saw, to my astonishment, red-coated English
soldiers advancing as tirailleurs. I heard
and saw their shots; but I could not see the
enemy, the ridge of a little hill hindering the
view. The English made a movement, and
were soon behind the hill; but, near to my
building I saw advancing a strange-looking
corps of soldiers, which it puzzled me
to understand next morning; they were
dressed in an eastern fashion, but kept
western order. They were formed in a
battalion's column, advancing in a regular trot,
like the Chasseurs d'Afrique; they advanced
with a sort of terrible grunting. Next morning
I thought I must have been in India, and
seen Englishmen at war with some of the
people there; but these Easterly-dressed
soldiers seemed to fight on the same side with
the English. Perhaps what I saw was a
battalion of Zouaves, about whom I knew
nothing.

At other times I was led in my dreams
before a fortress, where I saw soldiers working
in trenches, cannons, and other
evidences of active warfare, and yet I knew
nothing about Sebastopol. The first I heard
of the siege was in the middle of the present
year.

With persons dear to me I was always in a
certain connection, and I knew almost always
when a letter was coming, even if I had no
reason to expect one. If the letter on its way
were written in a hurry, I seldom knew
anything about it; but, if the thoughts of the writer
were intensely fixed upon me, as was made
apparent by the letter, I knew of it always.
That I almost every night sat at dinner
and ate and drank heartily, was only a
token that my body cried always for food.
This dream-dinner, alas! did not satisfy; the
dishes I ate had not even any taste.

But, enough of my dreams, which I tell
only to show what the working of the mind
in the starved body may be like.

My nerves were so much excited, that
every uncommon noise or cry in the house
caused my heart to beat more quickly; and
sometimes the internal pain in my head
especially in the temples, which seemed
pierced by a red hot iron, made me fear that
I might lose my reason. One evening, lying
in my bed, I was alarmed by an almost
unearthly roaring, which continued for some
time, and came nearer and nearer to my cell
It was that of a mad prisoner, who had
pushed aside the overseer opening his door
and ran about the house.

Through the overseers I knew that in this
prison cases of madness occurred very often
and almost always it came to its outbreak in
the night. They told me that it was
something frightful to enter such a cell, and
that they often roused a comrade to go with
them.

Bad, and especially insufficient food is not
proper for solitary prisoners; it predisposes
them to aberrations, especially such of them
as have been used to a more opulent life.
By new regulations, convicts enter the house
of correction for several years, with an addition
of even sixty or seventy days' fasting
and darkness, which must be endured during
the first year.

He who is punished by hunger-diet
(hunger-kost) has only a chopin (not quite
a pint) of the dog soup twice a-day, and
nothing else. The localities for the
imprisonment in darkness (dunkel-arrest) are in
the ground-floor of the small round towers
which are in each corner of the external wall.
The place of confinement differs not very
much from a cell, but there is no bed in it
and no window, only a slit in the wall, which
is darkened, and even when opened it lets in
but little air. The smell in these dens is
therefore very bad, and one of the officers
said to me, that he would rather do
anything than stay for only an hour in one of
them.

And now that I am speaking of punishments,
I will mention the different forms of
punishment adopted in the Bruchsal house.
Little infractions of the rule of the house are
punished by reprimands before the conference
of the house-officers, or by deprivations of
favours and permissions; others by hunger
or dark-arrest, deprivation of the bed, the
putting on of chains, and applying of the
"strafstuhl" (chair of punishment). This
instrument is a wooden arm-chair. The
delinquent sitting upon it is attached to it by
straps fixed to his neck, breast, belly, arms
and legs. By the straining of these thongs
at so many parts of the body, the circulation
of the blood is very soon checked, and the
result is a most painful sensation, which
increases every moment. Sometimes,
prisoners have been for six hours in this situation,
until blood came from their mouth, nose,
and ears. I have heard such poor sufferers
roar in a manner that made people who
passed on the road stand still and listen,
and at which even the sentries could not
suppress their horror. Corporal punishment,
nevertheless, is abolished in Baden, and the
torture also.

For the common prisoners, work is a relief;
without it most of them would become mad.
They are interested in their work in more
than one respect. They have done, when free,
the same or about the same, and their work
is not humiliating to them; they have an
opportunity of learning in the house several
new trades, which they could not afford when
free; and they understand very well that in
this manner their capital for life is augmented.
Have they done their day's work, one-third of a
penny is paid daily to each; and if a prisoner
be diligent and skilful, he can earn more, up
to twopence. This is not much; but after
having finished an imprisonment of perhaps
three or four years, the convict receives a
little stock of money, which will help him
greatly.