I remember the first time I was given alms in money. It was soon after my arrival in prison. I was coming back from the morning’s work alone, with a convoy soldier. I crossed paths with a mother and her daughter, a girl of about ten, pretty as a little angel. I had already seen them once. The mother was a soldier’s wife, a widow. Her husband, a young soldier, had been on trial and had died in the prisoners’ ward of the hospital while I, too, was lying sick there. His wife and daughter came to take leave of him; they both wept terribly. When she saw me, the girl blushed and whispered something
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