Towards the end of my third half-year the urgency of my difficulties increased.  I owed the keeper of an eating-house (for meals) thirty thalers, if I am not mistaken.  As this man had caused me to be summoned for payment several times before the Senate of the University, and I had never been able to pay, and as he had even addressed my father, only to receive from him a sharp refusal to entertain the matter, I was threatened with imprisonment in the case of longer default of payment.  And I actually had to submit to this punishment.  My step-mother inflamed the displeasure of my father, and rejoiced at his inflexibility.  My trustee, who still had the disposal of some property of mine, could have helped me, but did not, because the letter of the law was against any interference from his side.  Each one hoped by the continuance of my sorry plight to break the stubbornness of the other.  I served as scapegoat to the caprices of the obstinate couple, and languished as such nine weeks long in the university prison at Jena.[23] At last my father consented to advance me money on my formally abandoning, before the university board, all claim on his property in the shape of inheritance; and so, in the end, I got free.

In spite of the gloom into which my position as a prisoner plunged me, the time of my arrest was not utterly barren.  My late endeavours towards scientific knowledge had made me more and more conscious of my need of a solid foundation in my knowledge of Latin; therefore I now tried to supply deficiencies to the extent of my ability, and with the help of a friend.  It was extremely hard to me, this working my way through the dead and fragmentary teaching of an elementary grammar.  It always seemed to me as if the mere outer acquisition of a language could but little help forward my true inner desire for knowledge, which was deeply in earnest, and was the result of my own free choice.  But wherever the knowledge of language linked itself to definite external impressions, and I was able to perceive its connection with facts, as, for instance, in the scientific nomenclature of botany, I could quickly make myself master of it.  This peculiarity of mind passed by me unnoticed at the time; I knew and understood too little, nay, indeed, almost nothing of myself as yet, even as regards the actions of my every-day life.

A second occupation of this prison period was the preparation of an exercise (or academical thesis) in geometry, which I undertook that I might the sooner obtain an independent position in some profession.

Thirdly, I studied Winckelmann’s “Letters on Art.”  Through them some germs of higher artistic feeling may have been awakened within me; for I examined the engravings which the work contains with intense delight.  I could quite perceive the glow of pleasure that they aroused, but at the time I took little account of this influence, and indeed the feeling for art altogether was late in developing