Page:The Jail, Experiences in 1916.pdf/169

 could not stop her crying, and so after a few minutes I announced that I was going home.

And that was why I arrived this day with alarm; my health was getting worse from day to day. Kranz, the burglar of goldsmith's shops, the good Kranz, brought me lemons, rum, ﬂasks of cognac daily, and Papa Declich, my only doctor, prepared remedies and medicines for me from them. Mr. Fels remarked that he was concerned on my account by the cold here. Sergeant Kretzer wanted to report on his own account that I was sick, and Warder Sponner advised me to wrap myself up in the blankets and to lie down all day, this being, he said, the best remedy against fever.

In a word, I shrank from showing myself to any new visitor.

This day, however, it was not a visitor. A cross-examination. A cross-examination into the merits of my case, which Frank had promised me on the day of my arrest. That is, seven weeks previously.

Frank, clean-shaven, took my file out of a table-drawer,—this precious file of mine had become quite fat. He handed me my book "Drops", and asked me whether I knew that the "Temps" and the "Times" had published articles on my imprisonment.

How could I know it,—I was hermetically closed up.

He smiled, strips of gold flashed in his teeth, but he did not begin. He was clearly waiting for somebody.

This somebody now entered. A cadet sergeant-major, the interpreter.

He gave me his hand, which surprised me somewhat—Frank had never done so.

We began. I translated the first poem. Frank held a German translation in his hand, nodded, and where my translation deviated from his translation, the interpreter gave his decision. The trans-