Austro-Hungarian Imperial Police

The Austro-Hungarian Gendarmerie is the imperial law-enforcement force that enters the Anger household during an investigation involving Ernest Thorn and attempts to take Felix away. Its brief but consequential appearance brings distant state authority into conflict with the household’s ingenuity: Petro and Stefania make Felix too large to fit the props associated with Thorn’s theatrical act, while Adèle turns the general’s anger aside with hospitality. The officials depart without the boy, and Felix is saved.

Institutional Presence

The gendarmerie is invoked as one of several authorities expected to act against Thorn. A police commissioner privately warns the Angers that representatives of the police and court, and possibly the gendarmerie, will soon visit; someone is coming from Vienna, while an investigation into Thorn is underway in Lviv. Thorn is accused of selling the same bonds to multiple people and of being bankrupt with his Colosseum. The warning places the gendarmerie within a broader effort to pursue a disgraced theatrical entrepreneur, rather than presenting it as an independent organization with a separately described structure or policy.

The Attempt to Take Felix

Two weeks after the warning, bailiffs in black suits arrive with gendarmes in green uniforms, led by the general of the Lviv gendarmerie. They order the household to surrender Felix. By then, Petro and Stefania have been feeding the boy relentlessly, seeking to make him too stout to fit into a sauerkraut barrel or a magician’s top hat. Petro points to Felix’s roundness as an obstacle to the theatrical disguise, and the household demonstrates the props: Stefania tries to push his calf into the barrel and struggles to fit the hat over his cheeks. Their performance turns Felix’s altered body into evidence that he cannot be the boy the authorities are seeking, although the episode also makes clear that this protection has been achieved by forcibly feeding him.

Withdrawal and Consequences

The little, thin general flies into a rage and curses his subordinates in German. Adèle intervenes in a white dress, offering the general Lithuanian kvass fresh from the cellar. He clicks his spurs, salutes, and leaves with the officials and military personnel. Felix remains with the household. Afterward, Adèle says that Felix must be put on a diet because she does not want to live under the same roof as an obese boy. The episode therefore ends not with a formal resolution of the investigation, but with the immediate danger averted and the household’s coercive workaround giving way to a new demand about Felix’s body.

Narrative Significance

The gendarmerie’s visit makes imperial power tangible at the level of a domestic doorway: uniformed men arrive with bailiffs and an order, yet their authority is checked by a staged demonstration and Adèle’s social intervention. The episode sets state enforcement against the household’s ability to manipulate appearances, while exposing the cost of that ingenuity in Felix’s forced weight gain. The force is not shown as permanently defeated or as having abandoned the investigation; the evidence establishes only that, on this visit, its officials leave without him.