“I believe and confess that our prison is immortal.  What do you say to this, my friends?”

But they were silent.  And having burst into good-natured laughter—­ What quiet roommates I have!  I undressed slowly and gave myself to peaceful sleep.  In my dream I saw another majestic prison, and wonderful jailers with white wings on their backs, and the Chief Warden of the prison himself.  I do not remember whether there were any little windows in the doors or not, but I think there were.  I recall that something like an angel’s eye was fixed upon me with tender attention and love.  My indulgent reader will, of course, guess that I am jesting.  I did not dream at all.  I am not in the habit of dreaming.

Without hoping that the Warden, occupied with pressing official affairs, would understand me thoroughly and appreciate my idea concerning the impossibility of escaping from our prison, I confined myself, in my report, to an indication of several ways in which suicides could be averted.  With magnanimous shortsightedness peculiar to busy and trusting people, the Warden failed to notice the weak points of my project and clasped my hand warmly, expressing to me his gratitude in the name of our entire prison.

On that day I had the honour, for the first time, to drink a glass of tea at the home of the Warden, in the presence of his kind wife and charming children, who called me “Grandpa.”  Tears of emotion which gathered in my eyes could but faintly express the feelings that came over me.

At the request of the Warden’s wife, who took a deep interest in me, I related in detail the story of the tragic murders which led me so unexpectedly and so terribly to the prison.  I could not find expressions strong enough—­there are no expressions strong enough in the human language—­to brand adequately the unknown criminal, who not only murdered three helpless people, but who mocked them brutally in a fit of blind and savage rage.

As the investigation and the autopsy showed, the murderer dealt the last blows after the people had been dead.  It is very possible, however—­even murderers should be given their due—­that the man, intoxicated by the sight of blood, ceased to be a human being and became a beast, the son of chaos, the child of dark and terrible desires.  It was characteristic that the murderer, after having committed the crime, drank wine and ate biscuits—­some of these were left on the table together with the marks of his blood-stained fingers.  But there was something so horrible that my mind could neither understand nor explain:  the murderer, after lighting a cigar himself, apparently moved by a feeling of strange kindness, put a lighted cigar between the closed teeth of my father.

I had not recalled these details in many years.  They had almost been erased by the hand of time, and now while relating them to my shocked listeners, who would not believe that such horrors were possible, I felt my face turning pale and my hair quivering on my head.  In an outburst of grief and anger I rose from my armchair, and straightening myself to my full height, I exclaimed: