All your ideas move round like tired mill-horses, in the
narrowest circle, with an unhappy Ipse Ego for its centre: all the
passing events of the outward world seem unnaturally dwarfed and
distant, as if seen through an inverted telescope: the struggles of
stranger nations move you no more than the battles on an ant-hill; the
only question of civil or religious liberty in which you feel the
faintest interest is the unimportant one involving your own personal
freedom. And throughout you are shamefully conscious that this
indifference is not philosophical, but simply selfish.
So much for the _morale_. Does the _physique_ fare better.
When you enter the gaol, there is probably laid up in your lungs a
certain store of fresh, free air, which takes some time to exhaust
itself; but soon you begin to draw your breath more and more slowly, and
to feel that the atmosphere inhaled no longer refreshes you; no
wonder--it is laden with compressed animal life. Then a dull, hot weight
closes round your brows, as if a heavy, fever-stricken hand was always
clasping them; there it lies--at night, when the drowsiness which is
_not_ sleep overcomes you--in the morning, when you wake, with damp
linen and dank hair: plunge your forehead in ice-cold water; before the
drops have dried there it is burning--burning again.
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