Prisoners who had suffered the punishment of the “sticks” were brought in about that time also, towards evening that is; their arrival always made rather a sensation as I have mentioned, however, already; but they did not come every day, and on the days when there were none of them, we felt dreary; all the patients seemed fearfully bored with one another and they even began to quarrel. We were glad to see even the lunatics, who were brought in to be kept under observation. The trick of pretending to be mad to escape corporal punishment was frequently adopted by convicts. Some were quickly detected, or rather they changed their tactics, and the convict who had been playing antics for two or three days would suddenly, apropos of nothing, behave sensibly, calm down and begin gloomily asking to be discharged. Neither the convicts nor the doctors reproached such a man, or tried to put him to shame by reminding him of the farce he had been playing. They discharged him without a word and let him go. Two or three days later he was brought back after punishment. Such cases were, however, rare on the whole.