Noon
That which followed the night which we have described afforded no circumstance of note . The dwarf imparted to his youthful companion a volume similar to that which formed his own studies , and which proved to be a tome of one of Scuderi 's now forgotten romances , of which Geoffrey Hudson was a great admirer , and which were then very fashionable both at the French and English Courts ; although they contrive to unite in their immense folios all the improbabilities and absurdities of the old romances of chivalry , without that tone of imagination which pervades them , and all the metaphysical absurdities which Cowley and the poets of the age had heaped upon the passion of love , like so many load of small coal upon a slender fire , which it smothers instead of aiding . But Julian had no alternative , saving only to muse over the sorrows of Artamenes and Mandane , or on the complicated distresses of his own situation ; and in these disagreeable divertisements , the morning crept through as it could . Noon first , and thereafter nightfall , were successively marked by a brief visit from their stern turnkey , who , with noiseless step and sullen demeanour , did in silence the necessary offices about the meals of the prisoners , exchanging with them as few words as an official in the Spanish Inquisition might have permitted himself upon a similar occasion . With the same taciturn gravity , very different from the laughing humour into which he had been surprised on a former occasion , he struck their fetters with a small hammer , to ascertain , by the sound thus produced , whether they had been tampered with by file or otherwise . He next mounted on a table , to make the same experiment on the window-grating . Julian 's heart throbbed ; for might not one of those grates have been so tampered with as to give entrance to the nocturnal visitant ?