eating
against the walls of their glass prison.

I was greatly mistaken, it seems, also in the significance of the
greetings which fell to my lot when I left the prison. Of course I was
convinced that in me they greeted the representative of our prison, a
leader hardened by experience, a master, who came to them only for the
purpose of revealing to them the great mystery of purpose. And when they
congratulated me upon the freedom granted to me I responded with thanks,
not suspecting what an idiotic meaning they placed on the word. May I be
forgiven this coarse expression, but I am powerless now to restrain my
aversion for their stupid life, for their thoughts, for their feelings.

Foolish hypocrites, fearing to tell the truth even when it adorns them!
My hardened truthfulness was cruelly taxed in the midst of these false
and trivial people. Not a single person believed that I was never so
happy as in prison. Why, then, are they so surprised at me, and why do
they print my portraits? Are there so few idiots that are unhappy in
prison? And the most remarkable thing, which only my indulgent reader
will be able to appreciate, is this: Often distrusting me completely,
they nevertheless sincerely go into raptures over me, bowing before me,
clasping my hands and mumbling at every step, "Master! Master!"

If they only profited by their constant lying--but, no; they are
perfectly disinterested, and they lie as though by some one's higher
order; they lie in the fanatical conviction that falsehood is in no way
different from the truth. Wretched actors, even incapable of a decent
makeup, they writhe from morning till night on the boards of the stage,
and, dying the most real death, suffering the most real sufferings, they
bring into their deathly convulsions the cheap art of the harlequin.
Even their crooks are not real; they only play the roles of crooks,
while remaining honest people; and the role of honest people is played
by rogues, and played poorly, and the public sees it, but in the name
of the same fatal falsehood it gives them wreaths and bouquets. And if
there is really a talented actor who can wipe away the boundary between
truth and deception, so that even they begin to believe, they go into
raptures, call him great, start a subscription for a monument, but do
not give any money. Desperate cowards, they fear themselves most of
all, and admiring delightedly the reflection of their spuriously
made-up faces in the mirror