fairly endurable. His cell was unpleasantly damp
and dark; but he had been brought up in a palace
in the Via Borra, and neither close air, rats, nor
foul smells were novelties to him. The food, also,
was both bad and insufficient; but James soon obtained
permission to send him all the necessaries of
life from home. He was kept in solitary confinement,
and, though the vigilance of the warders
was less strict than he had expected, he failed to
obtain any explanation of the cause of his arrest.
Nevertheless, the tranquil frame of mind in which
he had entered the fortress did not change. Not
being allowed books, he spent his time in prayer
and devout meditation, and waited without impatience
or anxiety for the further course of events.

One day a soldier unlocked the door of his cell
and called to him: "This way, please!" After two
or three questions, to which he got no answer but,
"Talking is forbidden," Arthur resigned himself
to the inevitable and followed the soldier through
a labyrinth of courtyards, corridors, and stairs, all
more or less musty-smelling, into a large, light
room in which three persons in military uniform
sat at a long table covered with green baize and littered
with papers, chatting in a languid, desultory
way. They put on a stiff, business air as he came
in, and the oldest of them, a foppish-looking man
with gray whiskers and a colonel's uniform,
pointed to a chair on the other side of the table