"This is a day to be marked with a white stone. I have often heard of you, but little expected ever to see you in my den."
I gripped the hand, with a choking in my throat to see such a man a prisoner, and said--
"If I had known, I would have come earlier."
"I thank Dame Fortune that you have come now," said he.
He had made his poor little room a wonderful place. On the walls were many sketches, pencilled from memory chiefly, as I came to know afterwards, full of life and spirit. Quaint drawings, the expression of his humorous fancy, there were also. A few well-thumbed books in several languages stood at his bed's head. On the table lay papers covered with mathematical studies. He followed my glance, and said--
"The hours are not so leaden-footed as you might fear. With books and pencil and a questioning habit of mind, one need not be idle."
"But accustomed to liberty and travel----" I began.
"And, therefore, with store of remembrances," he interrupted. "I used to roam the field and browse; now I lie and chew the cud. You may laugh when I tell you that my worst plague is the perpetual swarm of flies. At times their buzzing and their touch nearly madden me. The idlest, foulest, most impudent and vilest things on earth, no wonder the Bible ascribes their creation to Beelzebub. You don't happen to know what is the proper sacrifice to offer him? I should make it, if he would be favourable to me, and remove his creatures from me."
"The dame would prepare you a paper to catch them."
"Don't speak of it! She did, and the horror of it abides with me. But one thing I learned therefrom. The priests are wrong with their doctrine of everlasting torment. Why, I could not endure the miserable struggles of the most loathsome and detestable and worthless insects. _A fortiori_."
"Questions of divinity are beyond me," I said, laughing.
"Whereas questions of all sorts are my occupation," he answered.
Then the conversation turned on his travels, and he talked of men and things in nearly all the countries of Europe. He seemed to have made friends wherever he had been, and had something to say of the virtues of every people. He had seen with his own eyes and judged for himself, and spoke with a delightful freshness. Many a droll prank he had played in his desire to see things from the inside, here to get into a mosque, there to penetrate into a brigand's cave, and he told his escapades briefly and lightly, as I had never heard man speak before in my life. Despite my longing to be away to Sandtoft, the time passed quickly in his company, and we took our luncheon together pleasantly. But when two o'clock, three o'clock struck, and Drury did not appear, I grew restless and uneasy, and made some excuse for going out.