These had been placed there on the understanding that it was thither that Hogarth would go, the object of the plot being to rifle his pockets before he was officially taken; and it succeeded to the extent that his pockets _were_ rifled: but he knocked down one officer, and dodged the other two, reaching his taxi; and, having previously arranged with the cabman, got off racing. But the masked man whom he had struck down was Harris, who for weeks lay raving in fever--an ill-fated stroke, for Harris had a memory. As for Hogarth, he rushed home to Keppel Street, hurried down the trunk, and was off to Cheyne Gardens. “Well”, he cried, breaking in upon Loveday, “this phase of our life is up! Look at my clothes: I have had a fight--Frankl, I suppose. I wanted to live a simple life for two years: but they won't let me, you see. Ha!--then the other thing. From this night we bury our identity under mountains of splendour. It is disgusting to me, this life, skulking, thinking to bribe honest men. Meantime, you must find me some room to hide in with the trunk--mustn't stay here to-night. And to-morrow you buy me a boat to take us off from some point of the coast--Come--” XXXI THE HAMMERS Within six months Hogarth, as distinct from “Beech”, had risen upon the consciousness of Europe, say like the morning sun: and the wearied worker, borne at evening through crowded undergrounds, might read his name with a listless incomprehension. He impressed the popular fancy, especially in Paris, where he was best known, as erratic: as once when, by a stroke of financial sleight-of-hand, he got the young Government of Russia into a tight place, then refused them a loan, except on condition of the lease to him of the Kremlin: and for three months squalid old Moscow was the most cometary Court anywhere--acts savouring of a meteorite waywardness which impressed him, more than anything, upon the everyday world; and he won a tolerant wonder. However, an outcry, led by the _Intransigeant_, denounced his acquisition of the site of royal St. Cloud for his Paris residence on the ground that he was a Jew, betrayed by his face--an accusation which caused the buying up of hundreds of thousands of his photographs--and on the ground that his design was to familiarize the people with the idea of his sovereignty, and by a _coup_ to seize the Government; at which Paris was in a ferment, and a midnight mob traversed the _Bois_ and demolished some of his mason-work. The next day, however, the Minister of the Interior announced from the Tribune that Hogarth was no Jew, but an Englishman _pur sang_; and, on the whole, Hogarth had his way: the noise died down; and where parterres and avenues had stood on the old palace site, there arose one of those enchanting fabrics, which, from the Bosphorus to London, bore the name of “The Beeches”.