"Now my task is smoothly done,
I can fly or I can run
Quickly to the green earth's end,
Where the bowed welkin low doth bend;
And from thence can soar as soon
To the corners of the moon.
Mortals that would follow me,
Love virtue; she alone is free,
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime;
Or if virtue feeble were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her."
CHAPTER IV
THE GIANT IN THE SPIKED HELMET
In January of 1870, having decided to teach rather than preach, I embarked for Germany to enjoy a year of foreign study. Like Western professors in general (to borrow the witticism of President Eliot) I occupied not so much a chair as a sofa, and felt that I needed enlargement for the performance of my functions.
I think I saw a certain caricature first in Munich at the end of July, then in two or three Swiss cities, then in Paris at the end of August, then in Brussels and London; for it was popular, and the print-shops had it everywhere. It was a map of Europe where the different countries were represented by comical figures, each meant to hit off the peculiarities of the nation it stood for, according to popular apprehension. For Prussia there was an immense giant, one of whose knees was on the stomach of Austria represented as a lank figure utterly prostrate, while the other foot threatened to crush South-western Germany. One hand menaced France, whose outline the designer had managed to give rudely in the figure of a Zouave in a fierce attitude; and the other was thrust toward Russia, a huge colossus with Calmuck dress, and features. The most conspicuous thing in the giant's dress was a helmet with a spike projecting from the top, much too large for the head of the wearer, and therefore falling over his eyes until they were almost blinded by it. The style of the helmet was that of the usual head-dress of the Prussian soldier. The caricature generally was not bad, and the hit at Prussia, half crushed and blinded under the big helmet, was particularly good. Throughout her whole history Prussia is either at war, or getting ready for war, or lying exhausted through wounds and recovering strength. In Prussia you found things of pugnacious suggestion always, and in the most incongruous connections. Study the schools, and there was something to call up the soldier. Study the church, and even there was a burly polemic quality which you can trace back from to-day to the time when the Prussian bishops were fighting knights. Study the people in their quietest moods, in their homes, among their recreations, indeed, among the graves of those they honour as the greatest heroes, and you found the same overhanging shadow of war. This predominant martial quality showed itself in ways sometimes brutal, sometimes absurd, sometimes sublime.
I visited Prussia at a time of entire peace, for at my departure I crossed the frontier (or that of the North German Confederation, the whole of which, for convenience's sake, we will call Prussia) on the very day when King William was shouldering aside so roughly at Ems Benedetti and the famous French demands. The things to which I gave attention for the most part were the things which belong to peace; yet as I arrange my recollections I find that something military runs through the whole of them. As one's letters when he has read them are filed away on the pointed wire standing on the desk, so as regards my Prussian experiences everything seems to have been filed away on the spike of a helmet.
Going out early one May morning to get my first sight of Berlin, I stood presently in a broad avenue. In the centre ran a wide promenade lined with tall, full-foliaged trees, with a crowded roadway on each side bordered by stately buildings. Close by me a colossal equestrian statue in bronze towered up till the head of the rider was on a level with the eaves of the houses. The rider was in cocked hat, booted and spurred, the eye turned sharp to the left as if reconnoitring, the attitude alert, life-like, as if he might dismount any moment if he chose. In the distance down the long perspective of trees was a lofty gate supported by columns, with a figure of Victory on the top in a chariot drawn by horses. Close at hand again, under the porch of a square strong structure, stood two straight sentinels. An officer passed in a carriage on the farther side of the avenue. Instantly the two sentinels stepped back in concert as if the same clock-work regulated their movements, brought their shining pieces with perfect precision to the "present," stood for an instant as if hewn from stone, the spiked helmets above the blond faces inclining backward at the same angle, then precisely together fell into the old position. The street was "Unter den Linden." The tall statue was the memorial of Frederick the Great. The gate down the long vista was the Brandenburger Thor, surmounted by the charioted Victory which Napoleon carried to Paris after Jena and which came back after Waterloo. The solid building was the palace of iron-grey old King William; and when the clock-work sentinels went through their salute, I got my first sight of that famous Prussian discipline, against which before the summer was through supple France was to crush its teeth all to fragments, like a viper that has incautiously bitten at a file.
