Chapter III: University Life and Travel in Europe. 1845-1848 (3)

The winter drew to an end. I had long felt a deep desire to visit Munich, to study art, and to investigate fundamentally the wonderful and mysterious science of AEsthetics, of which I had heard so much. So I packed up and paid my bills, and passing through one town where there was in the hotel where I stopped, the last wolf ever killed in Germany, and freshly killed (I believe he has been slain two or three times since), and at another where I was invited to see a criminal beheaded by the sword--which sight I missed by over-sleeping myself--I came through Stuttgart, Ulm, and Augsburg to the German Athens.

I went to the Hotel Maulick, where I stayed a week. Opposite to me at table every day sat the famous Saphir, the great Vienna wit and licensed joker. Of course I soon became acquainted with some students, and was entered at the University, and got the card which exempted me from being arrested by any save the University beadles. I believe that we even had our own hangman, but as none of my friends ever had occasion for his services I did not inquire. The same ticket also entitled me to attend the opera at half-price, and if it had only included tobacco and beer gratis, it would have been the means of vast economies.

I entered myself for a course of lectures by Professor Friedrich Thiersch on AEsthetics. He it was who had trained Heine to art, and I venture to say that in my case the seed fell on good ground. I took in every thought. His system agreed, on the whole, perfectly with that advanced in after years by Taine, and marvellously well with that set forth in the "Essays, Speculative and Suggestive," of J. A. Symonds--that is, it was eclectic and deductive from historical periods, and not at all "rhapsodical" or merely subjective. I bought the best works, such as Kugler's, for guides, and studied hard, and frequented the Pinacothek and Glyptothek, and I may say really educated myself well in the history of art and different schools of aesthetics. My previous reading, travel, and tastes fitted me in every way to easily master such knowledge. I also followed Becker's course on Schelling, but my heart was not in it, as it would have been two years before. The lectures of Professor Henry and Gmelin and true Science had caused in me a distrust of metaphysics and psychological systems and theories. I began to see that they were all only very ingenious shufflings and combinations and phases of the same old cards of Pantheism, which could be made into Theism, Pietism, Atheism, or Materialism to suit any taste. I was advancing rapidly to pure science, though Evolution was as yet unknown by the name, albeit the Okenites and others with their _Natur-philosophie_ were coming closely to it.

In fact, I think it may be truly said that, as regarded deducing man and all things from a _prima materia_ or protoplasm by means of natural selection and vast study of differentiation, they were exactly where Darwin, and Wallace, and Huxley were when we began to know the latter. I do not agree with Max Muller in his very German and very artfully disguised and defended theory that the religious idea originated in a vague sense of the Infinite in the minds of savages; for I believe it began with the bogeys and nightmares of obscure terror, hunger, disease, and death; but the Professor is quite right in declaring that Evolution was first created or developed in the German _Natur-philosophie_, the true beginning of which was with the Italian naturalists, such as Bruno and De Cusa. What is to be observed is this, yet few understand it, nor has even Symonds cleared the last barrier--that when a Pantheist has got so far as to conceive an identity between matter and spirit, while on the other hand a scientific materialist rises to the unity of spirit and matter, there is nothing to choose between them. Only this is true, that the English Evolutionists, by abandoning reasoning based on Pantheistic poetic bases, as in Schelling's case, or purely logical, as in Hegel's, and by proceeding on plainly prosaic, merely material, simply scientific grounds after the example of Bacon, swept away so much rubbish that people no longer recognised the old temple of Truth, and really thought it was a brand new workshop or laboratory. But I can remember very distinctly that to me Evolution did _not_ come as if I had received a new soul, or even a new body, but had merely had a bath, and put on new garments. And as I became an English Evolutionist in due time, I had this great advantage, that by beginning so young I succeeded in doing very thoroughly what Symonds and Maudsley and many more clearly understand is _most_ difficult--that is, not merely to accept the truth, but to get rid of the old _associations_ of the puzzle of a difference between spirit and matter, which thing caused even the former to muddle about "God," and express disgust at "Materialism," and declare that there is "an insoluble problem," which is all in flat contradiction to pure Evolution, which does not meddle with "the Unknowable."

There was a Jewish professor named Karl Friedrich Neumann, who was about as many-sided a man as could be found even in a German university. He was a great Chinese scholar--had been in China, and also read on mathematics and modern history. I attended these lectures (not the mathematics) and liked them: so we became acquainted. I found that he had written a very interesting little work on the visit recorded in the Chinese annals of certain Buddhist monks to Fusang--probably Mexico--in the fifth century. I proposed to translate it, and did so, he making emendations and adding fresh matter to the English version.

Professor Neumann was a vigorous reader, but he soon found that I was of the same kind. One day he lent me a large work on some Indian subject, and the next I brought it back. He said that I could not have read it in the time. I begged him to examine me on it, which he did, and expressed his amazement, for he declared that he had never met with anything like it in all his life. This from him was praise indeed. Long after, in America, George Boker in closer fashion tested me on this without my knowing it, and published the result in an article.

