She fled with the lightness of a gazelle. Loutish steps followed her, and the wheezing of loud lungs. She reached the stairs of the quadrangular tower, the structure of her whim. She ran up the stairs. High up the gilded steps sparkled in the first glint of dawn. Her hand glided without friction over the balustrade. The painted enamel, another creation of her whims, was cool and calming to her palms. Her pursuers grunted like wolves. But the light seemed to lift her upward. She burst into the silvery morning, and beheld the burning buildings swaying in the wind and the wide sea. Her pursuers surged after her like a great heap of limbs, a polypus with hair and noses and cruel teeth. She leaped upon the parapet. Arms reached out after her. Higher! Ah, if there were a higher height! Clouds covered the sky. Once upon a time it had been different. Stars had comforted her--the lordly reaches of the firmament. The memory lasted but a second. Hands grasped her; claws were at her very breast. Four, six, eight pairs of arms were stretched out toward her. A last reflection, a last struggle, a last sigh. The air divided with a whir. She plunged.... On slabs of marble lay her body. That marvellous body was a mass of bloody pulp. The broken eyes were open--empty, void of depth or knowledge or consciousness. Over the parapet the human wolves howled in their disappointed rage. Below others fell upon her dead. They tore the garments from her body, and stuck shreds of them, like flags, on poles and branches. Slain on the threshold of her mistress’ bedchamber lay Susan Rappard. When the work of plundering and destruction had been completed, the wild horde withdrew. A man of mercy and shame had finally thrown a horse-blanket over the dancer’s soiled and naked body. As evening came, one man still wandered about amid the ruins, a lonely man in lonely travail of spirit. He wore the garb of a priest, and on his features was the stamp of a fate fulfilled. Those who came at a late hour to seek and accompany him, greeted him with reverence, for he was accounted by them a saint of the people and a prophet of the kingdom to come. He spoke to them: “I have lied to you; I am but a weak creature like the rest.” They rocked their heads and one answered: “Little Father Ivan Michailovitch, do not destroy our hope or cease leading us in our weakness.” Thereupon this saint of his people gazed at the body that lay under a horse-blanket amid the trampled flowers and the charred ruins, and said: “Let us proceed then even unto the end.” XXVIII Thrice on the street Niels Heinrich stopped and stared into Christian’s face. Then he went on, stumping his feet against the asphalt and hunching his back. At first he dragged himself painfully along; gradually his tread grew steadier. At Kahle’s shop he asked with toneless jeer whether the gentleman was employed by the police. In that case the gentleman needn’t delay or worry. He knew the way to headquarters himself.