THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
tive heard voices behind him and turning saw lights in the distance moving to and fro. He ran with furious speed, spurred on by the pursuit, which was evidently at his heels. Suddenly he struck his forehead against a hard object and fell down stunned.
The pursuers also had their difficulties. The police officer who had been in the room with Kinkel jumped for the door, and finding it locked, he hurried back to the window, which in the excitement of the moment he did not succeed in opening quickly. He smashed it with his fist and shouted into the street that the “rogue” had escaped. The whole house was promptly alarmed; the police officers told the servants that the fugitive was one of the most dangerous criminals of the Rhineland, and offered a reward of at least a hundred thalers for his capture. Of course, the village folk believed all they were told. The postilion who had driven the coach, not suspecting that his passenger was Kinkel, showed himself especially active. At once lanterns were brought to look for the tracks of the fugitive. The postilion soon discovered them, but Kinkel had gained considerable headway by these delays, and only his running against a pile of wood, a projecting log of which struck his forehead, had neutralized this advantage. In less than a quarter of an hour he was in his benumbed condition discovered by the postilion, who really believed that he had before him an escaped highwayman, and soon the police officers, hurrying on, again laid their hands upon him. These now redoubled their watchfulness until finally the door of the penitentiary of Spandau closed upon the unfortunate man.
When the excitement caused by the trial in Cologne had subsided, and Kinkel, sitting quietly in the Spandau penitentiary, had temporarily ceased to occupy public attention in an extraordinary degree, I left Paris for Germany. I had in the
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