be examined on his knowledge of the eye, and procured the insertion of a
satiric article in the news on the new operation for replacing the
crystalline humour, alluding to the wonderful artist then in Warsaw who
could perform this operation as easily as a dentist could put in a false
tooth.

This made Tadini furious, and he set upon the old professor in the street
and forced him to the refuge in a house.

After this he no doubt left the town on foot, for he was seen no more.
Now the reader is in a position to understand my surprise and amusement,
when, one day as I peered through the grating in my dungeon, I saw the
oculist Tadini standing over me with gun in hand. But he at all events
evinced no amusement whatever, while I roared and roared again with
laughter for the two hours his duty lasted.

I gave him a good meal and a sufficiency of my excellent wine, and at the
end a crown, promising that he should have the same treatment every time
he returned to the post. But I only saw him four times, as the guard at
my cell was a position eagerly coveted and intrigued for by the other
soldiers.

He amused me by the story of his misadventures since he had left Warsaw.
He had travelled far and wide without making a fortune, and at last
arrived in Barcelona, where he failed to meet with any courtesy or
consideration. He had no introduction, no diploma; he had refused to
submit to an examination in the Latin tongue, because (as he said) there
was no connection between the learned languages and the diseases of the
eye; and the result was that, instead of the common fate of being ordered
to leave the country, he was made into a soldier. He told me in