Ch. 5 - The Prison Cells - Page 2

creature was very young. Two brothers sat
here in two different cells: they were punished for horse stealing;
the one was still quite a boy.

In one cell was a poor servant girl. They said: "She has no place of
resort, and without a situation, and therefore she is placed here." I
thought I had not heard rightly, and repeated my question, "why she
was here," but got the same answer. Still I would rather believe that
I had misunderstood what was said--it would otherwise be abominable.

Outside, in the free sunshine, it is the busy day; in here it is
always midnight's stillness. The spider that weaves its web down the
wall, the swallow which perhaps flies a single time close under the
panes there high up in the wall--even the stranger's footstep in the
gallery, as he passes the cell-doors, is an event in that mute,
solitary life, where the prisoners' thoughts are wrapped up in
themselves. One must read of the martyr-filled prisons of the
Inquisition, of the crowds chained together in the Bagnes, of the hot,
lead chambers of Venice, and the black, wet gulf of the wells--be
thoroughly shaken by these pictures of misery, that we may with a
quieter pulsation of the heart wander through the gallery of the
prison-cells. Here is light, here is air;--here it is more humane.
Where the sunbeam shines mildly in on the prisoner, there also will
the radiance of God shine into the heart.