Albert scarcely noticed his removal from home to the seclusion of the prison.

Snatched away from his painful thoughts by the harsh voice of the commissary, saying.

"In the name of the law I arrest you," his mind, completely upset, was a long time in recovering its equilibrium, Everything that followed appeared to him to float indistinctly in a thick mist, like those dream-scenes represented on the stage behind a quadruple curtain of gauze.
To the questions put to him he replied, without knowing what he said.
Two police agents took hold of his arms, and helped him down the stairs.
He could not have walked down alone.

His limbs, which bent beneath him, refused their support.

The only thing he understood of all that was said around him was that the count had been struck with apoplexy; but even that he soon forgot.
They lifted him into the cab, which was waiting in the court-yard at the foot of the steps, rather ashamed at finding itself in such a place; and they placed him on the back seat.