"You wish to know," said the superintendent, as I laid down the paper with an inquiring look, "what I intend to do. Exactly as if I had never received this. I do not desire to know whether Doctor Snellius, whose friendship for me often gives him a sharper insight in matters that concern me, than I have myself, was playing a little comedy when he hurried you off so abruptly yesterday, but I am very glad it so happened. For it would have wounded my pride to be compelled to sacrifice you, to whom I am so much attached, to a pitiful bit of chicanery. According to the letter of the law, they are right in insisting that a prisoner cannot be a guest in the superintendent's family; and this point I should have had to yield; but beyond this I am fully determined not to yield a single step. To decide in what kind of work a prisoner shall be engaged, and how he shall employ his hours of recreation, is my incontestable right, which I will not suffer to be curtailed by a hair's breadth, and which I will maintain through all the tribunals, even though it should be brought before the king. And I am not sorry that this has happened, since it gives us an occasion to speak of our mutual relations, and to have a clear understanding of the way we shall pursue in future. If you are disposed to hear what I think on the subject, we will go into the garden. My lungs suffer to-day from the confined air of a room." We stepped from his office into the garden. I offered him my arm, as my strength was now sufficient for this service, and we walked in silence between the flower-beds, from which the warm south wind wafted us the perfume of wallflowers and mignonnette, to the grateful shade of the plane-trees. The superintendent took his seat upon one of the benches, motioned to me to place myself at his side, and after a silent glance of gratitude at the leafy crowns of the noble trees that afforded the refreshing coolness, he said: