Page:The Jail, Experiences in 1916.pdf/144

 Caesar and the great Corsican, degraded, dishonoured France and led it to its downfall. And here again the truth is that poets see clearer and better than historians. Victor Hugo judged and condemned Napoleon Ill, and history has shown him to be in the right. Our Rieger—assuredly in agreement with his father-in-law—submitted a memorandum to this same Napoleon III a few years before Sedan. That Mickiewicz, a poet, regarded him as the saviour of Poland, oh, he might believe it then. Half Europe rose up against the despotic Tsar Nicholas I, and Napoleon, that great and glorious name, stood at the head of this coalition. This was six years after the spring of 1848, when Europe seemed to have recognized that "Leipzig was the cross and Waterloo the grave of its liberty."

Yes, such are the reflections that occur to one when reading in jail. These and also others. The State in its own interests really ought to watch most carefully over the spirit of those whom it imprisons.

It is a pity that the history of Julius Caesar is unfinished. It breaks off on the threshold of the civil war. And the worst of it is that after such a book which fills the soul with emotion, one has no desire to read anything else. I had already obtained my Molière, but I will here break off for a little.

What were our young friends doing in the room? The same as usual. One batch was doing its spell of walking, the sergeant was sitting opposite Mr. Karl and gazing into his mouth, while Mr. Karl was whistling some Vienna ditty to him; the censorists were playing wolves and sheep—for a bottle of wine and three cigars again—Papa Declich was standing on the straw mattresses, very laboriously brushing his cap and giving a sly glance into the courtyard, the artillery-man had crept with somebody else into a corner and was playing at cards,—ah yes, his fellow-player had reached us that morning; he was a corporal in the mechanical transport corps at