I became acquainted with a learned writer on art named Foerster, who had married a daughter of Jean Paul Richter, and dined once or twice at his house. I also saw him twenty years later in Munich. George Ward came in from Berlin to stay some weeks in Munich. I saw Taglioni several times at the opera, but did not make her acquaintance till 1870. The great, tremendous celebrity at that time in Munich was also an opera-dancer, though not on the stage. This was Lola Montez, the King's last favourite. He had had all his mistresses painted, one by one, and the gallery was open to the public. Lola's was the last, and there was a blank space still left _for a few more_. I thought that about twenty- five would complete the collection.

Lola Montez had a small palace, and was raised to be the Countess of Landsfeldt, but this was not enough. She wished to run the whole kingdom and government, and kick out the Jesuits, and kick up the devil, generally speaking. But the Jesuits and the mob were too much for her. I knew her very well in later years in America, when she deeply regretted that I had not called on her in Munich. I must have had a great moral influence on her, for, so far as I am aware, I am the only friend whom she ever had at whom she never threw a plate or book, or attacked with a dagger, poker, broom, chair, or other deadly weapon. We were both born at the same time in the same year, and I find by the rules of sorcery that she is the first person who will meet me when I go to heaven. I always had a great and strange respect for her singular talents; there were very few indeed, if any there were, who really knew the depths of that wild Irish soul. Men generally were madly fascinated with her, then as suddenly disenchanted, and then detracted from her in every way.

There were many adventuresses in later years who passed themselves about the world for Lola Montez. I have met with two friends, whom I am sure were honest gentlemen, who told me they had known her intimately. Both described her as a large, powerful, or robust woman. Lola was in reality very small, pale, and thin, or _frele_, with beautiful blue eyes and curly black hair. She was a typical beauty, with a face full of character, and a person of remarkably great and varied reading. One of her most intimate friends was wont to tell her that she and I had many very strange characteristics in common, which we shared with no one else, while we differed utterly in other respects. It was very like both of us, for Lola, when defending the existence of the soul against an atheist, to tumble over a great trunk of books of the most varied kind, till she came to an old vellum-bound copy of Apuleius, and proceed to establish her views according to his subtle Neo-Platonism. But she romanced and embroidered so much in conversation that she did not get credit for what she really knew.

I once met with a literary man in New York who told me he had long desired to make my acquaintance, because he had heard her praise me so immeasurably beyond anybody else she had ever known, that he wanted to see what manner of man I could be. I heard the same from another, in another place long after. Once she proposed to me to make a bolt with her to Europe, which I declined. The secret of my influence was that I always treated her with respect, and never made love or flirted.

An intimate of both of us who was present when this friendly proposal was made remarked with some astonishment, "But, Madame, by what means can you two _live_?" "Oh," replied Lola innocently and confidingly, "people like us" (or "who know as much as we") "can get a living anywhere." And she rolled us each a cigarette, with one for herself. I could tell a number of amusing tales of this Queen of Bohemia, but Space, the Kantean god, forbids me more. But I may say that I never had more really congenial and wide-embracing conversations with any human being in my life than with Her Majesty. There was certainly no topic, within my range, at least, on which she could not converse with some substance of personal experience and reading. She had a mania for meeting and knowing all kinds of peculiar people.

I lived in the main street near the Karlsthor, opposite a tavern called the Ober-Pollinger, which was a mediaeval tavern in those days. My landlady was a nice old soul, and she had two daughters, one of whom was a beauty, and as gentle and Germanly good as a girl could be. Her face still lives in a great picture by a great artist. We lived on the third floor; on the ground was a shop, in which cutlery and some fireworks were sold. It befell that George Ward and I were very early in the morning sitting on a bench before the Ober-Pollinger, waiting for a stage-coach, which would take us to some place out of town; when bang! bang! crack! I heard a noise in the firework shop, and saw explosions puffing smoke out of the bursting windows. Great God! the front shop was on fire; it was full of fireworks, such as rockets and crackers, and I knew there was a barrel of gunpowder in the back-shop! I had found it out a few days before, when I went there to buy some for my pistols. And the family were asleep. In an instant I tore across the street, rushed screaming upstairs, roused them all out of bed, howling, "It burns!--there's gunpowder!" Yet, hurried as I was, I caught up a small hand-bag, which contained my money, as I got the girls and their mother downstairs. I was just in time to see a gigantic butcher burst open the two-inch door with an axe, and roll out the barrel containing two hundred pounds of gunpowder, as the flames were licking it. I saw them distinctly.

It was the awful row which I made which had brought the people out betimes, including the butcher and his axe. But for that, there would have been a fearful blow-up. But the butcher showed himself a man of gold on this occasion, for he it was who really saved us all. A day or two after, when I was jesting about myself as a knightly rescuer of forlorn damsels, in reply to some remark on the event, George Ward called me to order. There was, as he kindly said, too much that he respected in that event to make fun of it.

