Constantin Gane – a writer of Christian dignity

In the beginning of time there was the writer Constantin Gane, author of the incomparable ”Trecute vieți de doamne și domnițe”. He was old and ill. They had put a young student in his cell to take him back to the bed from which he could not get down. The Colonel would come in now and then, and he’d say:

– Colonel, I’d like some medicine to relieve my illness.

– We’ll give it to you if you write something for us.

– I won’t write anything!

– Then we won’t give you any medicine.

They kept him there to blackmail him into writing, although he should have been released with the other old and sick people. One day the student announced on the wall that Mr Gane had died.

(Pr. Ioan Bărdaș – The Calvary of Aiud. From the sufferings of an Orthodox priest, Anastasia Publishing House, Bucharest, 1999, p. 82)