That power, at least, had remained
with him. Whenever he lay down he could close his eyes and be asleep, and
forget the troubles and the mean trifles of his thorny existence. In this
respect he had the advantage of the others.
Vjera lay down, indeed, but the attempt to sleep seemed more painful than
the accepted reality of waking. The night was the most terrible in her
remembrance, filled as it was with anxiety for the fate of the man she so
dearly loved. To her still childlike inexperience of the world, the
circumstances seemed as full of fear and danger as though the poor Count
had been put upon his trial for a murder or a robbery on an enormous
scale, instead of being merely detained because he could not give a
satisfactory account of a puppet which had been found in his possession.
In the poor girl's imagination arose visions of judges, awful personages
in funereal robes and huge Hack caps, with cruel lips and hard, steely
eyes, sitting in solemn state in a gloomy hall and dispensing death,
disgrace, or long terms of prison, at the very least, to all comers. For
her, the police-station was a dungeon, and she fancied the Count chained
to a dank and slimy wall in a painful position, chilled to the marrow by
the touch of the dripping stone, his teeth chattering, his face distorted
with suffering. Of course he was in a solitary cell, behind a heavy door,
braced with clamps and bolts and locks and studded with great dark iron
nails. Without, the grim policemen were doubtless pacing up and down with
drawn swords, listening with a murderous delight to the groans of their
victim as he writhed in his chains.
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