I.N.R.I. | Page 8

the cell. He was not satisfied. Had he not listened enough, or had he spoken too much? How could so childlike a creature take an oath to commit murder? In the corridor he spoke seriously to the gaoler.
"I must point out to you that the man is very ill. Don't treat him harshly."
The old man was annoyed.
"I beg your pardon, sir! To treat a poor devil like that harshly! If you pity him, why were you so rough with him?" He rubbed a lamp-glass with a coarse rag in order to get the black off. "'To die by hanging.' Even said as gently as that, it hurts more than when we roundly abuse the people, and yet that's at once taken amiss. Only to prove it. Ill! Of course he's ill, poor devil. I am only surprised the doctors haven't been to cure him. I suppose he's well enough to be hanged?"
"That will do, Trapser."
The gaoler put down his work, stood up straight in military fashion, and said: "Sir, I beg to resign my post."
"What!" exclaimed the judge, "you wish to go?"
"I respectfully hand in my resignation." He stood up straight as a dart. "Do you know, I've got accustomed to most things here in six-and-twenty years, I've seen seventeen hanged--just seventeen, sir. There ought to have been twenty-four, but seven were granted imprisonment for life. They're still undergoing that mercy. Do you know, sir, it's a miserable calling! But as to that Ferleitner, I never afore saw anything like him. What has he done, I ask you? He's done nothing. You see we've had quite different gallows-birds here. A speculator who had ruined six families and driven the seventh to suicide--eight months. A student with two duel murders on his conscience--six months. But he is there now--because he's done nothing, it seems to me. Well, the long and the short of it is, it horrifies me."
"Always the same in temper and disposition, you old bear! God keep you!" And then a kindly tap on the shoulder. The attempt at resignation was again met with a refusal. The judge formally put it aside. But the old man growled on for a long time. "Old bear! old bear! That's his whole stock of wit every time, I'll show him the old bear. Good God! that's how things are with us!" He whistled and made a harsh noise with his bunch of keys so that the prisoners could make their preparations before he performed his duty of looking through the spyhole to see how his charges were spending their time. Then he went and procured a big bottle of ink and a packet of foolscap paper for Number 19.
"Is that enough?" he asked.
"Thank you, thank you!" said Ferleitner; "only now I want a pen."
"Oh no, my dear sir, no. We know that sort of thing. Since the notary in Number 43 stabbed himself with a steel pen five years ago, I don't give any more," said the gaoler.
"But I can't write without a pen," returned Konrad.
"That's not my business; I can't let you have a pen," the old man assured him.
"The judge gave me permission to have one," Konrad remonstrated modestly.
Then the old man exclaimed afresh: "Do you know this judge, he just comes up as far as this," and he placed his hand on a level with his chin. "He crumbles everything up and then we're to spoon it out." Then he muttered indistinctly in his beard; "I say just this, if they let a man hang for a week before they hang him, it's a--a--good God! I can't properly--I can't find any more fine words! If a man puts a knife into himself, no wonder!"
"I shan't kill myself," said Konrad quietly. "They say I may put my hopes in the king."
"And you want to write to him? That won't help much, but you can do it if you like; there's time. For once it's a good thing that our officials are so slow. If it's any comfort to you, you may know that they wrong me, too. They won't accept my resignation. Yes, that's how it is with us," concluded the old man.
Then he went and brought a pot with rusty steel pens. "But don't you spoil them!" For they were the very pens with which death-warrants had been signed--the old man had a collection of such things and hoped to sell it to a rich Englishman. "Does your honour require anything else?" With those mocking words he left the cell and raged and cursed all along the corridor. The prisoners thought he was cursing them.
The judge, his hands behind his back, walked up and down his large study. What a cursed critical case! If the Chancellor had not been given up by the doctors on the day of the