ABSTRACT
A ray of the sinking sun shoots into the bare cell of one of the captives. The sun shines upon the good and the evil. The dark stubborn criminal throws an impatient look at the cold ray. A little bird flies towards the grating. The bird twitters to the wicked as to the just. He only utters his short, “tweet, tweet;” but he perches on the grating, claps his wings, pecks a feather from one of them, puffs himself out, and sets his feather on end on his neck and breast, and the bad, chained man looks at him; a milder expression comes in to the criminal’s hard face; in his breast there swells up a thought-a thought he himself cannot rightly analyse; but the thought has to do with the sunbeam, with the scent of violets which grow luxuriantly in spring at the foot of the wall. Now the horns of the chasseur soldiers sound merry and full. The little bird starts, and flies away; the sunbeam gradually vanishes, and again it is dark in the room, and dark in the heart of the bad man; but still the sun has shone into that heart, and the twittering of the bird has touched it!
