umes were bought at
his request. It was while that passion lasted that the banker received
the following letter from the prisoner: "My dear gaoler, I am writing
these lines in six languages. Show them to experts. Let them read
them. If they do not find one single mistake, I beg you to give orders
to have a gun fired off in the garden. By the noise I shall know that
my efforts have not been in vain. The geniuses of all ages and
countries speak in different languages; but in them all burns the same
flame. Oh, if you knew my heavenly happiness now that I can understand
them!" The prisoner's desire was fulfilled. Two shots were fired in
the garden by the banker's order.

Later on, after the tenth year, the lawyer sat immovable before his
table and read only the New Testament. The banker found it strange
that a man who in four years had mastered six hundred erudite volumes,
should have spent nearly a year in reading one book, easy to
understand and by no means thick. The New Testament was then replaced
by the history of religions and theology.

During the last two years of his confinement the prisoner read an
extraordinary amount, quite haphazard. Now he would apply himself to
the natural sciences, then he would read Byron or Shakespeare. Notes
used to come from him in which he asked to be sent at the same time a
book on chemistry, a text-book of medicine, a novel, and some treatise
on philosophy or theology. He read as though he were swimming in the
sea among broken pieces of wreckage, and in his desire to save his
life was eagerly grasping one piece after another.

II

The banker recalled all this, and thought:

"To-morrow at twelve o'clock he receives his freedom. Under the
agreement, I shall have to pay him two millions. If I pay, it's all
over with me. I am ruined for ever ..."

Fifteen years before he had too many millions to count, but now he was
afraid to ask himself which he had more of, money or debts. Gambling
on the Stock-Exchange, risky speculation, and the recklessness of
which he could not rid himself even in old age, had gradually brought
his business to decay; and the fearless, self-confident, proud man of
business had become an ordinary banker, trembling at every rise and
fall in the market.

"That cursed bet," murmured the old man clutching his head in
despair... "Why didn't the man die? He's only forty years old. He will
take away my last farthing, marry, enjoy life, gamble on the Exchange,