I.N.R.I - Peter Rosegger

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that enough?" he asked.

      "Thank you, thank you!" said Ferleitner; "only now I want a pen."

      "Oh no, my dear sir, no. We know that sort of thing. Since the notary in Number 43 stabbed himself with a steel pen five years ago, I don't give any more," said the gaoler.

      "But I can't write without a pen," returned Konrad.

      "That's not my business; I can't let you have a pen," the old man assured him.

      "The judge gave me permission to have one," Konrad remonstrated modestly.

      Then the old man exclaimed afresh: "Do you know this judge, he just comes up as far as this," and he placed his hand on a level with his chin. "He crumbles everything up and then we're to spoon it out." Then he muttered indistinctly in his beard; "I say just this, if they let a man hang for a week before they hang him, it's a—a—good God! I can't properly—I can't find any more fine words! If a man puts a knife into himself, no wonder!"

      "I shan't kill myself," said Konrad quietly. "They say I may put my hopes in the king."

      "And you want to write to him? That won't help much, but you can do it if you like; there's time. For once it's a good thing that our officials are so slow. If it's any comfort to you, you may know that they wrong me, too. They won't accept my resignation. Yes, that's how it is with us," concluded the old man.

      Then he went and brought a pot with rusty steel pens. "But don't you spoil them!" For they were the very pens with which death-warrants had been signed—the old man had a collection of such things and hoped to sell it to a rich Englishman. "Does your honour require anything else?" With those mocking words he left the cell and raged and cursed all along the corridor. The prisoners thought he was cursing them.

      The judge, his hands behind his back, walked up and down his large study. What a cursed critical case! If the Chancellor had not been given up by the doctors on the day of the trial, the sentence would have been different. The petition for mercy! Would it have any result except that of prolonging the poor man's torture? Whether in the end it would not have been better——? Everything would have been over then. An old official came out of the adjoining room and laid a bundle of papers on the table.

      "One moment. Has the petition for mercy been sent to His Majesty?"

      "It has, sir."

      "What's your opinion?" asked the judge.

      The counsellor raised his shoulders and let them fall again.

      Konrad cowered down and stared at the table.

      On it lay everything—paper, ink, pens. What should he write? He might describe his sadness, but how did a man begin to do that? He lifted up his face as if searching for something. His glance fell through the window on to the wall, the upper part of which was lighted by the evening sun. The mountain tops glowed like that. Ah, world, beautiful world! Still three weeks. Or double that time. Then—the very beating of his heart hurt him; his temple throbbed as though struck by a hammer. For he always thought of the one thing—and it suddenly flashed into his mind—there were other executioners! His supper was there—a tin can with rice soup and a piece of bread. He swallowed it mechanically to the last crumb. Then came night, and the star was again visible in the scrap of sky between the roof and the chimney. Konrad gazed at it reverently for the few minutes until it vanished. Then the long, dark, miserable night. And this was called living! And it was for such life that you petitioned the king. But if a king grants mercy, then the sun shines. The kindness shown him by the judge had strengthened him a little, but the last of his surging thoughts was always, "Hopeless!"

      The next night Konrad had another visitor—his mother, in her Sunday gown, just as she used to go to communion. And there was some one with her. She went up to her son's bed, and said: "Konrad, I bring you a kind friend."

      When he felt for her hand, she was no longer there, but in the middle of the dim cell stood the Lord Jesus. His white garment hung down to the ground, His long hair lay over His shoulders. His shining face was turned towards Konrad.

      When the poor sinner woke in the morning his heart was full of wonder. The night had brought healing. He jumped blithely out of bed. "My Saviour, I will never more leave you."

      Something of which he had hardly been conscious suddenly became clear to him. He would take refuge in the Saviour. He would sink himself in Jesus, in whom everything was united that had formed and must form his happiness—his mother, his innocent childhood, his joy in God, his repose and hope, his immortal life. Now he knew, he would rely on his Saviour. He would write a book about Jesus. Not a proper literary work; he could not do that, he had no talent for it. But he would represent the Lord as He lived, he would inweave his whole soul with the being of his Saviour so that he might have a friend in the cell. Then perhaps his terrors would vanish. In former days it had pleased him, so to speak, to write away an anxiety from his heart, not in letters to others, but only for himself. Many things which were not clear to him, which he found incomprehensible—with pen in hand he succeeded in making clearer to his inward eye, so that vague pictures almost assumed corporeal shape. He had in that fashion created many comrades and many companions during his wanderings in strange lands when he was afraid. So now in his forlorn and deserted condition he would try to invite the Saviour into the poor sinner's cell. No outward help was to be hoped, he must evoke it all out of himself. He would venture to implore the Lord Jesus until He came, using his childish memories, the remains of his school learning, the fragments of his reading, and, above all, his mother's Bible stories.

      And now the condemned man began to write a book in so far as it was possible to him. At first his dreams and thoughts and figures were disconnected through timidity, and the painful excitement which often made his pulses gallop and his heart stop beating. Then he cowered in the corner, and wept and groaned and struggled in vain with the desire for mortal life. When he succeeded in collecting his thoughts again, and he took up his pen afresh, he gradually regained calm, and each time it lasted longer. And it happened that he often wrote for hours at a stretch, that his cheeks began to glow and his eyes to shine—for he wandered with Jesus in Galilee. Suddenly he would awake from his visions and find himself in his prison cell, and sadness overcame him, but it was no longer a falling into the pit of hell; he was strong enough to save himself on his island of the blessed. And so he wrote and wrote. He did not ask if it was the Saviour of the books. It was his Saviour as he lived in him, the only Saviour who could redeem him. And so there was accomplished in this poor sinner on a small scale what was accomplished among the nations on a large scale; if it was not always the historical Jesus as Saviour, it was the Saviour in whom men believed become historical, since he affected the world's history through the hearts of men. He whom the books present may not be for all men; He who lives in men's hearts is for all. That is the secret of the Saviour's undying power: He is for each man just what that man needs. We read in the Gospels that Jesus appeared at different times and to different men in different forms. That should be a warning to us to let every man have his own Jesus. As long as it is the Jesus of love and trust, it is the right Jesus.

      It often happened that during the prisoner's composition and writing, a wider, softer light from the window spread through the cell, flickered over the wall, the floor, the table, and then rested for a space on the white paper. And so light even entered the lonely room, but unspeakably more light entered the writer's heart.

      The gaoler saw little of the writing. Directly he rattled his keys, it was hidden under the sheet—just as children hide their treasures from intrusive eyes. When five or six weeks had gone by, hundreds of written sheets lay there.

      Konrad placed them in a cover and wrote on it

      I.N.R.I.

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      When darkness covers the world men look gladly towards the east. There light dawns. All lights come from out of the east. And the races of men are said to have

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