“A clergyman’s task,” says Herr Fleischmann, “is far more difficult in a prison for women than in one for men. In the latter he has to deal with coarseness, brutality and moral degradation, but in the former he meets with many despicable traits: unlimited cunning, spitefulness, love of revenge, deceit and artifice. The man often reveals himself as he is, while the woman, on the contrary, having lost caste, desires to conceal her abject condition and, with rare exceptions, assumes some part foreign to her real nature which she plays cleverly throughout. I was often obliged in spite of myself to compare the man’s gaol to a menagerie, the woman’s to a theatre or stage. “I was twenty-six years of age when I started on my official career of activity in K. On making my first rounds through the cells on the female side, I found one woman sitting with her head on the table weeping bitterly. She gave no sign that she had noticed my entrance, but when I wished her ‘Good morning,’ she slowly lifted her head and transfixed me with an uncomprehending gaze from soft, tear-dimmed brown eyes. She was apparently about fifty years of age and retained traces of great beauty. “‘I am your new pastor’ I said. What is your name?’ Then she passed her hand across her forehead as if to dispel an evil dream and, rising from her seat with a great show of good feeling, begged me to excuse her seeming rudeness, but in truth she had been absorbed in the contemplation of her past life. She claimed to be unfeignedly grateful for my visit and as she spoke she seized my hand and would have kissed it had I not drawn it away. I asked her name. ‘Ursula Pfeiffer, reverend sir,’ she replied. ‘Very well,’ I said, ‘I will look into your record and the next time I come we will discuss your past.’ But she continued, ‘Let me confess at once; I am the greatest sinner in the whole prison, but thank heaven, I have at last found peace within these walls.’ “On the prison registers this woman’s record ran thus: ‘Anna Ursula Pfeiffer, born at Zirndorf, near Nürnberg, in 1813, sentenced for repeated thefts to four years’ penal servitude. Was, from 1838 to 1863, punished forty-one times for leading a vicious life, vagrancy and theft.’ During my next few visits, her behaviour was characterised by reserve, which led me to think she had realised that she must not lay on her colours too thick. After the lapse of some weeks, she told me her history simply, without flourishes, and I recognised from her manner of relating that I had before me a woman of uncommon mental gifts.