Neither money nor prayers would get a man a bed to himself here; custom forbade it sternly.

You might as well have asked to monopolize a see-saw.

They assigned to Gerard a man with a great black beard.

He was an honest fellow enough, but not perfect; he would not go to bed, and would sit on the edge of it telling the wretched Gerard by force, and at length, the events of the day, and alternately laughing and crying at the same circumstances, which were not in the smallest degree pathetic or humorous, but only dead trivial.

At last Gerard put his fingers in his ears, and lying down in his clothes, for the sheets were too dirty for him to undress, contrived to sleep.