Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/221

Rh conclusion as that which the great teacher formulated so poetically and wisely in the words:

"Man! you can rise higher than God Indra and fall lower than the worm crawling in the marsh."

And so I remained in my cell and, together with the silent, thinking Nowakowski, continued our strange, never-to-be-forgotten life. Although I did not interrogate him, I knew that he was living through similar experiences but that, being of an unimaginative and uncommunicative turn of mind, he did not dwell on them or speak of them.

Some weeks after having remarked these psychologic changes, I ceased to sleep, though this cannot be said to be a strictly accurate statement regarding my condition. Sleeplessness is a state of ill-health, when one feels tired and longs to sleep but cannot; whereas I felt no mental fatigue and did not wish to sleep, but usually read or wrote eighteen hours out of the twenty-four. My mind continued quite fresh and my imagination unusually active. Together with the loss of a desire to sleep, I also lost my appetite and could not eat either meat, fish or ordinary bread, so that I had to ask to have sent me from home tinned fruit and zwiebach of white bread, on which I lived for some time, with the addition of a morning and evening glass of strong tea. My usual daily ration fell to one tin of pears or peaches, four pieces of zwiebach and two glasses of tea.

Mentally and spiritually I felt quite normal but became physically weakened and thin, for a long period never going out for a walk and endeavouring to move as little as possible. I also gave up my morning exercises, a practice which I had kept up without interruption since my boyhood, even during the crowded conditions in Cell No.