THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
was not firm like mine—and out of this speech the public prosecutor makes an incitement to revolt! Do not think, gentlemen, that I wish to appeal to your emotions and to awaken your pity. Yes, I know it, and the ‘acts of grace’ of the year 1849 have taught me that your verdict of guilty means a sentence of death; but in spite of this, I do not want your compassion; not for my fellow-defendants, for to them you owe not pity, but satisfaction for the long and undeserved imprisonment; not for me, for however inestimable your sympathy as citizens and men may be to me, your compassion for me would have no value. The sufferings I have to bear are so terrible that your verdict can have no added terrors for me. Beyond the measure of the punishment at first imposed upon me, the authorities have increased mine by the horrible solitude of the isolated cell, the desolate stillness, in which no trumpet call of the struggling outside world will penetrate, and no loving look of faithful friends. They have condemned a German poet and teacher who in more than one breast has lighted the flame of knowledge and beauty, they have condemned a heart full of sympathy slowly to die in soulless mechanical labor, in denial of all mental atmosphere. The murderer, the lowest, most hideous criminal, is permitted as soon as the word of grace and pardon has descended upon him to breathe the air of his Rhenish home, to drink the water of his beloved river. The fourteen days I have been here have taught me how much consolation there is in the air and light of the homeland. But I am kept in the far-away gloomy north, and not even behind the iron bars of my prison I am allowed to see the tears of my wife, to look into the bright eyes of my children. I do not ask for your commiseration, for however bloody this law may be you cannot make my lot more terrible than it is. The man whom the public prosecutor has in-
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