in there, and I said to see a friend—­and for curiosity.  He doubted if I would be admitted, but volunteered to put in a word or two for me with the custodian.

He rang the bell, a door opened, and we stepped into a paved way and then up into a small living-room, where we were received by a hearty and good-natured German woman of fifty.  She threw up her hands with a surprised “Ach Gott, Herr professor!” and exhibited a mighty deference for my new acquaintance.  By the sparkle in her eye I judged she was a good deal amused, too.  The “Herr Professor” talked to her in German, and I understood enough of it to know that he was bringing very plausible reasons to bear for admitting me.  They were successful.  So the Herr Professor received my earnest thanks and departed.  The old dame got her keys, took me up two or three flights of stairs, unlocked a door, and we stood in the presence of the criminal.  Then she went into a jolly and eager description of all that had occurred downstairs, and what the Herr Professor had said, and so forth and so on.  Plainly, she regarded it as quite a superior joke that I had waylaid a Professor and employed him in so odd a service.  But I wouldn’t have done it if I had known he was a Professor; therefore my conscience was not disturbed.

Now the dame left us to ourselves.  The cell was not a roomy one; still it was a little larger than an ordinary prison cell.  It had a window of good size, iron-grated; a small stove; two wooden chairs; two oaken tables, very old and most elaborately carved with names, mottoes, faces, armorial bearings, etc.—­the work of several generations of imprisoned students; and a narrow wooden bedstead with a villainous straw mattress, but no sheets, pillows, blankets, or coverlets—­for these the student must furnish at his own cost if he wants them.  There was no carpet, of course.

The ceiling was completely covered with names, dates, and monograms, done with candle-smoke.  The walls were thickly covered with pictures and portraits (in profile), some done with ink, some with soot, some with a pencil, and some with red, blue, and green chalks; and whenever an inch or two of space had remained between the pictures, the captives had written plaintive verses, or names and dates.  I do not think I was ever in a more elaborately frescoed apartment.