The _Carcer_ is the prison of the students, and consists of three or four rooms in the house of the Chief Beadle, immediately under the roof. It is secured with iron grating, and contains as furniture only a bed, a small table, and a wooden chair. These small chambers have received different names from the students, as the Solitude, Bellevue, Recreation, and the Hole. The last is the dark place into which the nightly disturbers are thrust, that they may here, undisturbed and undisturbing exercise their fancies till morning. They are under the care of a beadle, who supplies the necessities of the prisoner. The captive may not for the first few days quit his durance on any account. Afterwards he may attend his college lectures, or he goes about during the time that he ought to attend them, taking care to avoid meeting the officers of police. He must also return to the prison at night. During the days that he is in close confinement, he can entertain himself with reading; he plays or drinks, smokes and chats with his acquaintance, who are allowed to see him by an order from the Amtmann. His food he procures from one of the regular eating-houses, by means of his boot-fox. If all visits to him are prohibited, in accordance with the severity of his sentence, and if he be not inclined to study, he lies in bed and consoles himself with his pipe the greater part of the day, which he finds far more agreeable than sitting in that hard and uncomfortable chair. Thus we see, that this punishment is not excessively cruel, though it has the property of promoting considerably the transparency of the purse; since this agreeable lodging must be paid for, and the services of the beadle during the day are nothing near so responsive to love as to money, and for which, at all events, he must pay a specified sum. In some universities, as in Giessen, the incarceration is more rigorous. There, all visits and books are denied. The prisoner is not allowed to leave the prison; and even the bedstead is carried out in the morning, so that nothing is left to the poor wretch the whole day but to pace his small apartment, or to sit on that hard chair, and pour out his complaints to the four bare walls. Certainly the stranger will not select a place where such barbarous sentiments are retained, and refinement of mind has made so little progress, for the scene of his university life, but will rather turn his steps towards the more humane and polished _Ruperto-Carolo_[21] or some similar university. CHAPTER VIII. CHARACTERS CONNECTING THEMSELVES WITH STUDENT LIFE.