...
When I awoke it was dark all around me. I started up, bewildered and
freezing. I seized my parcel and commenced to walk. I went faster and
faster in order to get warm, slapped my arms, chafed my legs--which by now
I could hardly feel under me--and thus reached the watch-house of the fire
brigade. It was nine o'clock; I had been asleep for several hours.
Whatever shall I do with myself? I must go to some place. I stand there
and stare up at the watch-house, and query if it would not be possible to
succeed in getting into one of the passages if I were to watch for a
moment when the watchman's back was turned. I ascend the steps, and
prepare to open a conversation with the man. He lifts his ax in salute,
and waits for what I may have to say. The uplifted ax, with its edge
turned against me, darts like a cold slash through my nerves. I stand dumb
with terror before this armed man, and draw involuntarily back. I say
nothing, only glide farther and farther away from him. To save appearances
I draw my hand over my forehead, as if I had forgotten something or other,
and slink away. When I reached the pavement I felt as much saved as if I
had just escaped a great peril, and I hurried away.
Cold and famished, more and more miserable in spirit, I flew up Carl
Johann. I began to swear out aloud, troubling myself not a whit as to
whether any one heard me or not. Arrived at Parliament House, just near
the first trees, I suddenly, by some association of ideas, bethought
myself of a young artist I knew, a stripling I had once saved from an
assault in the Tivoli, and upon whom I had called later on.
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