[102] In the margin is added: ‘She had begged Chresten, for more than half a year before she left, to tell the prison-governor that her life hung on a thread; that I had a ball of clay in my handkerchief, and that I had threatened to break her head to pieces with it (I had said one day that a person with a ball of that kind could kill another). She invented several similar lies, as I subsequently heard.’
[103] In the margin is added: ‘The pins I had obtained some time ago from the first woman. She had procured them with some needles, and, thinking to hide them from me, she carried them in her bosom in a paper and forgot them. In the evening when she dropped her petticoat to go to bed, the paper fell on the floor. I knew from the sound what it was. One Saturday, when she went upstairs with the night-stool, I took the pins out of her box, and she never ventured to ask for them; she saw me using them afterwards, and said nothing about them.’
[104] In the margin is noted: ‘I said one day to the woman, “Were it not for the Queen, who would make the King angry with me, I would retaliate upon the prison governor for having decoyed Doctor Sperling. I would take the keys when he was sleeping, and wait for Chresten to come with the cups, and then I would go up the King’s stairs and take the keys to the King, just as the lacquey did with the old prison-governor. But I should gain nothing from this King, and perhaps should be still more strictly confined.”’
[105] In the margin is noted: ‘At first, when this Karen did not know the prison governor, she did not venture so boldly to the prisoners in the Dark Church to give them anything, for she said, “The prison governor stares at me so.” I said, “It is with him as with little children; they look staring at a thing, and do not know what it is.” It is the case with him, he does not trouble himself about anything.’
[106] In the margin is added: ‘The hinges of my outer door are so far from the wall that they are open more than a hand’s breadth, so that I have got in large things between them; and above they are still more open, and when I put my arm through the peep-hole of the inner door and stretch it out, I can reach to the top of the outer one, though the woman cannot.’
[107] In the margin: ‘She has a curious manner of spelling. She cannot spell a word of three syllables; for when she has to add the two syllables to the third, she has forgotten the first. If I urge her, however, she can read the word correctly when she has spelt the first syllable. She spells words of two syllables and reads those of four.’
[108] In the margin: ‘Once she asked me whether she could not get a book in which there was neither q nor x, for she could not remember these letters. I answered, “Yes, if you will yourself have such a book printed.”’
[109] In the margin of the MS. is added: ‘When this Karen came to me she left me no peace till I allowed her to clean the floor; for I feared that which happened, namely that the smell would cause sickness. In one place there was an accumulation of dirt a couple of feet thick. When she had loosened it, it had to remain till the door was opened. I went to bed, threw the bed-clothes over my head, and held my nose.’[E38]
[110] In the margin is added: ‘On the stick there was a tin candlestick, which was occasionally placed at the side of my bed. I used it for fixing my knitting.’[E39]
[111] In the margin: ‘The girl was a prostitute to whom he had promised marriage, and the tower-warder—both the former one and Chresten—let her in to Christian, went out himself, and left them alone.’