there is a Jinnistan and an Ardistan, an ethical highland and an ethical lowland, and that the main movement, we all have to participate in, is not downwards, but upwards, up, up towards liberation from sin, rising towards the nobler state of the human soul. This realization has been the greatest blessing for me; it has even freed me as well. I have heard those voices, I talked about earlier, also in the cell, screaming inside of me. I have fought them, and I have always silenced them. They returned, though; they rose their voices again, but with longer and longer intervals, until I could finally assume, that they had become completely mute once and for all. Furthermore, I had to manage the prisoner's library, and the official's library was also made available to me. The works collected in the latter were not at all just concerned with the criminal law and the penal system, but rather all fields of science were represented. I have not just read these delightful books, which were so rich in contents, but rather I have studied them and gained very much from them. And there were not just the volumes of the institution's libraries, which were made available to me, but I was also happily granted the opportunity to access books from outside. I felt the irresistible desire, to use the quiet and undisturbed situation in my cell as much as possible to progress mentally, and the officials enjoyed in assisting me in this in every manner which did not contradict the institution's regulations. Thus, the time of my punishment transformed for me into a time of studying, in which I found greater opportunities for being focused and greater possibilities for in-depth studies than any university student would ever find in freedom. I will say more about this great, inestimable benefit, which the imprisonment afforded me, later on. Even today, I am still in particularly grateful for the fact that I was not prohibited to obtain books on foreign grammar and to lay, by this, the actual foundation of my later traveller's tales, which are, as is well known, not based on any actual travels at all, but were meant to form an entirely different, up to this point untreated, genre. But for now, it is not my intention, to elaborate on these studies of mine, but rather I have to concentrate here solely and in particular on the fact that the management of the prisoner's library, which I had been entrusted with, gave me the opportunity to make most important observations and experiences, under the influence of which my work as an author has taken on the shape in which it appears now.