into a house, he went in by the servants' entrance, which she had left
open, went barefoot down a long passage and up the broad staircase,
which creaked occasionally, to the second story, where his mistress's
room was, and stopped there nearly the whole night.

"One night, when it was darker than usual, and he was making haste lest
he should be later than the time agreed on, the officer knocked up
against a piece of furniture in the ante-room and upset it. It so
happened that the girl's mother had not gone to sleep yet, either
because she had a sick headache, or else because she had sat up late
over some novel, and frightened at that unusual noise which disturbed
the silence of the house, she jumped out of bed, opened the door, saw
some one, indistinctly, running away and keeping close to the wall, and,
immediately thinking that there were burglars in the house, she aroused
her husband and the servants by her frantic screams. The unfortunate man
knew what he was about, and seeing into what a terrible fix he had got,
and preferring to be taken for a common thief to dishonoring his adored
mistress and to betraying the secret of their guilty love, he ran into
the drawing-room, felt en the tables and what-nots, filled his pockets
at random with valuable gew-gaws, and then cowered down behind the grand
piano, which barred up a corner of a large room.

"The servants who had run in with lighted candles, found him, and
overwhelming him with abuse, seized him by the collar and dragged him,
panting and appearing half dead with shame and terror, to the nearest
police station. He defended himself with intentional awkwardness when he
was brought up for trial, kept up his part with the most perfect
self-possession, and without any signs of the despair and anguish that
he felt in his heart, and condemned and degraded and made to suffer
martyrdom in his honor as a man and as a soldier, he did not protest,