"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 birdcages, 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 can not 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 disheveled 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.