Page:The Jail, Experiences in 1916.pdf/142

 tion: "Do you know, Mr. M., I would have no objection to staying here for life. This jail doesn't worry me at all. The people here are pleasant, straightforward—"

This worthy lad projected his guileless, unassuming spirit into everything.

But have I really any grievance against anyone? Thieves, sharpers,—it is true, but is there amongst them a single one in whom there is not at least a slight spark of holy fire?

 

I finished reading the biography of Julius Caesar. A fascinating book,—in the hours when I was reading it, I was not in jail. If the worthy authorities had an inkling how and whither a man's spirit is carried away by such reading, they certainly would not allow any books here at all. If the body is deprived of liberty, then the spirit ought not to be allowed to rove about,—and certainly not in ancient Gaul and in times two thousand years removed. But that is the old materialistic slovenliness; they attend to the body, but the spirit,—what do they care about the spirit!

This work is a strictly scientific history of Julius Caesar, the greatest genius of ancient times, and a rhapsodic apotheosis of the idea of Napoleonism. It is as if behind the figure of the Roman imperator there stood the figure of the first French Emperor, illuminated by every deed, every notion, every plan of the Roman. And nowhere can it be said that the book, as a result, suffers from an obtrusive political tendency,—it is a thoroughly honest, scientific work, written in a witty, sparkling style such as only French historians can contrive to write. There is only one circumstance to which I take exception, not in the text, but on the cover: the author's name,