While she was
working in the house, her thoughts were with Abonyi in his prison; she
saw him in the degrading convict-dress, with chains on his feet, as she
had so often found her father when she visited him in jail; there he
sat in a little dusky cell on a projecting part of the wall, eating
from a wooden bowl filled with a thin broth, repulsive in appearance
and smell and biting pieces of earth-colored bread as hard as a brick;
the cell was impregnated with horrible odours; the bare stone flags of
the floor were icy cold; a ragged, dirty sack of straw, and a thin,
tattered coverlet swarming with vermin covered the bench in the corner;
in the morning the prisoner, like the others, was obliged to clean his
cell and work at things whose contact sickened him; at noon he walked
up and down the prisonyard, amid thieves and robbers, who jeered at and
insulted the great gentleman; the jailers assailed him with rough
words, perhaps even blows--yes, perhaps, her father was right, possibly
Abonyi might have been better off lying in the grave than enduring the
disgrace and hardships of the prison.
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