The lawyer was to spend his confinement strictly under guard in one of the rooms of the banker's garden. It was agreed that for fifteen years he would not cross the threshold, see a living person, hear a human voice, or receive letters and newspapers. He was allowed a musical instrument, books, wine, and tobacco, and might write letters. By the agreement, the smallest attempt to break the rules, even two minutes before the end, freed the banker from the duty to pay. During the first year the lawyer suffered terribly from loneliness and boredom. From his room came the sound of the piano day and night. He refused wine and tobacco, saying that wine excites desires, and desires are the worst enemies of a prisoner. In the second year the music stopped, and he asked only for the classics. In the fifth year he played the piano again and wept. In the second half of the term he read a great deal. He studied languages, philosophy, and history. He flung himself eagerly upon these subjects, and at one time he was learning six languages at once. Later the prisoner read the Gospel, then theology and the history of religions. In the last two years he read an enormous amount, quite without plan — now science, now Byron or Shakespeare. There were notes in which he begged for books on chemistry, a manual of medicine, a novel, and some treatise on philosophy, all at the same time.