Therewith he began to back towards the door.
Everybody, in amazement at this scene, allowed him to go: for all the world as if everyone had suddenly begun to be sober, and at the first surprise no one knew how to think what should now happen.
But I ... I was not drunk. I had no need to become sober.
I leaped up from my place, with one bound came up to the departing man, and seized him before he could reach the door, just as a furious tiger fastens up a miserable dormouse.
"I am not drunk! I have never drunk wine, you know," I cried losing all self-restraint, and pressing him against the wall so that he shivered like a bat.—"I shall be the one to throw that cursed forgery in your face, miserable wretch!"
And I know well that that single blow would have been the last chapter in his life—which would have been a great pity, not as far as he was concerned, but for my own sake—had not Heaven sent a guardian angel to check me in my wickedness.
Suddenly someone behind seized the hand raised to strike. I looked back, and my arm dropped useless at my side.
It was Fanny who had seized my arm.
"Desi," cried my darling in a frightened voice: "This hand is mine: you must not defile it."
I felt she was right. I allowed my uncontrollable anger to be overcome; with my left hand I threw the trembling wretch out of the door—I do not know where he fell—and then I turned round to clasp Fanny to my breast.