He felt this while he was being undressed and searched, and while he was being led to prison, and when the iron doors were locked upon him. But when one day passed, and another, and a third, a week, two weeks, three weeks, in the dirty, damp, vermin-infested cell, in loneliness and enforced idleness, varied only by cheerless or bad news, which his comrades and fellow-prisoners communicated by tapping on the walls of their cells; and by occasional examinations by cold, hostile men who tried to torment him into incriminating his comrades, his moral⁠—and with it his physical⁠—strength gradually began to give way. He became despondent and, as he said to himself, longed for this insufferable position to end one way or another. His despondency was aggravated by doubts of his own endurance. In the second month of his incarceration he detected himself thinking of revealing the whole truth: anything to be free! He was appalled at this weakness, but could no longer find in himself his former strength; and, hating and despising himself, became more despondent than ever.