Back, down a corridor, up more stairs; and we were confronted by a small scarred pair of doors from which hung two of the largest padlocks I had ever seen. Being unable to go further, I stopped: he produced a huge ring of keys. Fumbled with the locks. No sound of life: the keys rattled in the locks with surprising loudness; the latter, with an evil grace, yielded—the two little miserable doors swung open.

Into the square blackness I staggered with my paillasse. There was no way of judging the size of the dark room which uttered no sound. In front of me was a pillar. "Put it down by that post, and sleep there for tonight, in the morning nous allons voir" directed the fencer. "You won't need a blanket," he added; and the doors clanged, the light and fencer disappeared.

I needed no second invitation to sleep. Fully dressed, I fell on my paillasse with a weariness which I have never felt before or since. But I did not close my eyes: for all about me there rose a sea of most extraordinary sound… the hitherto empty and minute room became suddenly enormous: weird cries, oaths, laughter, pulling it sideways and backward, extending it to inconceivable depth and width, telescoping it to frightful nearness. From all directions, by at least thirty voices in eleven languages (I counted as I lay Dutch, Belgian, Spanish, Turkish, Arabian, Polish, Russian, Swedish, German, French—and English) at distances varying from seventy feet to a few inches, for twenty minutes I was ferociously bombarded. Nor was my perplexity purely aural. About five minutes after lying down, I saw (by a hitherto unnoticed speck of light which burned near the doors which I had entered) two extraordinary looking figures—one a well-set man with a big, black beard, the other a consumptive with a bald head and sickly moustache, bo