As a gentleman by birth, and a scholar by taste and education, I was the type of all that he least understood and most detested; and the mere view of our visitors would leave him daily in a transport of annoyance, which he would make haste to wreak on the nearest victim, and too often on myself.
It was so now.

Our rations were scarce served out, and I had just withdrawn into a corner of the yard, when I perceived him drawing near.
He wore an air of hateful mirth; a set of young fools, among whom he passed for a wit, followed him with looks of expectation; and I saw I was about to be the object of some of his insufferable pleasantries.

He took a place beside me, spread out his rations, drank to me derisively from his measure of prison beer, and began.

What he said it would be impossible to print; but his admirers, who believed their wit to have surpassed himself, actually rolled among the gravel.

For my part, I thought at first I should have died.