Gudule

by Mary Kyle Dallas

There are prisons in all large towns. There is one, of course, at Alt Breisach, a German town at Baden on the Rhine, twelve miles west of Freiburg. It is an old building, and lately it was found that it needed great repairs. Consequently, a certain portion of the edifice—that in which the most important prisoners were usually confined—was vacated, and masons and carpenters set to work to re-build, enlarge, and improve certain cells, which, in the progress of humanity, were now considered too small, dark, and unhealthy even for a condemned murderer.

The mouldy walls were laid bare to the sunlight, the stone floors pried up, windows cut and ventilation supplied, and, in the course of all these alterations, a discovery was made. A certain stone in the walls of one of these cells had been dislodged at some past time, and behind it lay concealed a package of paper, a little cup that must have contained ink, and some quill pens. These the workman into whose hands they fell carried directly to the superintendent of the prison, fancying that he had perhaps discovered some grave plot. But, on examination, the paper bore the date of fifty years back and was only an autobiography. It ran… Read More