Page:The Jail, Experiences in 1916.pdf/128

 family. I had really saved his life, he said, by what I had told him the day before.

Then he called Mr. Lamm and told him that if he felt anxious and unhappy he should apply to me for comfort. I was wiser than any rabbi.

"I know, and a very dangerous man" declared Mr. Lamm,—it was clear that he had not properly understood.

I read a little longer. And when it began to get dark, I was glad that this day was coming to an end.

Such a Monday had in truth no other value except that it brought us a little nearer,—to what? To what, actually? To freedom? To life? Or perhaps merely to the end of it?

 

Mr. Fiedler acted as our official newspaper. Day by day he brought in the letters that had arrived, announced who would be transferred from our cell and where, whether there would be many new arrivals in his place, reported the amount of money which had arrived for one and the other, then under the heading of "Miscellaneous News" or "Day by Day" he related something fresh from the interior of the jail, which, by the way, might have been just an anecdote, and then he went to the neigbouring cell. The letters which we received were, of course, censored by the examining superintendent. Dr. Frank consistently erased and blackened in the manner of the Tsarist censors the name of each man who sent me greetings, the names of people I knew, about whom my correspondent informed me that they were ill, that they had died or merely that they asked whether I needed anything,—such circumspection on