Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/299

Rh men and to cover everything about them with a disgusting coating, they gather it up, put it into the stone bag, and, thinking that they have done all that is necessary for their peace, continue to grind out new dust, as they hurry with ever-increasing speed along the road of life. Whither are they going? To the precipice ahead—the day of revenge!"

The eyes of the old robber gleamed, his breast heaved and the words came from his mouth like stones hurled from a catapult. I listened carefully to the tirade of Boitsoff, because I realized that he was voicing the massed thoughts of the population of the Russian prisons. And I thought with terror then what it would mean, if all these men who held such views should one day come forth in a body from their prisons and take into their hands this weapon of revenge.

Fate strangely willed that I should have to be witness to such a supposedly unimaginable event. It was in the days when Bolshevism opened the doors of the prisons and called upon the "human dust" to wreak this long-deferred revenge, at which the perverted mass, wildly intoxicated by its opportunity, made rivers of blood to flow and ravaged as a destroying storm, as a laughing, mocking hurricane, the whole great breadth of the Empire.

In the meantime the life of the prison ran its expected course, reflecting the ordinary manifestations of the normal existence in the world without. While the women were few, the number of men amounted to nearly five hundred, and each one of these wanted to hear the voice of a woman directed to him exclusively. Because of this, quarrels began, jealousy naturally breeding fights, in which not only strong arms and fists came into full play but knives as well. Though this state of affairs filled