He had been arrested with scores and scores of other people in that
affair of the lithographed temperance tracts. Unluckily, having got hold
of a great many suspected persons, the police thought they could extract
from some of them other information relating to the revolutionist
propaganda.
"They beat him so cruelly in the course of investigation," went on the
_dame de compagnie_, "that they injured him internally. When they had
done with him he was doomed. He could do nothing for himself. I beheld
him lying on a wooden bedstead without any bedding, with his head on a
bundle of dirty rags, lent to him out of charity by an old rag-picker,
who happened to live in the basement of the house. There he was,
uncovered, burning with fever, and there was not even a jug in the
room for the water to quench his thirst with. There was nothing
whatever--just that bedstead and the bare floor."
"Was there no one in all that great town amongst the liberals and
revolutionaries, to extend a helping hand to a brother?" asked Miss
Haldin indignantly.
"Yes. But you do not know the most terrible part of that man's misery.
Listen. It seems that they ill-used him so atrociously that, at last,
his firmness gave way, and he did let out some information. Poor soul,
the flesh is weak, you know.
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