George Ward is deeply impressed on my memory. He was a sedate young fellow, with a gift of dry humour, now and then expressed in quaint remarks, a gentleman in every instinct, much given to reading and reflecting. When he said anything, he meant it, and this remark of his struck me more than the event itself had done.

And to think that I quite forgot, in narrating my Princeton experiences, to tell of something very much like this incident. It was in my last year, and my landlady had just moved into a new house, when, owing to some defect in the building, it caught fire, but was luckily saved after it had received some damage. I awoke in the night, flames bursting into my room, and much smoke. It happened that the day before a friend in Alabama had sent me eleven hundred dollars wherewith to pay for him certain debts. My first thought was for this money, so I hurried to get the key of the secretary in which it was--keys never can be found in a hurry--and when found, I could not find the right one in the bunch. And then it stuck in the lock and would not open it, till finally I succeeded and got the money out. And then, not finding myself quite dead, I in a hurry turned the contents of three drawers in my bureau and my linen on to the bed, threw on it my coats and trousers, tied the four corners of a sheet together in one bundle, caught up my boots, fencing-foils, &c., to make another, and so rescued all I had. I verily believe I did it all in one minute. That day the President, old Dr. Carnahan, when I plead "not prepared" for failing at recitation, excused me with a grim smile. I had really that time some excuse for it. During the Munich incident I thought of the sheets. But I had gunpowder and two girls to look after in the latter place, and time and tide--or gunpowder and girls--wait for no man.

And so, with study and art and friends, and much terrible drinking of beer and smoking of Varinas-Kanaster, and roaming at times in gay greenwoods with pretty maids alway, and music and dancing, the Munich semester came to an end. I proposed to travel with an English friend named Pottinger to Vienna, and thence by some adventurous route or other through Germany to Paris; which was a great deal more to undertake in those days than it now is, entailing several hundred per cent. more pain and sorrow, fasting, want of sleep and washing, than any man would encounter in these days in going round the world and achieving _la grande route_; or the common European tour, to boot. For it befell me ere I reached my journey's end to pass eighteen nights in one month in Eilwagen or waggons, the latter being sometimes without springs. And once or twice or thrice I was so utterly worn and wearied that I slept all night, though I was so tossed about that I awoke in the morning literally bruised from head to foot, with my chimney-pot hat under my feet; which was worse than even a forced march on short commons--as I found in after years--or driving in a Russian _telega_, or jackassing in Egypt, or any other of the trifles over which pampered tourists make such heart-rending howls now-a-days.

So we went to Prague, and thence to Vienna, which, in the year 1847, was a very different place indeed to what it is at present; for an unbounded gaiety and an air of reckless festivity was apparent then all the time to everybody everywhere. Under it all lurked and rankled abuses, municipal, social, and political, such as would in 1893 be deemed incredible if not unnatural (as may be read in a clever novel called _Die schone Wienerinn_), but on the surface all was brilliant foam and sunshine and laughing sirens. What new thing Strauss would play in the evening was the great event of the day. I saw and heard the great Johann Strauss--this was the grandfather--and in after years his son, and the _schone Edie_ his grandson. Everywhere one heard music, and the Prater was a gay and festive paradise indeed. There was no business; the town lived on the Austrian, Hungarian, Bohemian, Russian, and other nobility, who in those days were extravagant and ostentatious to a degree now undreamed of, and on strangers. As for free and easy licentiousness, Paris was a trifle to it, and the police had strict orders to encourage everything of the kind; the result being that the seventh commandment in all its phases was treated like pie-crust, as a thing made to be broken, the oftener the better. Even on our first arriving at our hotel, our good-natured landlord, moved by the principle that it was not good for a young man to be alone, informed us that if we wished to have damsels in our rooms no objection would be interposed. "Why not?" he said; "this is not a church"; the obvious inference being that to a Viennese every place not a church must necessarily be a temple to Venus. And every Wiener, when spoken to, roared with laughter; and there were minstrels in the streets, and musicians in every dining-place and cafe, and great ringing of bells in chimes, and 'twas merry in hall when beards wagged all, and "the world went very well in those days." Vienna is a far finer town now, but it is a Quaker meeting-house compared to what it was for gaiety forty years ago.

This change of life and manners has spread, and will continue to spread, all over the world. In feudal times the people were kept quiet by means of holidays, carnivals, processions, fairs, fairy-tales, treats, and indulgences; even the common childish instinct for gay dress and picturesqueness of appearance was encouraged, and at high tides everybody was fed and given to drink: so that if the poor toiled and fasted and prayed, it might be for months, they had their joyous revellings to anticipate, when there were free tables even for strangers. In those days--

"A Christmas banquet oft would cheer
A poor man's heart for half the year."

This Middle Age lasted effectively until the epoch of the Revolution and railroads, or, to fix a date, till about 1848. And then all at once, as at a breath, it all disappeared, and now lives, so to speak, only in holes and corners. For as soon as railroads came, factories sprang up and Capital began to employ Labour, and Labour to plot and combine against Capital; and what with scientific inventions and a sudden stimulus to labour, and newspapers, the multitude got beyond fancy dresses and the being amused to keep them quiet like children, and so the _juventus mundi_ passed away. "It is a perfect _shame_!" say the dear young lady tourists, "that the peasantry no longer wear their beautiful dresses; they ought to be _obliged_ to keep them up." "But how would _you_ like, my dear, if you were of the lower orders, to wear a dress which proclaimed it?" Here the conversation ceaseth, for it becomes too deep for the lady tourist to follow.

