The lieutenant of the tower, after the conference with Dumiger's officer had lasted some time, approached him. He took him gently by the arm, and brought him to the broken, rotten, creaking stairs, which led to the upper rooms, or rather cells, from which they were separated by two large, massive iron doors. The lieutenant himself opened the locks, while two soldiers, standing on either side with flambeaux, gave Dumiger a full view of the desolate stair which he had to ascend. The passage to which it led had been taken out of the thickness of the walls, so massive were they. They passed through a large hall where a huge fire was blazing, about which some soldiers slept, with their cloaks drawn tightly round them to ward off the draughts which came in strong gusts beneath the doors and even through the shutters; one or two with handkerchiefs tied round their heads, to serve the purpose of night-caps, were sitting by the fire smoking. They took the pipes from their lips to salute the lieutenant as he passed, but beyond this notice paid no attention to the object of his visit. It was evidently an event of no uncommon occurrence. More passages, more bars, more doors battered by age and mended by slabs of iron, and at last Dumiger arrived at the room, or rather the cell, which had been prepared for him. The preparations, it must however be admitted, were of the very simplest character. A palliasse thrown down in the corner, a rickety chair, and the strangest apology for a table, were the whole furniture of the place. Without one word of explanation the lieutenant motioned him into his new abode. In vain Dumiger stormed and raved, and desired to know whether this was the way in which free citizens were treated in the free city of Dantzic. The lieutenant only shrugged his shoulders, gave orders to the soldiers to withdraw, and Dumiger was left to his melancholy meditations. A heavy weight, such as magnetic influence affects the brain with, oppressed his forehead; he threw himself on the palliasse, and endeavored to recall the events of the last few hours: but so rapid and intense had they been, that they already seemed to be numbered amongst the visions of the past. When the heart is oppressed with suffering, and above all, with the most painful of all suffering, anxiety, solitude and sleep are the only consolations. But then the sleep is not the light, happy, joyous slumber, from which we awake refreshed and strengthened; it is a leaden, sullen, sodden trance, from which we awake with the sensation that the whole weight of the atmosphere has been concentrated on our brows. This was the case with Dumiger: the flickering, dreary light of the lamp kept waving before his eyes as he lay there. He felt like a man whose limbs have been paralyzed by some grievous accident. At last be breathed heavily, and the load of oppression fell from his eyelids. Such was the sleep we have described.