This man knew that it was wise; that those who were like to it were wise also: wise with the only wisdom which is honored of other men.
He had been unwise—always; and therefore he stood, watching the sun die, with hunger in his soul, with famine in his body.
For many months he had been half famished, as were the wolves in his own northern mountains in the winter solstice. For seven days he had only been able to crush a crust of hard black bread between his teeth. For twenty hours he had not done even so much as this. The trencher in his trestle was empty; and he had not wherewithal to refill it.
He might have found some to fill it for him, no doubt. He lived amidst the poor, and the poor to the poor are good, though they are bad and bitter to the rich.
But he did not open either his lips or his hand. He consumed his heart in silence; and his vitals preyed in anguish on themselves without his yielding to their torments.
He was a madman; and Cato, who measured the godliness of men by what they gained, would have held him accursed—the madness that starves and is silent for an idea is an insanity, scouted by the world and the gods. For it is an insanity unfruitful, except to the future. And for the future who cares,—save the madmen themselves?
He watched the spider as it went.
It could not speak to him as its fellow once spoke in the old Scottish story. To hear as that captive heard, the hearer must have hope, and a kingdom—if only in dreams.
This man had no hope; he had a kingdom, indeed, but it was not of earth; and in an hour of sheer cruel bodily pain earth alone has dominion and power and worth.
The spider crawled across the gray wall; across the glow from the vanished sun; across a coil of a dead passion-vine that strayed over the floor, across the classic shape of a great cartoon drawn in chalks upon the dull rugged surface of stone.