On Sunday we rose at half-past five o'clock,
and had no work to do. We attended
divine service in a long saloon, arranged like
a church. In the afternoon, such of us as
would write letters went to the guard-room.
There, accordingly I sat, mixed with the
refuse of human society, to write to my dear
wife; whose name I would have thought
sullied if spoken before them.

There was in Bruchsal a railway officer
who had absconded with six thousand florins.
Alter having spent the money he came back.
He had his own clothes and his own room in
the prison with many comforts, and was
occupied with keeping the books of the
management. A fraudulent watchmaker or jeweller
worked on his own account in his own room;
and such examples were by no means rare
ones. This could not be through fraud or
negligence in the director; for the prisons
were visited every month by the members of
the ministry. If criminals of this kind have
a claim to milder treatment, how much greater
claim had we, who became for the most part
criminals from motives which should be the
strength and not the weakness of a State?
But after a time we obtained, through the
representations that we made, much relaxation
of the prison discipline. Yet, scarcely
had we learnt to appreciate the bettering of
our condition, when there happened to me
a new trouble.

On Sunday, the thirtieth of September, a
tavern-keeper of Bruchsal, involved in the
revolution, was delivered in to our establishment.
He was popular in Bruchsal, and
in the afternoon about a hundred young fellows
assembled in the town, and boasted they
would free the prisoners. It was mere hectoring;
but the Prussians and their obedient
servants in Carlsruhe seized on this pretext
to aggravate the punishment of certain of
their enemies. Consequently, in the afternoon
of the second of October five of us were
called to the director, who received us with
much agitation. He told us that he had
received orders to send us immediately to the
new model prison—the terrible cellular
penitentiary.

A detachment of Nassau soldiers transported
us in our slave-gear through the
whole town, where many a pitying girl's
eye met ours as we passed. The gaolers
had told us many times of the new prison
to which we were going; and with other
things, that the prisoners there were obliged
to wear visors.

We arrived; we entered. We were brought
into a preparatory cell; where we studied
with dismay the regulations of the house.
Then we were separated, and I was led
into a cell towards the north; where I was to
live for years, away from other men, always
alone. I lost even my human name, and
became number two hundred and seventy-
eight, enclosed within four bare walls, in a
space four yards by six, under a ceiling like a
coffin-lid. My little iron bed was chained
against the wall. In one corner there was a
little open cupboard with a pitcher, a table,
a board, both fixed on the wall—and that
was all. Of the whole prison it is enough to
say that it is a costly massive structure
contrived on the principle of that at Pentonville.
It had not long been finished—indeed was
not wholly finished—when I entered it. But
of my pale yellow cell there are some things
that I must narrate:—

The floor in the Bruchsal cells is covered
with little square tiles, so soft that the prisoners
sweep from them every morning more
than a pint of the finest brick-dust, which
penetrates everywhere, and of course gets
into the lungs. To make this worse, the
shoes of the prisoners are thick-set with
large nails. Of late these shoes have been
abolished, and a few of the floors have been
painted with linseed oil; but this costs for
every cell about two shillings, and the Baden
government is not easily induced to expend
so much on the mere health of prisoners.

Beneath the ceiling in one of the longer
walls, a square hole is placed, through which
comes in the hot air in the winter: corresponding
to it is another such hole on the opposite
side, but near the floor, intended to
take bad air out. The theory of this heating
and airing may be very good; but the
practice proves very deficient. The openings
work very often more after their own
mind than after that of the inventor, one
filling the cell with cold air, and the other
spouting smoke.

The heating with hot air, the penetrating
brick-dust, the bad water, and the draught
always felt in the cell so strongly that the
hair of the prisoner is moved by the wind
even in bed, are the greatest calamities incident
to prison life at Bruchsal from architectural
reasons. It is a fact, that every plant
dies in one of these cells after a short time,
even in summer, and that a bird rarely will
outlive a winter. Hot air is excellent for
large halls in which people assemble now
and then for a few hours; but it is
murderous in such small closets. I will not
dwell upon the decomposition of the air by
this manner of heating, but only speak
of the dryness produced by it. Every thing
in the cell is dried to the utmost. The window-
frames—which are of wood instead of
cast-iron—are so much shrunk, that they let
the draughts in freely, and with doors it is
the same. A cloth saturated with water dries
in a few minutes; and it is evident, that this
dry air must operate in a like manner on the
body of the prisoners. I leave it to physicians
to tell what must be the consequence of
exposure to this dry heat when combined as a
state of suffering with bad and insufficient
food. Hot air fills only half the cell; the breast
and head of the prisoner are swimming in it,
whilst the other half of the man moves in a
cold current. The water comes from the lulls