Page:The Jail, Experiences in 1916.pdf/167

 He got before the colonel and made his request, but the old gentleman snapped at him, and asked him whether he was mad.

Meanwhile we had a collection made. Each one assigned a few crowns for his benefit from the amount deposited with the staff superintendent in the main office; altogether it came to about eight hundred. And with this dowry Hedrich left the jail. He collected his things into a military knapsack, put it on his back, shook hands with us, and wept and departed.

And rarely in my life have I said goodbye to a man with such regret and, at the same time, with such good wishes, as to this simple and unspoiled barber's assistant.

The engineer made another attempt to get in with us. He was again denied.

During exercise he told me that the lieutenant-colonel had said he would have the chains taken from his feet, if he would come and ask for it. The engineer answered that he had not asked for them to be given him, and that he would not plead for them to be taken away.

The style of this answer reminded me a little of a similar remark I had made to Frank,—perhaps that was why I took to him. I gave him all the cigars I had in my pocket.

 

I was again in the Street of the Tigers. When they took me there, I went with a certain amount of alarm. For a few days previously I had received a visitor who had caused me considerable agitation. It was the wife of a friend of mine, a journalist who was then in the army. After many entreaties, Frank had granted her the usual