THE JAIL
the "landlord", the "Trampl", he said, took a full hour to stir a limb; the gentlemen would see what the cell would look like; he had kept everything clean and tidy, and he was not going to have any "Katzelmacher" think that he could meddle with everything here and give orders to everybody, even if he were a doctor; besides, who could tell what sort of a doctor he was; today every other person gave himself the title of doctor. He, Karl, would show this doctor that three times three was not ten.
He went to the censorists and explained the injustice which had been committed against him. Messrs. Fels, Goldenstein and Fröhlich listened to him with interest; in that drab world a man was grateful for any incident which distracted him even only a little from the situation in which his own ego was involved. And then,—Karl had become their personal servant. He waited on them at table, in the evening he handed them the bottles, poured out the wine; nobody’s "Karl" sounded so commandingly imperious as theirs when they called him,—so they listened and nodded their heads. And Karl held forth: If anything in the room had been lost, he said, it was not his fault; he did without his exercise and kept watch to prevent any strange person from entering the room; of course, now and then he had to slip off, and, said he, if the gentlemen had boxes, they should lock them,—he had closed boxes which had been left open quite a hundred times; the boxes were always left so that the inside of them could be seen, and after all, he said, we were in jail, there was nothing but thieves and robbers right and left,—Karl spoke with emotion, I was expecting him to burst into tears.
Mr. Fels came to me and remarked that this man was being treated unfairly. On that he would stake his life. Thereupon he went to Dr. Povich-Rosetti, who with a dark look had watched
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