or him. The preparations,
it must however be admitted, were of the very simplest character.
A palliasse thrown down in the corner, a rickety chair, and the
strangest apology for a table, were the whole furniture of the place.
Without one word of explanation the lieutenant motioned him into his
new abode. In vain Dumiger stormed and raved, and desired to know
whether this was the way in which free citizens were treated in the
free city of Dantzic. The lieutenant only shrugged his shoulders,
gave orders to the soldiers to withdraw, and Dumiger was left to his
melancholy meditations.

A heavy weight, such as magnetic influence affects the brain with,
oppressed his forehead; he threw himself on the palliasse, and
endeavored to recall the events of the last few hours: but so rapid
and intense had they been, that they already seemed to be numbered
amongst the visions of the past. When the heart is oppressed with
suffering, and above all, with the most painful of all suffering,
anxiety, solitude and sleep are the only consolations. But then the
sleep is not the light, happy, joyous slumber, from which we awake
refreshed and strengthened; it is a leaden, sullen, sodden trance,
from which we awake with the sensation that the whole weight of the
atmosphere has been concentrated on our brows. This was the case with
Dumiger: the flickering, dreary light of the lamp kept waving before
his eyes as he lay there. He felt like a man whose limbs have been
paralyzed by some grievous accident. At last be breathed heavily, and
the load of oppression fell from his eyelids. Such was the sleep we
have described.

When he awoke in the morning the light had gone out; but a few
pale, melancholy gleams of morning pierced the prison-bars, which
were so far above him that it was not possible for him to reach
them. He strove to remember where he was; his eyes fell on the
grotesquely-painted figures which covered the walls, and which
had escaped his observation on the preceding night. These were the
handicraft of some man who had evidently endeavored to wile away his
time in prison by caricaturing his persecutors; and certainly he
had succeeded in the attempt. Nothing more absurd than some of these
pictures could be imagined; every possible deformity was ascribed to
the originals, and the sketches were surrounded by pasquinades and
quaint devices. Here and there might be found expressions of deeper
and more fearful import, if indeed anything could