Now I, too, had to stand in the background, and not only in the background; we were fettered and branded as felons; everyone avoided us, everyone seemed to be even afraid of us, alms were always given to us, and I remember that this was positively pleasing to me in a way; there was a special subtlety in this strange pleasure. “So be it,” I thought. The convicts prayed very earnestly and every one of them brought his poor farthing to the church every time to buy a candle, or to put in the collection. “I, too, am a man,” he thought, and felt perhaps as he gave it; “in God’s eyes we are all equal.⁠ ⁠…” We took the sacrament at the early mass. When with the chalice in his hands the priest read the words, “… accept me, O Lord, even as the thief,” almost all of them bowed down to the ground with a clanking of chains, apparently applying the words literally to themselves.