their physical powers on my body, until the
colonel blandly requested them to keep quiet.
As, however, they had by this time become
acquainted with my name, the young gentlemen
possibly only chose this proceeding as a method
for expressing their loyalty. One young officer
particularly showed his zeal and valour by tying
my hands on my back with such force that the
cords cut deep into the flesh, and the veins were
swollen unto bursting."

He was then taken from one place of confinement
to another, maltreated by officers and
soldiers in the most barbarous manner—indeed,
it appears that his captors were in two minds
whether they might not as well rid themselves
of the trouble of looking after him, or any other
prisoner, by throwing him into the Elbe, or
shooting him down, as they had actually done
in the case of a certain young physician, Dr.
Haussmann. (By the way, it was about the
services of such soldiers that the King of
Prussia, Frederick William the Fourth, wrote to
Count Waldersee: "The reports about the
excellent conduct of the officers and grenadiers fill
my heart with joy and my eyes with tears.
You command a splendid regiment, and I would
kiss all your people. Oh, that I could be
amongst you!") One day and night the narrator
spent amongst a numerous transport of prisoners
in one of the Dresden churches, where they
were made a sort of exhibition of—people walking
in and freely abusing them, hitting them and
spitting in their faces. Towards the end of
August he was suddenly called up in the middle
of the night, and, in company with Heubner and
Bakunin, two of the heads of the provisionary
government, put in chains, and, under a strong
military escort, conducted to the fortress
Königstein. Here he was taken to a room,
not otherwise uncomfortable than that the
authorities had deemed it expedient to have
a great wooden box put up outside the window
of a fortress situated on the very edge of a
precipice one thousand one hundred feet high,
evidently with no other purpose than to give
the prisoner the smallest possible allowance of
the light of heaven. The treatment in this
stronghold does not seem to have given cause
for great complaint, and the prisoner's existence
was on the whole as endurable as it could be in
solitary confinement and perfect exclusion from
all that went on in the world outside. This latter
hardship was felt most keenly by men of public
and political character, and although they enjoyed
many indulgences, such as books—which were
even furnished from the Royal Library at
Dresden—writing materials, and every physical
comfort, they gladly entered into a plan of
flight, proposed to them by some sympathising
soldiers; the project was, however, discovered,
and their escape prevented.

Meanwhile, the trial of the prisoner dragged
slowly on. It lasted until the 14th of January,
1850; the indictment was Treason, and the
sentence Death.

The sentence was communicated to the
prisoners on the 16th of April, but the honourable
character of the King of Saxony—honourable
in spite of all his errors—was sufficient guarantee
that it would never be executed. But what,
then, was to be done with the prisoners? The
very fact that the government had, in order to
secure the sentence to itself, trespassed upon
the law by eluding a jury and accepting the
judgment of its own paid functionaries, justified
the assumption that it would be satisfied with
this not very enviable triumph, and finally offer
an atonement to the offended majesty of the
law, and crown itself with the honour of
clemency, by exiling them perhaps to America, or
some such punishment. This seems to have
been generally expected, and the amazement of
the prisoners, and even of their keepers, was
great when the sentence was commuted into
"imprisonment for life in the house of correction."
The place chosen for their imprisonment
was Schloss Waldheim, an ancient
hunting-place of the Electors of Meissen, of the
sixteenth century.

On his arrival at Waldheim, the prisoner was
searched, and every article of value taken from
him. Then he was conducted to the "solitary
cells," which were situated on the ground floor,
one of which was opened for his reception. It
was a dark narrow place, very scantily furnished,
and with only one small strongly-barred window,
at a considerable height from the floor. After
a while a surgeon made his appearance, before
whom he had to undress; then, a barber who cut
his beard off; and after him, one of the keepers,
to crop his hair, which latter performance
concluded the prison toilette. The meals consisted
of a basin of thin brownish gruel for breakfast,
one ditto of pea-soup for dinner, a repetition of
the morning's gruel for supper, and a pound and
a half of bread for the day. Although the
prisoner was alone, yet was he not undisturbed.
At about man's height in the door there was an
aperture of the size of a playing-card, through
which he was being surveyed all day long. On
the morning after his arrival, he was taken to
the bath-room, where, after his ablutions, he had
to put on the prison dress. The governor,
"Captain" Christ, as he loved to style himself,
received him kindly, although he enjoyed the
reputation of a most unmitigated ruffian; and
indeed not without cause, for though naturally
not of an unkind disposition, he was occasionally
given to attacks of ungovernable rage, and
at such times subjected the prisoners to the most
barbarous punishments. These consisted in a
variety of thirteen different kinds, and were
written up on a large board in the entrance-hall
of the "solitary cells," situated on the ground
floor. The list began with "reduction of
rations," and continued then with simple arrest,
close arrest, dark arrest, hard bed, sick diet of
the third class, "jumpers," short fetters, the
log, the lath-room, flogging with rods, flogging
with a stick, flogging with the knout. This list
requires some explanation. The reduction of
rations simply consisted in giving the culprit
nothing but one pound of bread with some
water per day, instead of any warm food. This