There never was a place with aspect more military than Berlin even in peaceful times. In many quarters towered great barracks for the troops. The public memorials were almost exclusively in honour of great soldiers. There were tall columns, too, to commemorate victories or the crushing out of revolutionary spirit; rarely, indeed, in comparison, a statue to a man of scientific or literary or artistic eminence. Frederick sits among the tree-tops of Unter den Linden, and about his pedestal are life-size figures of the men of his age whom Prussia holds most worthy of honour. At the four corners ride the Duke of Brunswick and cunning Prince Heinrich, old Ziethen and fiery Seydlitz. Between are a score or more of soldiers of lesser note, only soldiers, spurred and sabre-girt,—except at the very back; and there, just where the tail of Frederick's horse droops over, stand—whom think you?—no others than Leasing, critic and poet, most gifted and famous; and Kant, peer of Plato and Bacon, one of the most gifted brains of all time. Just standing room for them among the hoofs and uniforms at the tail of Frederick's horse! Every third man one met in Berlin was a soldier off duty. Batteries of steel guns rolled by at any time, obedient to their bugles. Squadrons of Uhlans in uniforms of green and red, the pennons fluttering from the ends of their lances, rode up to salute the king. Each day at noon, through the roar of the streets, swelled the finest martial music; first a grand sound of trumpets, then a deafening roll from a score of brazen drums. A heavy detachment of infantry wheeled out from some barracks, ranks of strong brown-haired young men stretching from sidewalk to sidewalk, neat in every thread and accoutrement, with the German gift for music all, as the stride told with which they beat out upon the pavement the rhythm of the march, dropping sections at intervals to do the unbroken guard duty at the various posts. Frequently whole army corps gathered to manoeuvre at the vast parade-ground by the Kreuzberg in the outskirts. On Unter den Linden is a strong square building, erected, after the model of a Roman fortress, to be the quarters of the main guard. The officers on duty at Berlin came here daily at noon to hear military music and for a half-hour's talk. They came always in full uniform, a collection of the most brilliant colours, hussars in red, blue, green, and black, the king's body-guard in white with braid of yellow and silver, in helmets that flashed as if made from burnished gold, crested with an eagle with out-spread wings. The men themselves were the handsomest one can see; figures of the finest symmetry and stature, trained by every athletic exercise, and the faces often so young and beautiful! Counts and barons were there from Pomerania and old Brandenburg, where the Prussian spirit is most intense, and no nobility is nobler or prouder. They were blue-eyed and fair-haired descendants perhaps of the chieftains that helped Herman overcome Varus, and whose names may be found five hundred years back among the Deutsch Ritters that conquered Northern Europe from heathendom, and thence all the way down to now, occurring in martial and princely connection. It was the acme of martial splendour.
"But how do you bear it all?" you say to your Prussian friend, with whom you stand looking on at the base of Billow's statue. "Is not this enormous preparation for bloodshed something dreadful? Then the tax on the country to support it all, the withdrawing of such a multitude from the employments of peace." Your friend, who had been a soldier himself, would answer: "We bear it because we must. It is the price of our existence, and we have got used to it; and, after all, with the hardship come great benefits. Every able-bodied young Prussian must serve as a soldier, be he noble or low-born, rich or poor. If he cannot read or write, he must learn. He must be punctual, neat, temperate, and so gets valuable habits. His body is trained to be strong and supple. Shoemaker and banker's son, count, tailor, and farmer march together, and community of feeling comes about. The great traditions of Prussian history are the atmosphere they breathe, and they become patriotic. The soldier must put off marrying, perhaps half forget his trade, and come into life poor; for who can save on nine cents a day, with board and clothes? But it is a wonder if he is not a healthy, well-trained, patriotic man." So talked your Prussian; and however much of a peace-man you might be, you could not help owning there was some truth in it. If you bought a suit of clothes, the tailor jumped up from his cross-legged position, prompt and full-chested, with tan on his face he got in campaigning; and it is hard to say he had lost more than he gained in his army training. If you went into a school, the teacher, with a close-clipped beard and vigorous gait, who had a scar on his face from Königgrätz, seemed none the worse for it, though he might have read a few books the less and lost his student pallor. At any rate, bad or good, so it was; and so, said