This third was of a slow turn, and had imprinted on his mind the adage, _As soon gets the snail to his bed as the swallow_; therefore he called at every inn, and treated himself well. And it being infinitely more convenient that the people whom he was to question about his master should come to him, than that he should go tracking and spying them out in the wide world, he determined on choosing a position where he could examine every passenger from the East, with the insolent inquisitiveness of a toll-man behind his barrier; and fixed his quarters by the harbour of Venice. This Queen of the Waters was at that time, as it were, the general gate, which all pilgrims and crusaders from the Holy Land passed through in their way home. Whether this shrewd genius chose the best or the worst means for discharging his appointed function, will appear in the sequel. After a seven-years narrow custody in the Grated Tower at Grand Cairo,--a term which to the Count seemed far longer than to the Seven Sleepers their seventy-years sleep in the Roman catacombs,--he concluded himself to be forsaken of Heaven and Hell, and utterly gave up hope of ever getting out in the body from this melancholy cage, where the kind face of the sun was not allowed to visit him, and the broken daylight struggled faintly in through a window secured with iron bars. His devil-romance was long ago concluded; and his faith in miraculous assistance from his Guardian Saint was lighter than a mustard-seed. He vegetated rather than lived; and if in these circumstances any wish arose in him, it was the wish to be annihilated.