Here the justizrath showed, for the second time, how great emergencies bring out the strength of great characters. With gentle firmness he freed the flowered dressing-gown from the embrace of the night-gown, and said in a voice that announced his resolve to do and dare the worst: "Jette, bring me my coat!"
This was the signal for a scene of indescribable confusion, out of which, in about five minutes, the victim of his devotion to duty emerged victorious with coat, hat, and stick: a sublime sight, only the effect was a little damaged by the hero's feet being still covered with embroidered slippers, a fact of which he was not aware until it was too late, when we were standing on the pavement of the market-place.
"Never mind, Herr Justizrath," I said, as he was about to turn back. "You would not get away again, and we have but a few steps to go."
In fact the little old Rathhaus was at the other side of the by no means wide square, and the pavement was perfectly dry, so that the victim of fidelity had not even to fear a cold in the head.
"Herr Justizrath," I said, as we crossed the market-place, "you will tell my father, will you not, that I gave myself up voluntarily, and without any compulsion; and I will never mention to any one a word about the broken pipe."
I have spoken many foolish and inconsiderate words in my life, but few that were more foolish and more inconsiderate than this. Just as I was touching the point which I might say was the only thing in the whole affair to which I attached importance, namely, to show my pride to the father who had disowned me, I failed to perceive that I gave mortal offence to a man who would never forgive, and had never forgiven me. Who can tell what other turn the affair might have taken, if, instead of my unpardonable stupidity, I had intoned a pæan to the heroic man who knew how to guard himself from a possible and indeed probable attack, and then did his duty, happen what might. But how could I know that, young fool that I was?
So we reached the open hall of the Rathhaus, where in the day time an old cake-woman used to sit in a chair sawed out of a barrel, before a table where plum-buns and candies lay upon a cloth not always clean, that was constantly fluttering in the wind that blew through the hall. The table was now bare, and presented a very forlorn appearance, as if old Mother Möller, and not only she, but all the cakes, plum-buns, and candies of the world, had departed forever.
A desolate feeling came over me; for the first and only time this night, the thought occurred to me that perhaps after all I had better make my escape. Who was to prevent me? Assuredly not the slippered hero at my side; and as little the old night-watchman Rüterbusch, who was shuffling up and down the hall, in front of his sentry-box, in the dim light of a lantern that swung from the vaulted roof. But I thought of my father, and wondered if his conscience would not smite him when he heard the next morning that I was in prison; and so I stood quietly by and heard the night-watchman Rüterbusch explaining to Justizrath Heckepfennig that the matter would be very hard to manage, since the last few days so many arrests had been made, that the guard-house was completely full.
The guard-house was a forbidding-looking appendage to the Rathhaus, and fronted on an extremely narrow alley in which footsteps always made a peculiar echo. No townsman who could avoid it ever went through this echoing alley; for that gloomy appendage to the Rathhaus had no door, but a row of small square windows secured with iron bars and half-closed with wooden screens, and behind them here and there might be seen a pale, woe-begone face.
A quarter of an hour after the conversation between Herr Justizrath Heckepfennig and night-watchman Rüterbusch had come to a satisfactory conclusion, I was sitting behind one of these grated windows.