Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/270

258 books; while a few wrote letters to people who possibly no longer existed or who, perhaps, lived only in their imaginations. Generally these were love-letters. Three Georgians sat apart by themselves and in low voices exchanged short sentences, full of sadness and longing.

"In the Caucasus it must be like a real paradise now," said one of them.

"Everything is in white and pink bloom. Plum and cherry trees make lovely dots all over the green hillside," the second one added.

"In the evening when the sun is setting, everything is silent, so silent. &hellip; The herds wind back to the aouls," came from a third, as, with a sigh, he pressed his head between his hands.

"Don't sigh so, you folks from the Caucasus!" one of the other prisoners called over to them. "Without your sighs one dies from longing here. To the devil with you!"

The Georgians only raised their heads, looking like birds of prey.

In the farthest corner of the room a quarrel began over a game in which one of the players had cheated. During the inevitable struggle that followed, knives were bared, and soon the guards took away two wounded men to the hospital. But the affair was soon forgotten and only tranquillity seemed ever to have ruled in the place, as an old white-haired man and a boy, who could not have been over fourteen years of age, sat on a window sill, feeding the pigeons that lighted without fear upon their hands and shoulders.

Under the depressing burden of a day, aimless but full of noise, which was everywhere perceptible, all of the