it well. But it was already too late--the day was at hand. The
rest had still to be summoned. Nor was this the extent of my
misfortune; for the next night, and the night after, were adorned
with a perfect galaxy of stars, and showed every cat that stirred
in a quarter of a mile. During this interval, I have to direct
your sympathies on the Vicomte de Saint-Yves! All addressed me
softly, like folk round a sickbed. Our Italian corporal, who had
got a dozen of oysters from a fishwife, laid them at my feet, as
though I were a Pagan idol; and I have never since been wholly at
my ease in the society of shellfish. He who was the best of our
carvers brought me a snuff-box, which he had just completed, and
which, while it was yet in hand, he had often declared he would not
part with under fifteen dollars. I believe the piece was worth the
money too! And yet the voice stuck in my throat with which I must
thank him. I found myself, in a word, to be fed up like a prisoner
in a camp of anthropophagi, and honoured like the sacrificial bull.
And what with these annoyances, and the risky venture immediately
ahead, I found my part a trying one to play.

It was a good deal of a relief when the third evening closed about
the castle with volumes of sea-fog. The lights of Princes Street
sometimes disappeared, sometimes blinked across at us no brighter
than the eyes of cats; and five steps from one of the lanterns on
the ramparts it was already groping dark. We made haste to lie
down. Had our jailers been upon the watch, they must have observed
our conversation to die out unusually soon. Yet I doubt if any of
us slept. Each lay in his place, tortured at once with the hope of
liberty and the fear of a hateful death. The guard call sounded;
the hum of the town declined by little and little. On all sides of
us, in their different quarters, we could hear the watchman cry the