Pagina 607 di 896

There were in the cell, a chair, a table, and a straw mattress.

As the gaoler made a general inspection of these objects, and of

the four walls, before going out, a wandering fancy wandered

through the mind of the prisoner leaning against the wall

opposite to him, that this gaoler was so unwholesomely bloated,

both in face and person, as to look like a man who had been

drowned and filled with water. When the gaoler was gone, he

thought in the same wandering way, "Now am I left, as if I were

dead." Stopping then, to look down at the mattress, he turned

from it with a sick feeling, and thought, "And here in these

crawling creatures is the first condition of the body after

death."