e
no doubt that it is quite right one should be. It helps one, or should
help one, to realise both, and not to be too conceited about either. And
if I then am not ashamed of my punishment, as I hope not to be, I shall
be able to think, and walk, and live with freedom.

Many men on their release carry their prison about with them into the
air, and hide it as a secret disgrace in their hearts, and at length,
like poor poisoned things, creep into some hole and die. It is wretched
that they should have to do so, and it is wrong, terribly wrong, of
society that it should force them to do so. Society takes upon itself
the right to inflict appalling punishment on the individual, but it also
has the supreme vice of shallowness, and fails to realise what it has
done. When the man's punishment is over, it leaves him to himself; that
is to say, it abandons him at the very moment when its highest duty
towards him begins. It is really ashamed of its own actions, and shuns
those whom it has punished, as people shun a creditor whose debt they
cannot pay, or one on whom they have inflicted an irreparable, an
irremediable wrong. I can claim on my side that if I realise what I have
suffered, society should realise what it has inflicted on me; and that
there should be no bitterness or hate on either side.

Of course I know that from one point of view things will be made
different for me than for others; must indeed, by the very nature of the
case, be made so. The poor thieves and outcasts who are imprisoned here
with me are in many respects more fortunate than I am. The little way in
grey city or green field that saw their sin is small; to find those who
know nothing of what they have done they need go no further than a bird
might fly between the twilight and the dawn; but for me the world is
shrivelled to a handsbreadth, and everywhere I turn my name is written on
the rocks in lead. For I have come, not from obscurity into the
momentary notoriety of crime, but from a sort of eternity of fame to a
sort of eternity of infamy, and sometimes seem to myself to have shown,
if indeed it required showing, that between the famous and the infamous
there is but one step, if as much as one.

Still, in the very fact that people will recognise me wherever I go, and
know all about my life, as far as its follies go, I can discern something
good for me. It will force on me the necessity of again asserting myself
as an artist, and as soon as