How it was we wandered I do not distinctly remember, but having visited Nuremberg, Prague, and Dresden, we went to Breslau, where a fancy seized us to go to Cracow. True, we had not a special _vise_ from a Russian minister to enter the Muscovite dominions, but the police at Breslau, who (as I was afterwards told) loved to make trouble for those on the frontier, bade us be of good cheer and cheek it out, neither to be afraid of any man, and to go ahead bravely. Which we did.

There was a sweet scene at the frontier station on the Polish-Russian line at about three o'clock in the morning, when the grim and insolent officials discovered that our passports had only the police _vise_ from Breslau! I was asked why I had not in my native country secured the _vise_ of a Russian minister; to which I replied that in America the very existence of such a country as Russia was utterly unknown, and that I myself was astonished to find that Russians knew what passports were. Also that I always supposed that foreigners conferred a great benefit on a country by spending their money in it; but that if I could not be admitted, that was an end of it; it was a matter of very trifling consequence, indeed, for we really did not care twopence whether we saw Russia or not; a country more or less made very little difference to such travellers as we were.

Cheek is a fine thing in its way, and on this occasion I developed enough brass to make a pan, and enough "sass" to fill it; but all in vain. When I visited the Muscovite realm in after years I was more kindly received. On this occasion we were closely searched and re-searched, although we were not allowed to go on into Russia! Every square inch of everything was examined as with a microscope--even the small scraps of newspaper in which soap or such trifles were wrapped were examined, a note made as to each, and all put under paper-weights; and whatever was suspected--as, for instance, books or pamphlets--was confiscated, although, as I said, we were turned back! And this robbery accomplished, we were informed that the stage-coach, or rather rough post-waggon, in which we came, would return at five o'clock P.M., and that we could in it go back to Dresden, and might pass the time till then on a bench outside the building--reflecting on our sins! I had truly some papers about me which I did not care to have examined, but these were in my cravat, and even Russian ingenuity had not at that time got beyond picking pockets and feeling the linings of coats. It has since been suggested to me by something which I read that I was under suspicion. I had in Munich aided a Swiss student who was under police surveillance for political intriguing to escape, by lending him money to get away. It is probable that for this my passport was marked in a peculiar manner. My companion, Pottinger, was not much searched; all suspicion seemed to fall on me.

The stage went on, and Pottinger and I sat on the bench in a mild drizzle at half-past three in the morning, with as miserable a country round about as mortal man ever beheld. By-and-bye one of the subs., a poor Pole, moved by compassion and the hope of reward, cautiously invited us to come into his den. He spoke a very little German and a little Latin (Pottinger was an Oxford man, and knew several heavy classics, Greek and Latin, perfectly by heart). The Pole had a fire, and we began to converse. He had heard of America, and that Polish exiles had been well treated there. I assured him that Poles were admired and cherished among us like pet lambs among children, and the adored of the adored. Then I spoke of Russian oppression, and the Pole, in utmost secrecy, produced a sabre which had been borne under Kosciusko, and showed us a silver coin--utterly prohibited--which had been struck during the brief period of the Polish revolution.

The Pole began to prepare _his_ coffee--for one. I saw that something must be done to increase the number of cups. He took up his book of prayers and asked of what religion we were. Of Pottinger I said contemptuously, "He is nothing but a heretic," but that as for myself, I had for some time felt a great inclination towards the _Panna_--Holy Virgin--and that it would afford me great pleasure to conform to the Polish Catholic Church, but that unfortunately I did not understand the language. To which he replied, that if _he_ were to read the morning service in Polish and I would repeat it word by word, that the _Panna_ would count it to my credit just as if I had. And as I was praying in good earnest for a breakfast, I trust that it was accepted. Down on our knees we went and began our orisons.

"Leland! you --- humbug!" exclaimed Pottinger.

"Go away, you infernal heretic, and don't disturb Christians at their devotions!" was my devout reply. So, prayers concluded, there _was_ coffee and rolls for three. And so in due time the coach returned. I rewarded our host with a thaler, and we returned to Breslau, of which place I noted that the natives never ate anything but sweet cakes for their first morning meal.

We stopped at Gorlitz, where I asked a woman standing in the half-doorway of the house of Jacob Bohme if that was his house. But she had never heard of such a man!

Dresden we thoroughly explored, and were at Leipzig during the great annual fair. These fairs, in those days, were sights to behold. Now they are succeeded by stupendous Expositions, which are far finer and inconceivably greater, yet which to me lack that kind of gypsy, side-show, droll, old-fashioned attraction of the ancient gatherings, even as Barnum's Colossal Moral Show of half-a-dozen circuses at once and twenty-five elephants does not _amuse_ anybody as the old clown in the ring and one elephant did of yore.

