I remember I even beat my head against the wall, and for hours I lay unconscious on the stone floor of my cell; and for some time, when I had grown desperate, I refused food, until the persistent demands of my organism defeated my obstinacy.
I cursed my judges and threatened them with merciless vengeance.

At last I commenced to regard all human life, the whole world, even Heaven, as an enormous injustice, a derision and a mockery.

Forgetting that in my position I could hardly be unprejudiced, I came with the self-confidence of youth, with the sickly pain of a prisoner, gradually to the complete negation of life and its great meaning.
Those were indeed terrible days and nights, when, crushed by the walls, getting no answer to any of my questions, I paced my cell endlessly and hurled one after another into the dark abyss all the great valuables which life has bestowed upon us: friendship, love, reason and justice.
In some justification to myself I may mention the fact that during the first and most painful years of my imprisonment a series of events happened which reflected themselves rather painfully upon my psychic nature.

Thus I learned with the profoundest indignation that the girl, whose name I shall not mention and who was to become my wife, married another man.

She was one of the few who believed in my innocence; at the last parting she swore to me to remain faithful to me unto death, and rather to die than betray her love for me--and within one year after that she married a man I knew, who possessed certain good qualities, but who was not at all a sensible man.