up again as innocent
as though he had been saying his prayers. I refused the offer of a
pull at his cigarette, but not the morsel of white bread which he
drew from behind a picture and shared with me. That bread,
broken and shared between us in that upper room, is to me an
eternal sacrament. It fed my body hunger then; never shall it
cease to feed the hunger of my soul.

Whenever temptation to play the cynic or think meanly of my
fellow-man shall come, my mind will hark back to those two
unpretending fellows and bow in reverence before the selflessness
and immensity of the human soul. Needing bread, they gave it
freely away; needing strength, they poured themselves out
unsparingly; needing encouragement, they became the ministers
thereof. For not to me alone, but to all, they played this role of
servant, priest, and comforter.

As I write these lines I wonder where their spirits are now.
Speeded thence, they may have already made the next world
richer by their coming. I do not know that; but I do know that they
have made my soul infinitely richer by their sojourn here; I do not
know whether they were Catholic or Atheist, but I do know how
truly the Master of all souls could say to these two brave little
Belgians: "When I was an hungered, ye gave me food; when I was
thirsty, ye gave me drink; when I was a stranger, ye took me in;
when I was sick and in prison, ye visited me."

The prison is the real maker of democracy. I saw that clearly when,
at five o'clock, joy came marching into the room. It was an officer
who was its herald with the simple words, "The theater manager is
free." That was a trumpet blast annihilating all rank and caste. The
manager, forgetting his office and his dignity, and embracing with
his right arm a peasant and with his left an artisan, danced round
the room in a delirium of delight. Twenty men were at one time
besieging him to grasp his hand, and tears, not rhetorically, but
actually, were streaming down their faces--Russian, German,
Belgian, and American, high and low, countrymen and citymen,
smocked and frocked. We were fused altogether in the common
emotion of joy and hope. For hope was now rampant. "If one man
can be liberated," we argued, "why not another? Perhaps the
General was thus giving vent to a temporary vein of good humor."
Each man figured that he might be the fortunate one upon whom
this good luck would alight.

At five-thirty there was much murmuring in the corridor, and