Soon he became the victim of a great bearded man with small eyes of cunning, a man who, towering contemptuously above others, strode up and down the prison half his waking hours, his thick bare arms folded on his chest, his head set defiantly upon a bullock-like neck. This man was named Aristides, and it was said he was there because he had half-killed a demirep who had not kept faith with him.
“Take this, Aristides,” said Cavalcini, one afternoon, pulling a bottle of wine from beneath his cloak and furtively handing it to the bearded giant who was striding hither and thither.
Aristides, taking the bottle by the neck, held it up above his head against the sky’s brilliant blue.
“It is full?” he asked.
“Yes, it is full. And I have some grapes also.”
A big bunch of grapes changed hands. Aristides, having torn off a mouthful with his teeth, chewed them meditatively, spat out the skins on Cavalcini’s feet, and then stared down on his victim.
“Anything else?” he asked, loudly.
“No,” faltered Cavalcini.
With a snarling smile of amused contempt, Aristides resumed his walk.
There were terrible hours when Cavalcini gave way to morbid introspection. There was nothing in him that he kept sacred from himself; there was nothing so vile that he did not wish to understand it. Yet this habit of introspection dragged him deeper and deeper into dejection.