Page:Julian Niemcewicz - Notes of my Captivity in Russia.djvu/184

156 The second prisoner, whom I found on my arrival, was a stranger to me. All that I could learn of him through Mons. Bonneau was, that he seemed to be a Frenchman, and was imprisoned for having arrived at St. Petersburg without a passport. After six months of hard captivity, his mind became deranged; they sent him to an hospital, but scarcely had he recovered, when they put him again into prison, and he relapsed into a state worse than ever. He was not however cured this time in an hospital, but kept in prison. Sometimes he was quiet and appeared stupefied; but now and then the house resounded with his cries and howlings. Often he chanted the mass and vespers in a beautiful voice I saw him once passing through the corridor, when the guard opened the door for his going out; he seemed to be twenty-five years old, and to have a very fine countenance, but pale and worn out. Although he was not fond of reading, I sent him my books, and he spoiled several of them unintentionally, for it seems that he wrote