the Prussian, it must be. Eternal vigilance and preparation! I went in one day to the arsenal. The flags which Prussian armies had taken from almost every nation in Europe were ranged against the walls by the hundred; shot-shattered rags of silk, white standards of Austria embroidered with gold, Bavaria's blue checker, above all the great Napoleonic symbol, the N surrounded by its wreath. This was the memorable tapestry that hung the walls, and opposite glittered the waiting barrels and bayonets till one could almost believe them conscious, and burning to do as much as the flintlocks that won the standards. There was a needle-gun there or somewhere for every able-bodied man, and somewhere else uniform and equipments. When I landed in February on the bank of the Weser, the most prominent object was the redoubt with the North German flag. When in midsummer I crossed the Bavarian frontier among a softer people, the last marked object was the old stronghold of Coburg, battered by siege after siege for a thousand years. It was the spiked helmet at the entrance and again at the exit; and from entrance to exit, few places or times were free from some martial suggestion. It was a nation that had come to power mainly through war, and been schooled into the belief that its mailed fists alone could guarantee its life.
I visited a primary school. The little boys of six came with knapsacks strapped to their backs for their books and dinners, instead of satchels. At the tap of a bell they formed themselves into column and marched like little veterans to the schoolroom door. I visited a school for boys of thirteen or fourteen. Casting my eyes into the yard, I saw the spiked helmet in the shape of the half-military manoeuvres of a class which the teacher of gymnastics was training for the severer drill of five or six years later. I visited the "prima," or upper class of a gymnasium, and here was the spiked helmet in a connection that seemed at first rather irreverent. After all, however, it was only thoroughly Prussian, and deserved to be looked upon as a comical incongruity rather than gravely blamed. A row of cheap pictures hung side by side upon the wall. First Luther, the rougher characteristics of the well-known portrait somewhat exaggerated. The shoulders were even larger than common. The bony buttresses of the forehead over the eyes, too, as they rose above the strong lower face, were emphasised, looking truly as though, if tongue and pen failed to make a way, the shoulders could push one, and, if worse came to worst, the head would butt one. Next to Luther was a head of Christ; then in the same line, with nothing in the position or quality of the pictures to indicate that the subjects were any less esteemed, a row of royal personages, whose military trappings were made particularly plain. It was all characteristic enough. The Reformer's figure stood for the stalwart Protestantism of the Prussian character, still living and militant in a way hard for us to imagine; the portraits of the royal soldiers stood for its combative loyalty, ready to meet anything for king and fatherland; and the head of Christ for its zealous faith, which, however it may have cooled away among some classes of the people, was still intense in the nation at large. I visited the best school for girls in Berlin, and it was singular to find the spiked helmet, among those retiring maidens even, and this time not hung upon the wall nor outside in the yard. The teacher of the most interesting class I visited—a class in German literature—was a man of forty-five, of straight, soldierly bearing, a grey, martial moustache, and energetic eye. He told me, as we walked together in the hall, waiting for the exercise to commence, that he had been a soldier, and it so happened that among the ballads in the lesson for that day was one in honour of the Prussian troops at Rossbach. Over this the old soldier broke out into an animated lecture, which grew more and more earnest as he went forward; he showed how the idea of faithfulness to duty had become obscured, but was enforced again by the philosopher Kant in his teaching, and then brought into practice by the great Frederick. The veteran plainly thought there was no duty higher than that owed to the schwarzer Adler, the black eagle of Prussia. Then came an account of the French horse before Rossbach; how they rode out from Weimar, the troopers, before they went, ripping open the beds on which they had slept and scattering the feathers to the wind to plague the housewives,—a piece of ruthlessness that came home thoroughly to the young housekeepers; then how der alte Fritz, lying in wait behind Janus Hill, with General Seydlitz and Field-marshal Keith, suddenly rushed out and put them all to rout. The soldier was in a fever of patriotism and rage against the French before his description was finished, and the faces of the girls kindled in response. "They will some time," I thought, "be lovers, wives, mothers of Prussian soldiers themselves, and this training will keep alive in the home the national fire."
