Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/303

Rh out through the bars below, and the inspections proceeded. Smiles, flirtations and real coquetry ensued; kisses were even wafted through the air, accompanied by laughs and sighs, as the little god flew back and forth from cell to cell and made most heartless slaughter.

From my own observations and from the accounts of prisoners I know that many very happy and lasting marriages have resulted from the romances of the prison and have survived the severe trials of the "free life," where men struggle for existence in such selfish blindness that they pay little attention to the weaker ones who fall in the fight and try then to drag themselves up again to follow with the rest.

However, the prison love-stories did not always have such pleasant endings. I remember one case that was very interesting from several standpoints. Once in the summer a woman was led into the prison, who was reported to have been brought there through a family drama. She had killed her husband and had given herself up to the judge. During the investigation of her case she was kept in a separate cell by herself. Of a rich merchant family, she was a beautiful woman, tall and gracious, with a mass of soft, fair hair crowning a sweet but very sad face. As she always looked straight ahead out of a pair of dark-blue, widely opened eyes with an expression of astonishment, I thought, when I saw her for the first time, that she was not entirely sane; and I am even now not sure but that this may have been the case. Owing to the appeal in her personality, and also to the fact that someone paid the Commandant of the Prison well for the privilege, she was allowed to walk all day long in the exercise pen; and often I watched her, as she paced back and forth from one corner to the other