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290 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
ambulance driver. Since all governments distrust idealists, he was
thrown into a dungeon for some months.
Ezra said to him, during one of his visits to St. Elizabeths,
"How fortunate you were to have served your imprisonment while
you were still young!" He was referring to the fact that since the
young have no independence, and are always bound out in one
form of servitude or another until their maturity, it is not such a
great sacrifice for them to be imprisoned; whereas an older person
who has won a sort of independence, feels very cruelly its deprivation.
One of the more interesting aspects of Ezra's daily activities
was his manner of handling individual visitors. If he were bored,
or saw no possibilities in the newcomer (a rare decision indeed for
this incurable optimist!), he would maintain a discreet silence,
letting the conversation drift at random. Bores generally excluded
themselves out of decency, for the small talk that won them a
reputation as scintillating wits at Washington cocktail parties fell
rather flat at St. Elizabeths.
There were always three or four people present, and sometimes
as many as a dozen might drop by during the course of an afternoon.
We sat on ordinary park benches, painted the usual dark
green, which we pulled up close to the aluminum camp chairs
occupied by the Pounds. Their chairs, which were very light,
were folded and carried back to the room each afternoon. Because
of the arthritic condition of his neck vertebrae that he had
suffered ever since the imprisonment at Pisa, Ezra could not sit in
an ordinary chair for very long. He had acquired an aluminum
chair that could be extended, so that he maintained a semi-recumbent
position during most of the afternoon.
Ezra's eagerness to get outside and enjoy a few moments' respite
from Bedlam almost cost him his life in the spring of 1953.
Washington weather is quite treacherous in March, and one afternoon,
when a pale sun had lured him outdoors, he became badly
chilled. He developed serious bronchial trouble, and his son and
daughter were summoned to his bedside. Fortunately, he soon recovered.
This crisis afforded me the opportunity of meeting his daughter,
the Princess Mary de Rachewiltz of Schloss Brunnenberg, Italy,
who has presented Ezra with several lively and intelligent grand-