Admirable schools they all were, the presence of the spiked helmet notwithstanding, and crowning them in the great Prussian educational system came the famous universities. That at Berlin counted its students by thousands, its professors by hundreds. There was no branch of human knowledge without its teacher. One could study Egyptian hieroglyphics or the Assyrian arrow-head inscriptions. A new pimple could hardly break out on the blotched face of the moon, without a lecture from a professor next day to explain the theory of its development. The poor earthquakes were hardly left to shake in peace an out-of-the-way strip of South American coast or Calabrian plain, but a German professor violated their privacy, undertook to see whence they came and whither they went, and even tried to predict when they would go to shaking again. The vast building of the University stood on Unter den Linden, opposite the palace of the king. Large as it was, its halls were crowded at the end of every hour by the thousand or two of young men, who presently disappeared within the lecture-rooms. Here in past years had been Hegel and Fichte, the brothers Grimm, the brothers Humboldt, Niebuhr, and Carl Ritter. Here in my time, were Lepsius and Curtius, Virchow and Hoffman, Ranke and Mommsen,—the world's first scholars in the past and present. The student selected his lecturers, then went day by day through the semester to the plain lecture-rooms, taking notes diligently at benches which had been whittled well by his predecessors, and where he too most likely carved his own autograph and perhaps the name of the dear girl he adored,—for Yankee boys have no monopoly of the jack-knife.
Where could one find the spiked helmet in the midst of the scholastic quiet and diligence of a German university? It was visible enough in more ways than one. Here was one manifestation. Run down the long list of professors and teachers in the Anzeiger, and you would find somewhere in the list the Fechtmeister, instructor in fighting, master of the sword exercise, and he was pretty sure to be one of the busiest men in the company. To most German students, a sword, or Schläger, was as necessary as pipe or beer-mug; not a slender fencing-foil, with a button on the point, and slight enough to snap with a vigorous thrust, but a stout blade of tempered steel, ground sharp. With these weapons the students perpetrated savageries, almost unrebuked, which struck an American with horror. Duels were of frequent occurrence, taking place sometimes at places and on days regularly set apart for the really bloody work. The fighters were partially protected by a sort of armour, and the wounds inflicted were generally more ghastly than dangerous; though a son of Bismarck was said to have been nearly killed at Bonn a few years before, and there was sometimes serious maiming. Perhaps one may say it was nothing but very rough play, but it was the play of young savages, whose sport was nothing to them without a dash of cruel rage. The practice dates from the time when the Germans wore wolf-skins, and were barbarians roaring in their woods. Perhaps the university authorities found it too inveterate a thing to be done away with; perhaps, too, they felt, thinking as it were under their spiked helmets, that after all it had a value, making the young men cool in danger and accustoming them to weapons. We, after all, cannot say too much. Often our young American students in Germany take to the Schläger as gracefully and naturally as game-cocks to spurs. The most noted duellist at one of the universities that winter was a burly young Westerner, who had things at first all his own way. A still burlier Prussian from Tübingen, however, appeared at last, and so carved our valiant borderer's face, that thereafter with its criss-cross scars it looked like a well-frequented skating-ground. Football, too, in America probably kills and maims more in a year than all the German duels.
