The Man and His Kingdom by E. Phillips Oppenheim

A man was sitting alone in a room of the prison of San Martina. It was scarcely a cell in which he had been placed, yet it was hard to conceive a more miserable apartment. The floor was bare, the walls had once been whitewashed, but were now thickly encrusted with all manner of dirt and cobwebs. There was no furniture save a chair, a wooden bed, and a table, all of the plainest and most wretched description. No wonder that the man who sat there was miserable.

He was neither young nor old, handsome or ugly--yet here ended all kinship with the nonentity. He was slim and dark, with mobile features, and a mouth whose humorous and sensitive proclivities made it the most marked feature of his face. He sat with his hollow eyes fixed steadfastly upon the little level patch of deep-blue sky visible through the iron bars of his prison window. Dimly he could see the lights of the town, faintly he could hear the echoes of many voices from the people thronging the Square, and neither the sight nor the hearing seemed pleasant to him.