A MARTYR'S CROWN 87
increasingly psychopathic, he became convinced that there was
a plan in the making to murder him. The doctor who gave him a
powder in response to his plea for help was suspected of trying
to feed him arsenic. When the jailer stripped him of his shirt, the
prisoner concluded that it would be used to strangle him, and the
incident reported as a suicide. He counted his pulse dozens of times
a day and developed rapidly into a hypochondriac. He pushed a
table in front of the cell door at night for protection, and his tor
tured mind fluctuated sharply between the deepest depression and
the most ecstatic expectations.
Occasionally, the prisoner was given a little tailoring, ironing,
and copying to do to break the unbearable monotony of his con
finement. Sometimes he got a letter from a friend, who guardedly
suggested that he was not forgotten and enclosed a few francs to
buy extra food or wine. Siegfried, a manufacturer of Zofingen
who was interested in his theories, sent him a shirt. Several times
the prisoner conversed with the pastor assigned to the jail; he
attended church services, wearing a red cap made out of a hand
kerchief, and heard the minister discourse on those who languish
in jail for truth's sake. A letter, allegedly from his mother, was
rejected as a forgery. Weitling frequently complained of chest
pains, and sometimes became hysterical. His mind played with
wild schemes for a jail delivery by his friends; he began to look for
rocket signals and was alternately buoyed up by the hope of free
dom and depressed by the thought that relief would come too late,
or that he himself might prove inadequate to exercise the leader
ship which his martyrdom had thrust upon him. When Fröbel
wrote to inquire when he would be released and added that "50
francs are here for you," Weitling immediately concluded this
meant that fifty men were waiting outside to rescue him.
More and more, the tortured, introspective prisoner assumed
the role of a Messiah. "A magic fire" burned in his breast: he would
revive Christianity for the regeneration of mankind. As the com
munist Messiah, had he not carried "his cross" to Zurich, the area
of greatest danger, as Jesus had ridden into Jerusalem to make his
barré
(Barré)
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