Chapter 2

The surprising way in which Van Spreckdal had appeared to me threw me
into deep wonderment. "Yesterday," I said to myself, as I contemplated
the pile of ducats glittering in the sun, "yesterday I formed the wicked
intention of cutting my throat, all for the want of a few miserable
florins, and now today Fortune has showered them from the clouds. Indeed
it was fortunate that I did not open my razor; and, if the same
temptation ever comes to me again, I will take care to wait until the
morrow."

After making these judicious reflections, I sat down to finish the
sketch; four strokes of the pencil and it would be finished. But here an
incomprehensible difficulty awaited me. It was impossible for me to take
those four sweeps of the pencil; I had lost the thread of my
inspiration, and the mysterious personage no longer stood out in my
brain. I tried in vain to evoke him, to sketch him, and to recover him;
he no more accorded with the surroundings than with a figure by Raphael
in a Teniers inn-kitchen. I broke out into a profuse perspiration.

At this moment, Rap opened the door without knocking, according to his
praiseworthy custom. His eyes fell upon my pile of ducats and in a
shrill voice he cried:

"Eh! eh! so I catch you. Will you still persist in telling me, Mr.
Painter, that you have no money?"

And his hooked fingers advanced with that nervous trembling that the
sight of gold always produces in a miser.

For a few seconds I was stupefied.

The memory of all the indignities that this individual had inflicted
upon me, his covetous look, and his impudent smile exasperated me. With
a single bound, I caught hold of him, and pushed him out of the room,
slamming the door in his face.

This was done with the crack and rapidity of a spring snuff-box.

But from outside the old usurer screamed like an eagle:

"My money, you thief, my money!"

The lodgers came out of their rooms, asking:

"What is the matter? What has happened?"

I opened the door suddenly and quickly gave Mister Rap a kick in the
spine that sent him rolling down more than twenty steps.

"That's what's the matter!" I cried, quite beside myself. Then I shut
the door and bolted it, while bursts of laughter from the neighbours
greeted Mister Rap in the passage.

I was satisfied with myself; I rubbed my hands together. This adventure
had put new life into me; I resumed my work, and was about to finish the
sketch when I heard an unusual noise.

Butts of muskets were grounded on the pavement. I looked out of my
window and saw three soldiers in full uniform with grounded arms in
front of my door.

I said to myself in my terror: "Can it be that that scoundrel of a Rap
has had any bones broken?"

And here is the strange peculiarity of the human mind: I, who the night
before had wanted to cut my own throat, shook from head to foot,
thinking that I might well be hanged if Rap were dead.

The stairway was filled with confused noises. It was an ascending flood
of heavy footsteps, clanking arms, and short syllables.

Suddenly somebody tried to open my door. It was shut.

Then there was a general clamour.

"In the name of the law--open!"

I arose, trembling and weak in the knees.

"Open!" the same voice repeated.

I thought to escape over the roofs; but I had hardly put my head out of
the little snuff-box window, when I drew back, seized with vertigo. I
saw in a flash all the windows below with their shining panes, their
flower-pots, their bird-cages, and their gratings. Lower, the balcony;
still lower, the street-lamp; still lower again, the sign of the "Red
Cask" framed in iron-work; and, finally, three glittering bayonets, only
awaiting my fall to run me through the body from the sole of my foot to
the crown of my head. On the roof of the opposite house a tortoise-shell
cat was crouching behind a chimney, watching a band of sparrows fighting
and scolding in the gutter.

One cannot imagine to what clearness, intensity, and rapidity the human
eye acquires when stimulated by fear.

At the third summons I heard:

"Open, or we shall force it!"

Seeing that flight was impossible, I staggered to the door and drew the
bolt.

Two hands immediately fell upon my collar. A dumpy, little man, smelling
of wine, said:

"I arrest you!"

He wore a bottle-green redingote, buttoned to the chin, and a stovepipe
hat. He had large brown whiskers, rings on every finger, and was named
Passauf.

He was the chief of police.

Five bull-dogs with flat caps, noses like pistols, and lower jaws
turning upward, observed me from outside.

"What do you want?" I asked Passauf.

"Come downstairs," he cried roughly, as he gave a sign to one of his men
to seize me.

This man took hold of me, more dead than alive, while several other men
turned my room upside down.

I went downstairs supported by the arms like a person in the last stages
of consumption--with hair dishevelled and stumbling at every step.

They thrust me into a cab between two strong fellows, who charitably let
me see the ends of their clubs, held to their wrists by a leather
string--and then the carriage started off.

I heard behind us the feet of all the urchins of the town.

"What have I done?" I asked one of my keepers.

He looked at the other with a strange smile and said:

"Hans--he asks what he has done!"

That smile froze my blood.

Soon a deep shadow enveloped the carriage; the horses' hoofs resounded
under an archway. We were entering the Raspelhaus. Of this place one
might say:

"Dans cet antre,
Je vois fort bien comme l'on entre,
Et ne vois point comme on en sort."

All is not rose-coloured in this world; from the claws of Rap I fell
into a dungeon, from which very few poor devils have a chance to escape.

Large dark courtyards and rows of windows like a hospital, and furnished
with gratings; not a sprig of verdure, not a festoon of ivy, not even a
weathercock in perspective--such was my new lodging. It was enough to
make one tear his hair out by the roots.

The police officers, accompanied by the jailer, took me temporarily to a
lock-up.

The jailer, if I remember rightly, was named Kasper Schlüssel; with his
grey woollen cap, his pipe between his teeth, and his bunch of keys at
his belt, he reminded me of the Owl-God of the Caribs. He had the same
golden yellow eyes, that see in the dark, a nose like a comma, and a
neck that was sunk between the shoulders.

Schlüssel shut me up as calmly as one locks up his socks in a cupboard,
while thinking of something else. As for me, I stood for more than ten
minutes with my hands behind my back and my head bowed. At the end of
that time I made the following reflection: "When falling, Rap cried out,
'I am assassinated,' but he did not say by whom. I will say it was my
neighbour, the old merchant with the spectacles: he will be hanged in my
place."

This idea comforted my heart, and I drew a long breath. Then I looked
about my prison. It seemed to have been newly whitewashed, and the walls
were bare of designs, except in one corner, where a gallows had been
crudely sketched by my predecessor. The light was admitted through a
bull's-eye about nine or ten feet from the floor; the furniture
consisted of a bundle of straw and a tub.

I sat down upon the straw with my hands around my knees in deep
despondency. It was with great difficulty that I could think clearly;
but suddenly imagining that Rap, before dying, had denounced me, my legs
began to tingle, and I jumped up coughing, as if the hempen cord were
already tightening around my neck.

At the same moment, I heard Schlüssel walking down the corridor; he
opened the lock-up, and told me to follow him. He was still accompanied
by the two officers, so I fell into step resolutely.

We walked down long galleries, lighted at intervals by small windows
from within. Behind a grating I saw the famous Jic-Jack, who was going
to be executed on the morrow. He had on a strait-jacket and sang out in
a raucous voice:

"Je suis le roi de ces montagnes."

Seeing me, he called out:

"Eh! comrade! I'll keep a place for you at my right."

The two police officers and the Owl-God looked at each other and smiled,
while I felt the goose-flesh creep down the whole length of my back.