Thence to Berlin, where we were received with joy by the American students, who knew all about one another all over Germany. I very much enjoyed the great art gallery, and the conversation of those who, like myself, followed lectures on AEsthetics and the history of art. Thence to Magdeburg and Hanover, Dusseldorf--to cut it short, Holland and the chief cities in Belgium.

I noted one little change of custom in Berlin. In South Germany it was a common custom for students, when calling on a friend, to bring and leave generally a small bouquet. When I did this in Berlin my friends were astonished at it. This was an old Italian custom, as we may read in the beautiful One Hundred and Fifty _Brindisi_ or Toasts of Minto.

"Porto a voi un fior novello,
Ed, oh come vago e bello!"

In 1847 even a very respectable hotel in Holland was in any city quite like one of two centuries before. You entered a long antiquely-brown room, traversed full length by a table. Before every chair was placed a little metallic dish with hot coals, and a churchwarden pipe was brought to every visitor at once without awaiting orders. The stolid, literal, mechanical action of all the people's minds was then _wonderful_. An average German peasant was a genius compared to these fresh, rosy-fair, well-clad Hollanders. It was to me a new phase of human happiness in imbecility, or rather in undisturbed routine; for it is written that no bird can fly like a bullet and doze or sleep sweetly at the same time. Yet, as from the Huns, the most hideous wretches in the world, there arose by intermixture the Hungarians, who are perhaps the handsomest, so from the Knickerbocker Dutch sprang the wide-awake New Yorkers! The galleries in Holland and Belgium were to me joys unutterable and as the glory of life itself. Munich and Thiersch still inspired me; I seemed to have found a destiny in aesthetics or art, or what had been wanting in Princeton; that is, how the beautiful entered into life and was developed in history and made itself felt in all that was worth anything at all. Modern English writers on this subject--with exceptions like that of J. A. Symonds, whose Essays I cannot commend too highly--are in the same relation to its grand truth and higher inspiration as Emerson and Carlyle to Pantheism in its mightiest early forms. For several years the actual mastery of aesthetics gave me great comfort, and advanced me marvellously in thought to wider and far higher regions.

I forget where I parted with Pottinger; all that I can remember was, that early in November I arrived alone in Paris, going to some small hotel or other, and that as all the fatigues of the past many weeks of weary travel seemed to come upon me all at once, I went to bed, and never left the house till four o'clock P.M. the next day. On the next I found my way into the Latin Quarter, and secured a _not_ very superior room in the Place Saint-Michel, near the Ecole de Medecine, to which I moved my luggage.

I was very much astonished, while sitting alone and rather blue and overcast in my room, at the sudden entrance of a second cousin of mine named Frank Fisher, who was studying medicine in Paris. He had by some odd chance seen my name registered in the newspapers as having arrived at the hotel, and lost no time in looking me up. He lived on the other side of the Seine in the Boule Rouge, near the Rue Helder, a famous happy hunting-ground for _les biches_--I mean kids or the very dear. I must go forthwith to his quarters and dine, which I did, and so my introduction to Paris was fairly begun.

I attended at the College Louis le Grand, and at the Sorbonne, all or any lectures by everybody, including a very dull series on German literature by Philarete Chasles. I read books. _Inter alia_, I went through Dante's "Inferno" in Italian aided by Rivarol's translation, of which I possessed the _very copy_ stamped with the royal arms, and containing the author's autograph, which had been presented to the King. I picked it up on the Quai for a franc, for which sum I also obtained a first edition of _Melusine_, which Mr. Andrew Lang has described as such a delightful rarity. And I also ran a great deal about town. I saw Rachel, and Frederic Lemaitre, and Mlle. Dejazet, and many more at the great theatres, and attended assiduously at Bobinot's, which was a very small theatre in the Quartier Latin, frequented entirely by students and grisettes. I went to many a ball, both great and small, including the masked ones of the Grand Opera, and other theatres, at which there was dissipation and diablerie enough to satisfy the most ardent imagination, ending with the _grande ronde infernale_. I made many acquaintances, and if they were not by any means all highly respectable, they were at least generally very singular or notorious. One day I would dine at a place outside the Barrier, where we had a plain but fairly good dinner for a franc, _vin compris_, and where the honoured guest at the head of the table was the _chef des claqueurs_ or head of the paid applauders at all the theatres. Then it would be at a private _table-d'hote_ of _lorettes_, where there was after dinner a little private card-playing. I heard afterwards that two or three unprincipled gamblers found their way into this nest of poor little innocents and swindled them out of all their money. When I was well in funds I would dine at Magny's, where, in those days, one could get such a dinner for ten francs as fifty would not now purchase. When _au sec_, I fed at Flictoteau's--we called him _l'empoisonneur_--where hundreds of students got a meal of three courses with half a bottle of ordinaire, and not so bad either, for thirty sous.

