88 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNIST
last sacrifice? Communism became for him a substitute religion
as Weitling enacted the double role of one persecuted by the
world, torn by doubt about the progress of his own cause, and
at the same time transported into a golden dream world of the
future. "Danger and pain have become a necessity for me," he
wrote. "I have found a new criterion of truth which must not be
lost.... You do not dare to let me, a tailor, address the people
for even a quarter of an hour, lest your power crash into ruin."
One day he was the Messiah, confident of his role as deliverer and
sustained by his faith; the next day he was ready to give up in de
spair, certain that he was losing his mind and utterly crushed by
the unbearable loneliness that overcame him because he believed
that he was completely forgotten by "those outside." It was on
such occasions that time weighed upon his unsettled spirits "like
a hundred-weight."
Obviously, such manifestations of persecution and delusion did
not make it easy for his jailers to deal with the prisoner in any ra
tional way. There is no convincing evidence to prove that the
authorities in Zurich deliberately planned to abuse their prisoner
or to break his mind and body. He probably was treated no differ
ently from scores of other prisoners in a time when penal reform
had made little progress. Weitling received poor prison fare like
all the other prisoners, but he also had his allotment of wine, which
he frequently refused for fear that it contained poison. He had
some visitors, and the number included Dr. Bluntschli, who found
his conversation intelligible and clear, despite his hostility to the
prisoner's false doctrines. Why Bluntschli came at all is not clear,
but Weitling concluded it was because he really was interested in
his theories. Karl Fröbel brought the prisoner a copy of Prou¬
dhon's De la creation de l'ordre dans l'humanite ou principes
d'organisation politique, which had just appeared in Paris.^13 The
Zurich jailers seem to have been as considerate in their dealings
with a troublesome, unco-operative, and overwrought prisoner as
(^13) See Ernst Barnikol, Klassifikation des Universums von Wilhelm Weitling
(Kiel, 1931).