Old Demetrius was a very bad sleeper.

The whole night long he scarcely slept more than an hour at a time.

His eyes would only close when the droaning voice of some one reading aloud made his head dizzy, and then he would doze off for a short time.

But at the slightest pause he would instantly awake and angrily ask the reader why he left off, and urge him on again.
The reader in question was a student more than fifty years old, who, time out of mind, had been making a living by fair-copying all sorts of difficult manuscripts.

He was an honest, simple creature who, in his time, had tried hard to push his way into every conceivable business and profession without ever succeeding till, at last, when he was well over fifty, he was fortunate enough to fall in with an editor who happened to know that Demetrius Lapussa wanted a reader, and recommended the poor devil for the post.