Read "Papillon" by Henri Charrière online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
We were to sail to the islands the next day. For all my long struggle, in a few hours I'd be interned for life, starting with two years in solitary on the Île Saint-Joseph. I only hoped I could give the lie to its nickname, la mangeuse d'hommes.
I had lost the game, but I didn't feel like a loser. I could even be thankful that I'd have only two years in this prison within a prison. As I had promised myself, I would not give in to the mental aberrations that complete isolation induced. I had a good remedy: from the very start I would think of myself as free, healthy in mind and body-an ordinary convict on the islands. And I'd be only thirty when I got out.