§1
A MAN soon gets used to prison, if he has any interior life at all. One quickly gets accustomed to the silence and complete freedom of one’s cage—there are no cares and no distractions.
They refused me books at first, and the police-magistrate declared that it was against the rules for me to get books from home. I then proposed to buy some. “I suppose you mean some serious book—a grammar of some kind, I dare say? Well, I should not object to that; for other books, higher authority must be obtained.” Though the suggestion that I should study grammar to relieve boredom was exceedingly comic, yet I caught at it eagerly and asked him to buy me an Italian grammar and dictionary. I had two ten-rouble notes on me, and I gave him one. He sent at once to buy the books, and despatched by the same messenger a letter to the Chief Commissioner, in which, taking my stand on the article I had read, I asked him to explain the cause of my arrest or to release me.
The magistrate, in whose presence I wrote the letter, urged me not to send it. “It’s no good, I swear it’s no good your bothering His Excellency. They don’t like people who give them trouble. It can’t result in anything, and it may hurt you.”
A policeman turned up in the evening with a reply: His Excellency sent me a verbal message, to the effect that I should learn in good time why I was arrested. The messenger then produced a greasy Italian grammar from his pocket, and added with a smile, “By good luck it happens that there is a vocabulary here; so you need not buy one.” The question of change out of my note was not alluded to. I was inclined to write again to His Excellency; but to play the part of a little Hampden seemed to me rather too absurd in my present quarters.