They walked out into the evening air unnoticed; he had given his consent to follow the bill-discounter without resistance, and he had no thought to break his word; he had submitted himself to the inevitable course of this fate that had fallen on him, and the whole tone of his temper and his breeding lent him the quiescence, though he had none of the doctrine of a supreme fatalist.  There were carriages standing before the hotel, waiting for those who were going to the ballroom, to the theater, to an archduke’s dinner, to a princess’ entertainment; he looked at them with a vague, strange sense of unreality—­these things of the life from which he was now barred forever.  The sparkling tide of existence in Baden was flowing on its way, and he went out an accused felon, branded, and outlawed, and dishonored from all place in the world that he had led, and been caressed by and beguiled with for so long.

To-night, at this hour, he should have been among all that was highest and gayest and fairest in Europe at the banquet of a Prince—­and he went by his captor’s side, a convicted criminal.

Once out in the air, the Hebrew laid his hand on his arm.  He started—­it was the first sign that his liberty was gone!  He restrained himself from all resistance still, and passed onward, down where Baroni motioned him out of the noise of the carriages, out of the glare of the light, into the narrow, darkened turning of a side street.  He went passively; for this man trusted to his honor.

In the gloom stood three figures, looming indistinctly in the shadow of the houses.  One was a Huissier of the Staats-Procurator, beside whom stood the Commissary of Police of the district; the third was an English detective.  Ere he saw them their hands were on his shoulders, and the cold chill of steel touched his wrists.  The Hebrew had betrayed him, and arrested him in the open street.  In an instant, as the ring of the rifle rouses the slumbering tiger, all the life and the soul that were in him rose in revolt as the icy glide of the handcuffs sought their hold on his arms.  In an instant, all the wild blood of his race, all the pride of his breeding, all the honor of his service, flashed into fire and leaped into action.  Trusted, he would have been true to his accuser; deceived, the chains of his promise were loosened, and all he thought, all he felt, all he knew were the lion impulses, the knightly instincts, the resolute choice to lose life rather than to lose freedom, of a soldier and a gentleman.  All he remembered was that he would fight to the death rather than be taken alive; that they should kill him where he stood, in the starlight, rather than lead him in the sight of men as a felon.