Not he! Cold reason, he boasted, was the basis of his optimism.

Yes, optimism-- His laborious wheezing stopped, then, after a gasp or two, he added: "Don't you think that, if I had not been the optimist I am, I could not have found in fifteen years some means to cut my throat?
And, in the last instance, there were always the walls of my cell to dash my head against." The shortness of breath took all fire, all animation out of his voice; his great, pale cheeks hung like filled pouches, motionless, without a quiver; but in his blue eyes, narrowed as if peering, there was the same look of confident shrewdness, a little crazy in its fixity, they must have had while the indomitable optimist sat thinking at night in his cell.

Before him, Karl Yundt remained standing, one wing of his faded greenish havelock thrown back cavalierly over his shoulder.

Seated in front of the fireplace, Comrade Ossipon, ex-medical student, the principal writer of the F.P.leaflets, stretched out his robust legs, keeping the soles of his boots turned up to the glow in the grate.

A bush of crinkly yellow hair topped his red, freckled face, with a flattened nose and prominent mouth cast in the rough mould of the negro type.