Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 | Page 5

of boots beside me,
and said:
"'Go to your cell and put those on,' and I went into my cell shaking.
That's the way they give you a new pair of boots in prison, Frank; that's

the way they are kind to you."
"The first period was the worst?" I asked.
"Oh, yes, infinitely the worst! One gets accustomed to everything in
time, to the food and the bed and the silence: one learns the rules, and
knows what to expect and what to fear...."
"How did you win through the first period?" I asked.
"I died," he said quietly, "and came to life again, as a patient." I stared
at him. "Quite true, Frank. What with the purgings and the
semi-starvation and sleeplessness and, worst of all, the regret gnawing
at my soul and the incessant torturing self-reproaches, I got weaker and
weaker; my clothes hung on me; I could scarcely move. One Sunday
morning after a very bad night I could not get out of bed. The warder
came in and I told him I was ill."
"'You had better get up,' he said; but I couldn't take the good advice.
"'I can't,' I replied, 'you must do what you like with me.'
"Half an hour later the doctor came and looked in at the door. He never
came near me; he simply called out:
"'Get up; no malingering; you're all right. You'll be punished if you
don't get up,' and he went away.
"I had to get up. I was very weak; I fell off my bed while dressing, and
bruised myself; but I got dressed somehow or other, and then I had to
go with the rest to chapel, where they sing hymns, dreadful hymns all
out of tune in praise of their pitiless God.
"I could hardly stand up; everything kept disappearing and coming
back faintly: and suddenly I must have fallen...." He put his hand to his
head. "I woke up feeling a pain in this ear. I was in the infirmary with a
warder by me. My hand rested on a clean white sheet; it was like
heaven. I could not help pushing my toes against the sheet to feel it, it

was so smooth and cool and clean. The nurse with kind eyes said to
me:
"'Do eat something,' and gave me some thin white bread and butter.
Frank, I shall never forget it. The water came into my mouth in streams;
I was so desperately hungry, and it was so delicious; I was so weak I
cried," and he put his hands before his eyes and gulped down his tears.
"I shall never forget it: the warder was so kind. I did not like to tell him
I was famished; but when he went away I picked the crumbs off the
sheet and ate them, and when I could find no more I pulled myself to
the edge of the bed, and picked up the crumbs from the floor and ate
those as well; the white bread was so good and I was so hungry."
"And now?" I asked, not able to stand more.
"Oh, now," he said, with an attempt to be cheerful, "of course it would
be all right if they did not take my books away from me. If they would
let me write. If only they would let me write as I wish, I should be quite
content, but they punish me on every pretext. Why do they do it, Frank?
Why do they want to make my life here one long misery?"
"Aren't you a little deaf still?" I asked, to ease the passion I felt of
intolerable pity.
"Yes," he replied, "on this side, where I fell in the chapel. I fell on my
ear, you know, and I must have burst the drum of it, or injured it in
some way, for all through the winter it has ached and it often bleeds a
little."
"But they could give you some cotton wool or something to put in it?" I
said.
He smiled a poor wan smile:
"If you think one dare disturb a doctor or a warder for an earache, you
don't know much about a prison; you would pay for it. Why, Frank,
however ill I was now," and he lowered his voice to a whisper and

glanced about him as if fearing to be overheard, "however ill I was I
would not think of sending for the doctor. Not think of it," he said in an
awestruck voice. "I have learned prison ways."
"I should rebel," I cried; "why do you let it break the spirit?"
"You would soon be broken, if you rebelled, here. Besides it is all
incidental to the System. The System! No one outside knows what that
means. It is