The doctor again looked round, and perceived that his red silk umbrella, which he had laid aside when he had seated himself by Lenny, was within arm's reach.

Possessing himself of this treasure, he soon expanded its friendly folds.

And thus, doubly fortified within and without, under shade of the umbrella, and his pipe composedly between his lips, Dr.Riceabocca gazed on his own incarcerated legs, even with complacency.
"'He who can despise all things,'" said he, in one of his native proverbs, "'possesses all things!'-- if one despises freedom, one is free! This seat is as soft as a sofa! I am not sure," he resumed, soliloquizing, after a pause,--"I am not sure that there is not something more witty than manly and philosophical in that national proverb of mine which I quoted to the fanciullo, 'that there are no handsome prisons'! Did not the son of that celebrated Frenchman, surnamed Bras de Fer, write a book not only to prove that adversities are more necessary than prosperities, but that among all adversities a prison is the most pleasant and profitable?
But is not this condition of mine, voluntarily and experimentally incurred, a type of my life?
Is it the first time that I have thrust myself into a hobble?
And if in a hobble of mine own choosing, why should I blame the gods ?" Upon this, Dr.Riceabocca fell into a train of musing so remote from time and place, that in a few minutes he no more remembered that he was in the parish stocks than a lover remembers that flesh is grass, a miser that mammon is perishable, a philosopher that wisdom is vanity.

Dr.
Riccabocca was in the clouds..