"Where can I get some?"

"Nowhere."

What displeased this ignorant and gossiping fellow about me was my
silence and my laconic manner of talking.

Next day he told me that the Tribunal had assigned me fifty sous per diem
of which he would have to take charge, but that he would give me an
account of his expenditure every month, and that he would spend the
surplus on what I liked.

"Get me the Leyden Gazette twice a week."

"I can't do that, because it is not allowed by the authorities."

Sixty-five livres a month was more than I wanted, since I could not eat
more than I did: the great heat and the want of proper nourishment had
weakened me. It was in the dog-days; the strength of the sun's rays upon
the lead of the roof made my cell like a stove, so that the streams of
perspiration which rolled off my poor body as I sat quite naked on my
sofa-chair wetted the floor to right and left of me.

I had been in this hell-on-earth for fifteen days without any secretion
from the bowels. At the end of this almost incredible time nature
re-asserted herself, and I thought my last hour was come. The
haemorrhoidal veins were swollen to such an extent that the pressure on
them gave me almost unbearable agony. To this fatal time I owe the
inception of that sad infirmity of which I have never been able to