“I have received orders to transfer you to the bottom of the tower.”
“To transfer me?”
“Yes.”
“Then they must have discovered in me a criminal of the deepest dye! Let us go at once.”
I found myself in a kind of round cellar, paved with large flagstones, and lighted by five or six narrow slits in the walls. The officer told me I must order what food required to be brought once a day, as no one was allowed to come into the ‘calabozo’, or dungeon, by night.
“How about lights?”
“You may lave one lamp always burning, and that will be enough, as books are not allowed. When your dinner is brought, the officer on duty will open the pies and the poultry to see that they do not contain any documents; for here no letters are allowed to come in or go out.”
“Have these orders been given for my especial benefit?”
“No, sir; it is the ordinary rule. You will be able to converse with the sentinel.”
“The door will be open, then?”