They had reached Schrotter’s door by this time, and were on the point of entering, when a policeman stepped up to them, and touching Wilhelm’s arm, said: 

“Gentlemen, you will have to come with me.”

“Why, what do you mean?” they exclaimed, very much taken aback.

“Better make no fuss, but come quietly with me,” answered the policeman, “This gentleman accuses you of making insulting remarks against his majesty.”

Only now did they become aware of a man standing behind the policeman and glaring at them in fury.

“Are you mad?” Schrotter burst out angrily.  “That is for the magistrate to decide,” exclaimed the man, in a voice trembling with rage; “and you, policeman, do your duty.”

Passers-by began to gather round the group, so, to bring a disagreeable scene to a close, Schrotter said to Wilhelm: 

“We had better go with the policeman; I suppose we shall be enlightened presently.”

A short walk brought them to the police office in the Neue Wilhelms Strasse, where they were taken before the lieutenant of police.  The policeman deposed in a few words that he had been standing at the corner of the Friedrich and Mittelstrasse, the two gentlemen passed him in loud conversation; the third gentleman, who was following them, then came up to him, and told him to arrest them because they had spoken insultingly of his majesty, and here they were.  He had neither seen nor heard anything further.

The lieutenant of police began by asking their names.  When they told him—­“Dr. Schrotter, M. D. one of the members for Berlin and Professor Emeritus,” and “Dr. Eynhardt, Doctor of Philosophy, householder,” he offered them chairs.  The informer introduced himself as “non-commissioned officer Patke, retired, member of a military association, and candidate for the private constabulary.”

“What have you to bring forward against the gentlemen?”

“I walked behind the two gentlemen from the Linden to the Mittelstrasse.  They were conversing loudly about the attempted assassination, and I naturally listened.”

“It does not appear to me so very natural,” commented the lieutenant dryly.

The informer was a trifle disconcerted, but he soon recovered himself, and proceeded in a declamatory manner: 

“The younger gentleman—­the dark one—­expressed himself in very unbecoming terms with regard to his majesty the emperor, and said among other things, that the outrage was of no real importance.  I am a patriot, I have served his august majesty; if his majesty—­”

“That will do,” the lieutenant broke in, ruthlessly interrupting the retired non-commissioned officer’s flow of language, which he accompanied with a dramatic waving of the right arm.  “Can you repeat the ‘unbecoming terms’ of which, according to your account, this gentleman made use?”

“I cannot remember the exact words.  I was too excited.  So much, however, I remember distinctly—­he declared the attempt upon his majesty’s life to be an occurrence of no importance.”