Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/264

252 criminal prison to give to the young rats the benefits of better training and education.

In her relations with me I saw plainly the selfish characteristics of the widow in the fact that she never came to see me save in connection with her own material affairs. She understood that I did not want her family under my feet, on my bed and in my box and not only acquiesced in this, but, as I paid her well, made an agreement with me, which she kept until the day of her departure. However, I must explain that she gave ample evidence of understanding my moods, for in the time of my moral depression she carried away her food rapidly and noiselessly, as though she had no wish to intrude herself into my thoughts. On the other hand, when I was in a brighter mood, she acted very differently, squeaking joyfully and even shaking and tossing the morsels I gave to her, at the same time jumping about in a far from graceful but very amusing manner.

While mentioning my animal friends, I cannot refrain from including a word about a sorcerer, who entered my cell and took up his abode therein. This was a large, dark-yellow spider with a black cross on its back. I had no idea how it came in, thinking that I had perhaps brought it on my clothes from somewhere among my tomato vines. Once inside, it had stretched its web in a corner of the window and lay in ambush for its game. As I saw that it was destined to perish from hunger, owing to the fact that my gauze allowed no flies to enter, and learning from other prisoners that a spider is a fine companion in a cell, I caught flies for it in the yard and threw them into its web, until I was afraid it would burst from over-feeding and want of the customary exercise of its primitive ancestors, who had to roam the wood for their subsistence.