Page:The Jail, Experiences in 1916.pdf/138

 such a day, and his children were in an orphan asylum at Pardubice. "At that moment I became the wreck of a man. My wife dead, my children will be brought up as Czechs, by the time I come out, I shall not recognize them, I myself shall be a stranger to them and shall not be able to make myself understood to them with a single word" he said with such convincing emotion in his voice that I believed him and gave him two cigars.

I then got into the habit of giving him two cigars daily—he always related to me a portion of this heartrending story of his. Dušek also helped him as far as possible, Budi too,—only Papa Declich stubbornly kept silence about him.

Somebody gave the sergeant-major at the main entrance three magnificent peonies on my behalf, and the superintendent himself brought them to me into the room. My fellow-inmates came running up,inspected this dark-red greeting from the outside world, Hedrich sniffed at them and wondered that they had no scent. I had to announce upon occasion to Frank that I had received them, that they were on the table in our cell, that the State continued to exist, and that nothing whatever had happened to the jail.

And then there was another new arrival. A man like a cat, I should call him, but a nice cat. Tender, velvety eyes, all of him in fact, was velvety,—movements, gait, speech,—he was, by the way, a Magyar, I did not understand much of what he said. The jail produced a home-like impression upon him, he was surprised by nothing, he was familiar with everything; it was the very first night he had slept there (he arrived in the evening), and already when we returned from exercise, a hand thrust into the room a small package which he quickly hid among the straw mattresses. When things were quiet and the door was shut, he took it out and opened it: Salami, bread, and a box of very fine tobacco cut thinly