A Polizei-Commissär, bearded in his den by tramps and vagabonds like us—it was too much for his petty Majesty! Any strictures on the ceremonial of his state reception which I may have held in reserve, were cut short by his roaring out, in a still more insufferable tone, ‘I tell you I will see your pass!’ ‘Sir,’ I replied, ‘just to prove to you that we _are_ Englishmen, and out of pure courtesy, we are willing to show you our pass; but we must nevertheless protest that you have no right whatever to demand it!’ ‘No right!’ screamed the P.-C., almost choking with rage, and bouncing from his chair with a spoon in one hand, and a maize-stalk in the other. ‘_I_ no RIGHT! We’ll soon see about that. Take them off!’ he cried to his satellites; ‘take them off, I say, to the lock-up. Remove him!’—as I attempted to insert the thin end of a protest, and hurled a few consuls, ambassadors, thrones and dominions, at the official’s head; while the gendarmes, seeing that it was a disgraceful business, hesitated to carry out their chief’s commands—‘Do you hear me? I tell you they shall pass the night in gaol. They shall show me their pass to-morrow. Quick!’ And we left him muttering ‘No right!’ Meanwhile rumours of the successful capture and impending doom of two outrageous disturbers of the peace had spread throughout the length and breadth of Brood, and all Brood was rapidly assembling to see the majesty of the law vindicated on our persons; so that when we were led forth again by the police, we were followed through the streets by a kind of funeral _cortége_. Presently we turned down another larger court, and, ascending some steps, found ourselves on a raised platform outside the door of our intended prison, from which I seized the opportunity of addressing a kind of scaffold speech to the assembled soldiers and people, which at least had the effect of delaying our incarceration. I endeavoured to urge on them the seriousness of what was about to take place. Two Englishmen, travelling under the protection of a passport which they were willing to produce, were about to be cast into a dungeon on the mere fiat of a petty magistrate. That for ourselves, gross as was the indignity, we regretted it principally for the sake of the Polizei-Commissär. That it would be but merciful to allow him a short space for repentance; and here I sketched out vaguely some of the tremendous consequences which such conduct might bring down on his head. That they, too, the gendarmes, would do well to think twice before lending a hand in such a business. That Brood itself might rue the day; nor did I neglect this opportunity to call up an apparition of a British fleet on the Save. Finally, I enquired who was the highest authority in Brood, and hearing that it was the Stadthauptmann, or Mayor, despatched a gendarme to beg that functionary’s immediate attendance.