And then his voice died away, and the hubbub of beating and crying and cursing and groaning filled all the echoes. They cried, but no one listened to them. They thundered on the door, but in vain. They aggravated all their pangs in that mad struggle to get free. After a while my companion, whoever he was, spoke again.
'They would rather,' he said, 'lie on the roadside to be kicked and trodden on, as we have seen; though to see that made you miserable.'
'Made me miserable! You mock me,' I said. 'Why should a man be miserable save for suffering of his own?'
'You thought otherwise once,' my neighbor said.
And then I remembered the wretch in the corner of the wall in the other town, who had cursed me for pitying him. I cursed myself now for that folly. Pity him! was he not better off than I? 'I wish,' I cried, 'that I could crush them into nothing, and be rid of this infernal noise they make!'
'The spirit of the place has entered into you,' said that voice.
I raised my arm to strike him; but my hand fell on the stone floor instead, and sent a jar of new pain all through my battered frame. And then I mastered my rage and lay still, for I knew there was no way but this of recovering my strength,—the strength with which, when I got it back, I would annihilate that reproachful voice and crush the life out of those groaning fools, whose cries and impotent struggles I could not endure. And we lay a long time without moving, with always that tumult raging in our ears. At last there came into my mind a longing to hear spoken words again. I said, 'Are you still there?'
'I shall be here,' he said, 'till I am able to begin again.'
'To begin! Is there here, then, either beginning or ending? Go on; speak to me; it makes me a little forget my pain.'
'I have a fire in my heart,' he said; 'I must begin and begin—till perhaps I find the way.'