The next thing I remember was that I found myself lying on the floor of a great room full of people with every kind of disease and deformity, some pale with sickness, some with fresh wounds, the lame, and the maimed, and the miserable.  They lay round me in every attitude of pain, many with sores, some bleeding, with broken limbs, but all struggling, some on hands and knees, dragging themselves up from the ground to stare at me.  They roused in my mind a loathing and sense of disgust which it is impossible to express.  I could scarcely tolerate the thought that I—­I! should be forced to remain a moment in this lazar-house.  The feeling with which I had regarded the miserable creature who shared the corner of the wall with me, and who had cursed me for being sorry for him, had altogether gone out of my mind.  I called out, to whom I know not, adjuring some one to open the door and set me free; but my cry was answered only by a shout from my companions in trouble.  ’Who do you think will let you out?’ ‘Who is going to help you more than the rest?’ My whole body was racked with pain; I could not move from the floor, on which I lay.  I had to put up with the stares of the curious, and the mockeries and remarks on me of whoever chose to criticise.  Among them was the lame man whom I had seen thrust in by the two officers who had taken me from the gate.  He was the first to jibe.  ’But for him they would never have seen me,’ he said.  ’I should have been well by this time in the fresh air.’  ‘It is his turn now,’ said another.  I turned my head as well as I could and spoke to them all.

‘I am a stranger here,’ I cried.  ’They have made my brain burn with their experiments.  Will nobody help me?  It is no fault of mine, it is their fault.  If I am to be left here uncared for, I shall die.’

At this a sort of dreadful chuckle ran round the place.  ’If that is what you are afraid of, you will not die,’ somebody said, touching me on my head in a way which gave me intolerable pain.  ‘Don’t touch me,’ I cried.  ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ said the other, and pushed me again upon the throbbing brain.  So far as my sensations went, there were no coverings at all, neither skull nor skin upon the intolerable throbbing of my head, which had been exposed to the curiosity of the crowd, and every touch was agony; but my cry brought no guardian, nor any defence or soothing.  I dragged myself into a corner after a time, from which some other wretch had been rolled out in the course of a quarrel; and as I found that silence was the only policy, I kept silent, with rage consuming my heart.