Although I was really there for knowing too much about the "blessed book" already, I read it right through in the first month, and again in the second, besides reading it discursively afterwards.

And still, I am a sincerely impenitent Freethinker! You may knock a man down with the Bible, and make an impression on his skull; but when he picks himself up again, you find you have made no impression on his mind, except that his opinion of _you_ is altered.

I remember the chaplain calling to see me one day as I was just concluding my inspection of what Heine calls the menagerie of the Apocalypse.

He could not help seeing the Bible, for when it lay open there was very little table visible.

"Ah," he said, "I see you have been reading the holy Scripture." "Yes," I replied, "I've read it through this month, and I believe I'm the only man in the place who has done it--including the chaplain." By and by the schoolmaster hunted me out a French Bible, the only one in the prison.