It happened one night at Bobinot's that I sat in the front row of the stage-box, and by me a very pretty, modest, and respectable young girl, with her elder relations or friends. How it happened I do not know, but they all went out, leaving the young lady by me, and I did not speak to her.

Which "point" was at once seized by the house. The pit, as if moved by one diabolical inspiration, began to roar, "_Il l'embrassera_!" (He will kiss her), to which the gallery replied, "_Il ne l'embrassera pas_."

So they kept it up and down alternately like see-sawing, to an intonation; and be it remarked, by the way, that in French such a monotonous bore is known as a _scie_ or saw, as may be read in my romance in the French tongue entitled _Le Lutin du Chateau_, which was, I regret to say, refused by Hachette the publisher on account of its freedom from strait-laced, blue-nosed, Puritanical conventionalism, albeit he praised its literary merit and style, as did sundry other French scholars, if I may say it--who should not!

I saw that something must be done; so, rising, I waved my glove, and there was dead silence. Then I began at the top of my voice, in impassioned style in German, an address about matters and things in general, intermingled with insane quotations from Latin, Slavonian, anything. A change came o'er the spirit of the dream of my auditors, till at last they "took," and gave me three cheers. I had _sold_ the house!

There was in the Rue de la Harpe a house called the Hotel de Luxembourg. It was the fragment of a very old palace which had borne that name. It had still a magnificent Renaissance staircase, which bore witness to its former glory. Washington Irving, in one of his earlier tales, describes this very house and the rooms which I occupied in it so accurately, that I think he must have dwelt there. He tells that a student once, during the Revolution, finding a young lady in the street, took her home with him to that house. She had a black ribbon round her neck. He twitched it away, when--off fell her head. She had been guillotined, and revived by sorcery.

I soon removed to this house, where I had two very good-sized rooms. In the same establishment dwelt a small actress or two, and divers students, or men who were extremely busy all the winter in plotting a revolution. It was considered as a nest of rather doubtful and desperate characters, and an American _carabin_ or student of medicine told me of another who had fled from the establishment after a few days' experience, "for fear lest he should have his throat cut." But this was very silly, for none of us would have cut anybody's throat for any consideration. Some time ago I read the "Memoirs of Claude," who was the head of police in Paris during my time, and I was quite startled to find how many of the notorieties chronicled in his experiences had been known to me personally. As, for instance, Madame Marie Farcey, who he declares had a heart of gold, and with whom I had many a curious conversation. She was a handsome, very ladylike, suave sort of a person, who was never known to have an intrigue with any man, but who was "far and away" at the very head of all the immorality in Paris, as is well known to everybody who was deeply about town in the Forties. Claude himself I never knew, and it was to his possible great loss; for there came a time when I could, had I chosen, have given him information which would have kept him in office and Louis Philippe on the throne, and turned the whole course of the events of 1848, as I will now clearly and undeniably prove.

I did not live in the Hotel de Luxembourg for nothing, and I knew what was going on, and what was coming, and that there was to be the devil to pay. Claude tells us in his "Memoirs" that the revolution of February 24 took him so much by surprise that he had only three hours' previous notice of it, and really not time to remove his office furniture. Now, _one month_ before it burst out I wrote home to my brother that we were to have a revolution on the 24th of February, and that it would certainly succeed. Those who would learn all the true causes and reasons of this may find them in my forthcoming translation of "Heine's Letters from Paris," with my notes. The police of Paris were very clever, but the whole organisation was in so few hands, and we managed so well, that they never found us out. It was beyond all question the neatest, completest, and cheapest revolution ever executed. Lamartine himself was not allowed to know anything about it till he was wanted for President. And all over the Latin Quarter, on our side of the river, in cafes and balls and in shops, and talking to everybody, went the mysterious dwellers of the Hotel de Luxembourg, sounding public opinion and gathering signs and omens, and making recruits and laying trains, which, when fired, caused explosions all over Europe, and sounds which still live in history. And all the work was duly reported at head-quarters. The great secret of the success of the revolution was that it was in the hands of so few persons, who were all absolutely secret and trustworthy. If there had been a few more, the police would have found us out to a certainty. One who was suspected was "squared."

At last the ball opened. There was the great banquet, and the muttering storm, and angry mobs, and small _emeutes_. There is a mere alley--I forget its name--on the right bank, which runs down to the Seine, in which it is said that every Paris revolution has broken out. Standing at its entrance, I saw three or four shots fired and dark forms with guns moving in the alley, and then came General Changarnier with his cavalry and made a charge, before which I fled. I had to dodge more than one of these charges during the day. Before dark the rioting was general, and barricades were going up. The great storm-bell of Notre Dame rung all night long.

