a hideous continuous noise
and scuffle which was agony to my brain. Every one pushed before the
other; there was an endless rising and falling as in the changes of a
feverish dream, each man as he got strength to struggle forwards himself,
thrusting back his neighbors, and those who were nearest to the door
beating upon it without cease, like the beating of a drum without cadence
or measure, sometimes a dozen passionate hands together, making a
horrible din and riot. As I lay unable to join in that struggle, and
moved by rage unspeakable towards all who could, I reflected strangely
that I had never heard when outside this horrible continual appeal of the
suffering. In the streets of the city, as I now reflected, quiet reigned.
I had even made comparisons on my first entrance, in the moment of
pleasant anticipation which came over me, of the happy stillness here
with the horror and tumult of that place of unrule which I had left.

When my thoughts reached this point I was answered by the voice of some
one on a level with myself, lying helpless like me on the floor of the
lazar-house. 'They have taken their precautions,' he said; 'if they will
not endure the sight of suffering, how should they hear the sound of it?
Every cry is silenced there.'

'I wish they could be silenced within too,' I cried savagely; 'I would
make them dumb had I the power.'

'The spirit of the place is in you,' said the other voice.

'And not in you?' I said, raising my head, though every movement was
agony; but this pretence of superiority was more than I could bear.

The other made no answer for a moment; then he said faintly, 'If it is
so, it is but for greater misery.'

And then his voice died away, and the hubbub of beating and crying and
cursing and groaning filled all the echoes. They cried, but no one
listened to them. They thundered on the door, but in vain. They
aggravated all their pangs in that mad struggle to get free. After a
while my companion, whoever he was, spoke again.

'They would rather,' he said, 'lie on the roadside to be kicked and
trodden on, as we have seen; though to see that made you miserable.'

'Made me miserable! You mock me,' I said. 'Why should a man be miserable
save for suffering of his own?'

'You thought otherwise once,' my neighbor said.

And then I remembered the wretch in the corner of the wall in the
other town, who had cursed me for pitying him. I cursed myself now for
that folly. Pity him! was h