Erckmann-Chatrian

“ I suddenly had an idea, an idea crossed my mind like manna from heaven...My hand went into my jacket pocket!...The box containing my charcoal was there.
Then, rushing towards the wall, I began to copy the murder scene with unprecedented vigour. No more uncertainty, no more trial and error. I knew the man... I could see him... He was posing for me.
At ten o'clock the jailer came into my cell. His owl-like impassiveness gave way to admiration. ”

“ The policemen, accompanied by the jailer, showed me into a temporary cell.
The jailer, if memory serves me right, was called Kasper Schlüssel and, with his grey woollen bonnet, the stem of his pipe stuck between his teeth and the bunch of keys on his belt, he came over to me like the Owl god people worship in the Caribbean. He had his great round gilded eyes that can see in the dark, his curved nose and his bull neck. ”

“ The door opened. A man already in the twilight of his life, tall, thin, dressed in black, appeared on the threshold. The face of this man, his eyes set close together, his great hook nose over which loomed a broad, bony brow had something stern about it. He greeted me solemnly.
"Mr Christian Venius, the painter?" he said.
"I am he, sir."
He bowed once more, giving his own name:
"Baron Frederick Van Spreckdal."
The appearance in my poor hovel of the rich art collector Van Spreckdal, a judge in the criminal court, made a strong impression on me. ”

“ And see what a strange thing the human mind is: I, who had wanted to cut my own throat just the previous day, shuddered to the marrow of my bones when I reflected that I might well be hanged if Rap was dead. ”

“ I had not prayed for a long time, but misfortune always takes us back to thoughts of submissiveness... Man is such a small thing!
Facing me, on a raised dais, two people were sitting with their backs to the light, which kept their faces shaded from me. I could see it was Van Spreckdal, however, by his aquiline nose picked out by a slanting reflection of the pane. ”

“ Van Spreckdal, after some moments of silence, asked:
"His name?"
"I don't know... but he is at this moment in time in the covered market... he's cutting meat on the third stall on the left as you enter the market hall through the Street of the Bodyguards."
"What do you think?" he said, leaning towards his fellow judge.
"Let that man be sent for," answered the latter in solemn tones.
Various guards, stationed in the corridor, obeyed this order. The judges remained standing still looking at the drawing. I sank down on the straw, my head between my knees, like someone dead. ”

“ By dint of perseverance and hard work, I have staked my claim to a place in the sun and I earn my living honourably by painting works of art, the only end, in my opinion, that any true artist should strive to attain. ”

“ Those who have not waited for the hour of their deliverance and counted the minutes, long then like centuries... those who have not felt the agonizing feelings of waiting, terror, hope, doubt...those people will not be able to imagine the inner turmoil I was experiencing just then. I could have distinguished the footsteps of the murderer, walking flanked by his guards, from a thousand other similar ones. ”

“ Picture a dark courtyard hemmed in by high dilapidated walls...These walls are furnished with hooks seven or eight feet from the ground. Even at a cursory glance we may guess that this is a shambles of some sort.
On the left there is a latticework made up of narrow strips. Through it you can see a side of beef suspended from an enormous ceiling by enormous pulleys. Broad pools of blood run down over paving stones and meet up in a drain full of undefined debris. ”

“ The light comes down from on high, from between chimneys, against which weathervanes are silhouetted by a piece of sky only as big as your hand and the roofs of neighbouring houses drop their shadows dramatically from one floor to another. ”

“ I asked one of my guards.
He looked at his companion with a strange smile and said:
"Hans...he's asking what he's done!"
That smile made my blood run cold.
Soon the carriage was enveloped in deep shadow and the hooves of the horses echoed under a vault. We were entering the Raspelhaus or Penitentiary...I was escaping Rap's tender mercies only to end up in a dungeon from which not many poor devils have had the opportunity to extricate themselves.
Big dark courtyards; lines of windows just like in a hospital decked with guttering ”