Then a small detail is introduced to heighten the effect of the grim picture—
"And thrice a day he smoked his pipe
And drank his quart of beer."
There is quite a Shakespearean note in this introduction of these commonplace details, which proves how thoroughly Oscar Wilde had studied the methods of the great dramatist.
But he leaves the condemned cell to paint the effect the whole ghastly tragedy being enacted within those grey walls had upon the other prisoners. To a highly strung and supersensitive nature like the writer's the strain must have been terrible. The captives went through the allotted tasks of picking oakum till the fingers bled, scrubbing the floors, polishing the rails, sewing sacks, and all the other daily routine of prison life.
"But in the heart of every man
Terror was lying still—"
until one day, returning from their labours, they "passed an open grave," and they knew that the execution would take place on the morrow. They saw the hangman with his black bag shuffling through the gloom, and like cowed hounds they crept silently back to their cells. Then night comes and Fear stalks through the prison, but the man himself is wrapt in peaceful slumbers. The watching warders cannot make out
"How one could sleep so sweet a sleep
With a hangman close at hand."
Not so with the other prisoners—"the fool, the fraud, the knave"—sleep is banished from their cells, they are feeling another's guilt, and the hardened hearts melt at the thought of another's agony. The warders, making their noiseless round, are surprised as they look through the wickets to see "gray figures on the floor." They are puzzled and wonder—
"Why men knelt to pray
Who never prayed before."
All through the long night they keep their sacred vigil.