one chair,
an empty wooden box turned up on end, with a tin basin on it--that was
his washstand--a little shelf fixed on the wall, and on the little shelf
a tin mug, a tin plate, a pot of salt, a small loaf of black bread, and
a Bible. The walls were painted brown, and the window, fitted with
ground glass, was high up near the ceiling; it was barred on the
outside, and could only be opened a few inches at the top. On the door a
neat printed card was fastened, giving, besides information for the
guidance of the habitually dirty as to the cleansing properties of
water, the quantity of oakum the occupant of the cell would be expected
to pick every day. The cell was used sometimes for condemned criminals,
hence the mention of the oakum; but the card caught Axel's eye whenever
he reached that end of the room in his pacings up and down, and without
knowing it he learnt its rules by heart.

At first he had been completely dazed, absolutely unable to understand
the meaning and extent of the misfortune that had overtaken him; but
there was a grim, uncompromising reality about the prison, about the
heavy doors he passed through, each one barred and locked behind him,
each one cutting him off more utterly from the common free life outside,
about the look of the miserable beings he met being taken to or from
their work by armed warders, about the warders themselves with their
great keys, polished by frequent use--there was about these things an
inexorable reality that shook him out of the blind apathy into which he
had fallen after his arrest. Some extraordinary mistake had been made;
and, knowing that he had done nothing, when first he began to think
connectedly he was certain that it could only be a matter of hours
before he was released. But the horror of his position was there.
Released or not released, who would make good to him what he was
suffering and what he would have lost? He had been searched on his
arrival--his money, watch, and a ring he wore of his mother's taken from
him. The young official who arrested him--he was the Junior Public
Prosecutor--presided at these operations with immense zeal. Being young
and obscure, he thirsted to make a name for himself, and opportunities
were few in that little town. To be put in charge, therefore, of this
sensational case, was to behold opening out before him the rosiest
prospects for the future. His name, which was Meyer, would flare up in
flames of glory from the ashes of Axel'