"I have told it the truth."
"Write that down, clerk of the court," Van Spreckdal ordered.
The quill pen raced afresh.
"And this woman," the judge went on, "this woman being murdered on
the edge of a well... Did you imagine her as well?"
"I must have done."
"You've never seen her before?"
"Never."
Van Spreckdal got to his feet as if indignant, then, sitting down again,
appeared to consult in a low voice with his fellow judge.
Those two dark profiles, silhouetted against the light-filled backdrop
of the window, the three men standing behind me...the silence in the
amphitheatre...all these things made me shudder.
"What have they got against me? What have I done?" I muttered to
myself.
Suddenly Van Spreckdal said to my guards:
"Take the prisoner back to the carriage. We're leaving for the
Metzgerstrasse."
Then he addressed me directly:
"Christian Venius," he cried, "the situation that you find yourself
in is most regrettable...Pull yourself together and consider that if
human justice is unbending...you can still seek the pardon of a
merciful God...You can even merit it by confessing your crime!"
These words stunned me like a blow from a hammer...I recoiled
from them with arms outstretched crying:
"My God! What a nightmare!"
And I fainted.
When I came round the carriage was rolling slowly through the
street and another carriage was in front of us. The two policemen
were still there. One of them, while we were still moving, offered
a pinch of snuff to his colleague. I too automatically stretched out
my fingers to the snuffbox, but he pulled it away from me sharply.
I felt my face go red with shame and I turned my head to one side in
order to hide my emotion.
"If you look outside," said the owner of the snuffbox, "we'll have to
put handcuffs on you."
"I hope the devil strangles you, you scurvy knave!" I thought to
myself inwardly. And as the carriage had just stopped, one of them
got down while the other held me back by the neck. Then, seeing his
comrade ready to catch me, he pushed me out roughly.
These infinite precautions to ensure I did not run away augured
nothing good, but I still had not the foggiest idea of just how serious
the accusation was that was hanging over me when a frightful incident
finally opened my eyes to it and plunged me into despair.
I had just been pushed into a low alleyway with broken and uneven
flagstones. All along the wall there ran a yellowish ooze exhaling a
fetid stench. I walked among shadows with the two men behind me.
Further on the chiaroscuro of an internal courtyard began to become
visible.
As I approached it, I was possessed by an ever-increasing sense of
terror. There was nothing natural about it, just a harrowing feeling
of impending doom, nightmarish, unnatural. I instinctively drew back
from it with each forward step that I took.
"Get along with you!" one of the policemen shouted, putting his hand
on my shoulder. "Walk, damn you!"
Imagine my sense of dread when, at the end of this passage, I saw the
courtyard I had drawn the night before with its walls furnished with
hooks, its heaps of scrap metal, its hencoop and its rabbit hutch....
Not one skylight big or small, high or low, not one cracked pane
of glass, not a single detail in my drawing had been left out!