“Kindly explain to me,” said Mr. Burton, approaching the officer of gendarmerie, “what is the meaning of this violent intrusion into a private house? I warn you that, unless you are prepared to furnish me with a satisfactory explanation, I shall feel bound to complain to the English Ambassador.”
“I presume,” replied the officer stiffly, “that you will recognize this as a sufficient explanation; the English Ambassador certainly will.” He pulled out a warrant for the arrest of Arthur Burton, student of philosophy, and, handing it to James, added coldly: “If you wish for any further explanation, you had better apply in person to the chief of police.”
Julia snatched the paper from her husband, glanced over it, and flew at Arthur like nothing else in the world but a fashionable lady in a rage.
“So it's you that have disgraced the family!” she screamed; “setting all the rabble in the town gaping and staring as if the thing were a show? So you have turned jail-bird, now, with all your piety! It's what we might have expected from that Popish woman's child——”
“You must not speak to a prisoner in a foreign language, madam,” the officer interrupted; but his remonstrance was hardly audible under the torrent of Julia's vociferous English.
“Just what we might have expected! Fasting and prayer and saintly meditation; and this is what was underneath it all! I thought that would be the end of it.”
Dr. Warren had once compared Julia to a salad into which the cook had upset the vinegar cruet. The sound of her thin, hard voice set Arthur's teeth on edge, and the simile suddenly popped up in his memory.
“There's no use in this kind of talk,” he said. “You need not be afraid of any unpleasantness; everyone will understand that you are all quite innocent. I suppose, gentlemen, you want to search my things. I have nothing to hide.”
While the gendarmes ransacked the room, reading his letters, examining his college papers, and turning out drawers and boxes, he sat waiting on the edge of the bed, a little flushed with excitement, but in no way distressed. The search did not disquiet him. He had always burned letters which could possibly compromise anyone, and beyond a few manuscript verses, half revolutionary, half mystical, and two or three numbers of Young Italy, the gendarmes found nothing to repay them for their trouble. Julia, after a long resistance, yielded to the entreaties of her brother-in-law and went back to bed, sweeping past Arthur with magnificent disdain, James meekly following.
When they had left the room, Thomas, who all this while had been tramping up and down, trying to look indifferent, approached the officer and asked permission to speak to the prisoner. Receiving a nod in answer, he went up to Arthur and muttered in a rather husky voice: