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.