The next morning I rose, and telling Leonard Field, who lived in the same hotel with me, that I was going to work in earnest, loaded a pair of duelling-pistols, tied a sash round my waist _en revolutionnaire_, and with him went forth to business. First I went to the Cafe Rotonde, hard by, and got my breakfast. Then I sallied forth, and found in the Rue de la Harpe a gang of fifty insurgents, who had arms and a crowbar, but who wanted a leader. Seeing that I was one of them, one said to me, "Sir, where shall we make a barricade?" I replied that there was one already to the right and another farther down, but that a third close at hand was open. Without a word they handed me the crowbar, and I prized up the stones out of the pavement, while they undertook the harder work of piling them up. In a few minutes we had a solid wall eight feet high. Field had on light kid gloves, which formed an amusing contrast to his occupation. Then remembering that there was a defenceless spot somewhere else, I marched my troop thither, and built another barricade--all in grim earnest without talking.

I forgot to say that on the previous day I had witnessed a marvellously dramatic scene in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, by the market-house. There was across it an immense barricade, made of literally everything--old beds, waggons, stones, and rubbish--and it was guarded by a dense crowd of insurgents, armed or unarmed, of whom I was one. All around were at least three thousand people singing the _Marseillaise_ and the _Chant des Girondins_. There was a charge of infantry, a discharge of muskets, and fifteen fell dead, some almost touching me, while the mob around never ceased their singing, and the sounds of that tremendous and terrible chorus mingled with the dying groans and cries of the victims and the great roar of the bell of Notre Dame. It was like a scene in the opera. This very barricade has been described by Victor Hugo in detail, but not all which took place there, the whole scene being, in fact, far more dramatic or picturesque than he supposed it to have been.

It seemed to be predestined that I should see every great event in that drama, from the charge of Changarnier down to the very end, and I hereby declare that on my honour I set forth exactly what I saw with my own eyes, without a shade of colour off the truth.

There was a garcon named Edouard, who always waited on me in the Cafe Rotonde. While I was working for life at my second barricade, he came out holding a napkin, and examining my labour critically, waved it, exclaimed approvingly, "_Tres bien_, _Citoyen Charles_--_tres bien_!" It was his little joke for some days after to call me Citoyen Charles.

Returning down the Rue de la Harpe before our house my landlady exclaimed to me in alarm, "Hide your pistols! there is a _mouchard_ (spy of the police) following you." I believe that I, my blood being up, said something to the effect that if she would point him out I would shoot him forthwith, but the _mouchard_ had vanished. We had all got into cool earnestness by that time as regards shooting, having been in it constantly for three days.

Over the barricade came sprawling a tall ungainly red-haired Yankee, a student of medicine, whom I had met before, and who began to question me as to what I was doing. To which I replied, "What the devil do you want here, anyhow?" not being in a mood to be trifled with. To which he replied, "Nawthin', only a kinder lookin' reound. But what on airth--" "But are you for us, or against?" I cried. "Wall, I ain't on no side." "See here!" I cried in a rage; "those who are not for us are against us. Any one of those fellows you see round here would shoot you at once if I told him to, and if you don't clear out in double quick time, by God I will!" And at this he made himself scarce forthwith, "nor does he come again into this story."

Then I went down the street, and as a large supply of ammunition came to us from our friends, with the aid of a student of the Ecole Polytechnique, I distributed it to the mob. I had principally boxes of percussion-caps to give. I mention this because that young man has gone into history for it, and I have as good a right to a share in this extremely small exploit as he. Besides, though not wounded by the foe, I got a bad cut on my hand from a sharp paving-stone, and its scar lasted for many years.

I had that day many a chance to knock over a _piou-piou_ or shoot a soldier, as Field said, but I must confess that I felt an invincible repugnance to do so. The poor devils were, after all, only fighting unwillingly against us, and I well knew that unless they came over to our side all would be up with us. Therefore it was our policy to spare them as much as possible. I owe it to Field to state that through all the stirring scenes of the Revolution he displayed great calmness and courage.

All at once we heard a terrible outcry down the street. There was a tremendous massing of soldiers there, and to defend that barricade meant death to all defenders. I confess that I hesitated _one instant_, and than rushed headlong to join the fight. Merciful God! the troops had fraternised with us, and they were handing over their muskets to the mob, who were firing them in the air.

The scene was terribly moving. My men, who a minute before had expected to be shot, rushed up, embraced and kissed the soldiers, wept like children--in short, everybody kissed and embraced everybody else, and all my warriors got guns, and therewith I dismissed them, for I knew that the war was now about at an end.

There was a German-French student named Lenoir, and he, with Field and I, hearing that there was sharp work at the Tuileries, started thither in haste. And truly enough, when we got there, the very devil was loose, with guns firing and the guard-house all in a blaze. The door was burst open, and Field and I were among the very first who entered. We behaved very well, and did not steal anything. I remember that there was a great pile of plate and jewellery soon laid by the door.

I went into the throne-room. There was a great silver inkstand on the table, paper and pens, and we wrote, "Respect Property!" "Liberty for Italy and Hungary!" and hung the papers up around the room. I wrote one or two myself, and _touched_ the inkstand for luck, in case I should ever write about the event.

It was a great and indeed a very touching and beautiful sight, for all present were inspired with a feeling like that of men who have passed a terrible, racking crisis. _Nous avons vaincu_! Yes, we had conquered. And the Revolution had marched sternly on through years of discontent unto the year of aggravation, Forty-Eight, when there was thunder all round in Europe--and after all, France at one desperate bound had again placed herself in the van! And it was first decided by the taking of the Tuileries!

