The Gadfly was once more taken back to his cell;
and there lay down upon the pallet, in the mood
of black and hopeless depression which always succeeded
to his boisterous fits. He lay till evening
without moving, without even thinking; he had
passed, after the vehement emotion of the morning,
into a strange, half-apathetic state, in which
his own misery was hardly more to him than a dull
and mechanical weight, pressing on some wooden
thing that had forgotten to be a soul. In truth,
it was of little consequence how all ended; the one
thing that mattered to any sentient being was to
be spared unbearable pain, and whether the relief
came from altered conditions or from the deadening
of the power to feel, was a question of no moment.
Perhaps he would succeed in escaping;
perhaps they would kill him; in any case he
should never see the Padre again, and it was all
vanity and vexation of spirit.
One of the warders brought in supper, and the
Gadfly looked up with heavy-eyed indifference.
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