last they are in a huge, low hall, almost dark. The narrow passage in the centre is evil-smelling, littered with boots, rags, and other footgear of those who a little earlier succeeded in gaining admission.
On both sides of the passage there rise in five tiers, bunklike, wooden benches, which are dirty and bare. The air is close, foul, saturated with smoke and soot from the little iron stove, the smell of petrol from the diminutive, smoking lamp close to the ceiling, with the exhalation of dirty, worn-out, and diseased human bodies.
On the benches, like so many cast-off bundles of rags or broken furniture, were lying human beings, young and old, men and women, the vicious and the virtuous, the profligate and the innocent. … Close to a boyish youth, still clinging to life, still able to dream dreams, without complaint and appeals for help, was dying an old tramp, who had stumbled through the last lap of a life which was as dark as this night asylum; into the ears of a young peasant girl, no more than a child, a powerful, drunken, red-faced, and red-haired brute was whispering vile suggestions; at the side of a woman, weeping silently with a sick baby in her arms, was sitting and chanting merry songs a curious character: a monk, to judge by his habit, a regular prison inmate according to his words and actions. … And at night … at night … abominable things took place, which rotted bodies and souls, filled brains with despair, and hearts with hatred.