Let me dwell an instant on some minor incidents. Many of the insurgents had been all night without food. The royal dinner was cooking in the kitchen, and it was droll to see the men helping themselves and walking off with the chickens and joints on their bayonets. I had never seen a royal kitchen before. Soon all along the street loafers were seen with jars of preserved cherries, &c., emptying them into their caps. I went into the burning guard-house. A savage fellow offered me a great tin pail, containing about two gallons of wine, which he offered me to drink. I was very thirsty, but I had a scruple against plunder. Grasping his sword, he cried, "_Buvez_, _citoyen_; _c'est du vin royal_." Not wishing to have a duel _a l'outrance_ with a fellow-patriot, and, as I said, being thirsty, I took a good long pull. We mutually winked and smiled. He took a pull also to my health and Liberty. We both "pulled."

I forgot to mention how my cohort had partially armed themselves that morning. They burst into every house and carried off all the arms they could find, and then wrote in chalk over the doors--"_Armes donnees_." The Musee Cluny was very near my hotel and I saw it plundered. Such a sight! I saw one vagabond on a fine stolen horse, with a mediaeval helmet on his head, a lance in his hand, and a six-feet double-handed sword or flamberg hanging behind his back. He appeared to be quite drunk, and reared about in eccentric _gambades_. This genius of Freedom reappeared at the Tuileries. Mortal man was never under such temptation to steal as I was--just one fifteenth-century poignard as a souvenir--from that Museum--in fact, it was my _duty_ at that instant to do so, whispered the tempter in my ear. But I resisted; and lo! it came to pass in later years that I became possessed, for a mere trifle, in Dresden, of the court dagger, in exquisite carved ivory, which was originally made for Francis II. of France, and which has been declared by competent authority to be authentic. Owing to his short reign there are very few relics of this monarch.

Some of the blackguards in the mob drew out the royal carriages, set fire to them, and rolled them gaily along the _quai_.

A noble-looking very old gentleman in military costume spoke to me before the Tuileries, and saying that he had seen all of the old Revolution and Napoleon's wars, actually with tears in his eyes implored me to use my influence to prevent any plundering. "_Respectez la properte_." There were very few gentlemen indeed among the insurgents. I only observed two or three in our quarter, and they were all from our hotel, or rather lodgings. But the next day every swell in Paris came out as an insurgent. _They_ had all worked at barricades--so they said. I certainly had not seen any of them at work.

That afternoon I strolled about with Field. We came to a barricade. A very pretty girl guarded it with a sword. She sternly demanded the parole or countersign. I caught hold of her and kissed her, and showed my pistols. She laughed. As I was armed with dirk and pistols, wore a sash, and was unmistakably a Latin Quarter _etudiant_, as shown by long hair, rakish cap on one side, red neck-tie, and single eyeglass, I was everywhere treated as a man and brother, friend and equal, warrior, and--by the girls--almost like a first-cousin. Field shared the glory, of course. And we made a great deal out of it, and were thought all the more of in consequence. _Vive la jeunesse_!

Coming to a corner, we heard three or four musket-shots. We turned the corner, and saw a man lying dead or dying in the last quiver, while at his head there was at once placed a stick with a paper on it, on which was written with lead-pencil, "_Mort aux voleurs_!"

The day before, one insurgent had offered me a beautiful old silver-mounted sword for one of my pistols, fire-arms being so much in demand, but I declined the offer.

The day after, I went into a cafe. There were some students there who had laid their arms on a table. There was a very notorious little _lorette_, known as Pochardinette, who was so called because she was always half-tipsy. She was even noted in a popular song as--

"La Pochardinette,
Qui ne sait refuser
Ni la ponche a pleine verre,
Ni sa bouohe a baiser."

Pochardinette picked up a horse-pistol, when its owner cried, "Let that be! That is not the kind of weapon which _you_ are accustomed to manage!" I stared at him with respect, for he had actually translated into French an epigram by Jacopo Sannazar, word for word!

I should here mention that on the 24th there was actually a period of two hours during which France had no Government--that is, none that it knew of. Then there appeared on the walls all at once small placards giving the list of names of the _Gouvernement Provisoire_. Now, during this period of suspense there appeared at the Hotel de Ville a mysterious stranger; a small, bustling, active individual, who came in and announced that a new Government had been formed, that he himself had been appointed Minister, that France expected every man to do his duty, and that no one should lose their places who conformed to his orders. "I appoint," he said, "So-and-so to take command of Vincennes. Here, you--_Chose_! notify him at once and send orders. I believe that _Tel-et-tel_ had better take Marseilles. Do any of you fellows know of a good governor for Mauritius?" So _he_ governed France for half-an-hour and then disappeared, and nobody ever knew to this day who this stupendous joker was. A full account of it all appeared some time after, and the cream of the joke was that some of his appointed ones contrived to keep their places. This brief dynasty has not been recorded in any work save this!