Page:The Jail, Experiences in 1916.pdf/113

 "Colleagues?"

"Yes. They stole some copper wire and sold it."

Rags on their bodies, rags on their feet, deplorable misery in their faces,—fourteen or fifteen years old, and the whole of life still before them.

We were back again in the room.

Mr. Kranz.

He was not tall, but he was sturdy, with a military cap slantwise on his head, an upturned moustache, a good-humoured, tolerant expression in his blue eyes—he stood in the middle of the room and looked around him.

"Kranz, this way” exclaimed Hedrich.

He came up to our table. I thanked him for the coffee; he waved my thanks aside, but said he wanted to ask me that if some day I were to write about what I had seen here and whom I had met, I should not forget him. His name was Kranz, Kranz, the same as what rests upon coffins, Kranz, a thief and a rogue. But he said he would like to see his name some day written by an honest hand. Up till now he had been only in criminal records, in judges' verdicts, in the annals of the police court.

I believe that what others call a soul is a holy fire in man, greater in some, less in others, in others again only a tiny spark; and this holy fire forms our moral, artistic and human worth. At that moment I saw a spark of it flashing with humour in the eyes of this robber.

"Kranz, how much longer?" asked the sergeant.

"Five and a half,—if Papritz doesn't get into my way when I'm in a temper."

"Like yesterday evening?"