What was really the matter with Ráby the police never learned; but we can tell the reader.
When at about three hours after midnight, they had brought him to the Assembly House, the whole gang of his enemies was awaiting him, including the gaoler.
He was received with a shout of derisive laughter, as he came into the room, thick with tobacco-smoke.
"So the Emperor has given you decorations, has he?" thus they jeered at him. "Well, we'll see what sort of ornaments we can procure for your worship," and such like remarks, were freely fired off at him.
But Ráby bore all the jeers of his tormentors in a dignified silence, and quietly submitted to the searching process, whereby he was stripped of all his valuables, and fetters slipped over his wrists and ankles, the gold lace being cut off from his new coat so that he might not hang himself with it! Then he was led back into the cell he had formerly occupied, and left to himself.
But, he reflected, his captivity could not last long. The two police-officers must be still there, and when all was said, they were the masters. And failing all else, had not the Emperor himself promised to come? Up till then, he would have patience. The visit of his friends on the following day did not give him much hope that their help would avail him.
On the third day, the prison doctor sought him out, and with the help of the gaoler, began to subject him to a long process of disinfecting, which he said, was necessary for every prisoner who came from across the frontier, seeing that in Turkey the oriental plague was raging.
We have seen how the two Viennese officers were smoked out of the city. This left the coast clear for Ráby's examination the following day. His earlier trial had taken place before the district commissioner as a political offender: now he was haled before the ordinary assizes as a common criminal.
The indictment which set forth how Ráby by the help of diabolic arts, had forcibly broken out of custody, and fled to another country, was read. It called for five and twenty years' solitary imprisonment, together with public chastisement; which should allow of his being at appointed intervals set in the public stocks, with a placard showing the nature of his crime hung round his neck.
Ráby, in his defence, demanded that the judges should call one of the twenty men who had forcibly seized him the night of his flight; this was, he said, exacted by the Emperor in his instructions as to the trial.