To crown all, the schools and University at Berlin were magnificently supplemented in the great Museum, a vast collection, where one might study the rise and progress of civilisation in every race of past ages that has had a history, the present condition of perhaps every people, civilised or wild, under the sun. In one great hall you were among the satin garments and lacquered furniture of China; in another there was the seal-skin work of the Esquimaux stitched with sinew. Now you sat in a Tartar tent, now among the war-clubs, the conch-shell trumpets, the drums covered with human skin of the Polynesians. Here it was the feathery finery of the Caribs, here the idols and trinkets of the negroes of Soudan. There too, in still other halls, was the history of our own race; the maces the Teutons and Norsemen fought with, the torcs of twisted gold they wore about their necks, the sacrificial knives that slew the victims on the altars of Odin; so, too, what our fathers have carved and spun, moulded, cast, and portrayed, until we took up the task of life. In another place you found the great collection made in Egypt by Lepsius. The visitor stood within the facsimile of a temple on the banks of the Nile. On the walls and lotus-shaped columns were processions of dark figures at the loom, at the work of irrigation, marching as soldiers, or mourners at funerals,—exact copies of the original delineations. There were sphinx and obelisk, coffins of kings, mummies of priest and chieftain, the fabrics they wore, the gems they cut, the scrolls they engrossed, the tomb in which they were buried. Stepping into another section, you were in Assyria, with the alabaster lions and plumed genii of the men of Nineveh and Babylon. The walls again were brilliant, now with the splendour of the palaces of Nebuchadnezzar; the captives building temples, the chivalry sacking cities, the princes on their thrones. Here too was Etruria revealed in her sculpture and painted vases; and here too the whole story of Greece. Passing through these wonderful halls, you reviewed a thousand years and more, almost from the epoch of Cadmus, through the vicissitudes of empire and servitude, until Constantinople was sacked by the Turks. The rude Pelasgic altar, the sculptured god of Praxiteles, then down through the ages of decay to the ugly painting of the Byzantine monk in the Dark Ages. So too the whole history of Rome; the long heave of the wave from Romulus until it becomes crested with the might and beauty of the Augustan age; the sad subsidence from that summit to Goth and Hun. There was architecture which the eyes of the Tarquins saw, there were statues of the great consuls of the Republic, the luxury of the later Empire. You saw it not only in models, but sometimes in actual relics. One's blood thrilled when he stood before a statue of Julius Caesar, whose sculptor, it is reasonable to believe, wrought from the life. It was broken and discoloured, as it came from the Italian ruin where it had lain since the barbarian raids. But the grace had not left the toga folded across the breast, nor was the fine Roman majesty gone from the head and face,—a head small, but high, with a full and ample brow, a nose with the true eagle curve, and thin, firm lips formed to command; a statue most subduing in its simple dignity and pathetic in its partial ruin. And all this was free to the world as the air of heaven almost. No fee for admission; the only requisitions, not to handle, orderly behaviour, and decent neatness in attire. Here I saw too, when I ascended the steps between the great bronze groups of statuary as I entered, and again the last thing as I left, the spiked helmet on the head of the stiff sentinel always posted at the door.
The German home was affectionate and genial. The American, properly introduced, was sure of a generous welcome, for it was hard to find a German who had not many relatives beyond the Atlantic. There were courteous observances which at first put one a little aback. Sneezing, for instance, was not a thing that could be done in a corner. If the family were a bit old-fashioned, you would be startled and abashed by hearing the "prosits" and "Gesundheits" from the company, wishes that it might be for your advantage and health sonorously given, with much friendly nodding in your direction. This is a curious survival of an old superstition that sneezing perhaps opened a passage through which an evil spirit might enter the body. As you rose from the table it was the old-fashioned way, too, to go through with a general hand-shaking, and a wish to every one that the supper might set well. The Germans are long-lived, and almost every domestic hearthstone supports the easy-chairs of grandparents. Grandfather was often fresh and cheerful, the oracle and comforter of the children, treated with deference by those grown up, and presented to the guest as the central figure of the home. As the younger ones dropped off to bed and things grew quieter, grandfather's chair was apt to be the centre toward which all tended, and, of course, the old man talked about his youth. Here are the reminiscences I heard once at the end of a merry evening, and at other times I heard something not unlike: "Children and grandchildren and guest from over the sea, when I was a boy, Prussia was struggling with the first Napoleon; and when I was eighteen I marched myself under Blücher beyond the Rhine. Sometimes we went on the run, sometimes we got lifts in relays of waggons, and so I have known the infantry even to make now and then fifty miles a day. Matters were pressing, you see (sehen Sie 'mal). At last we crossed at Coblentz, and got from there into Belgium the first days of June. We met the French at Ligny,—a close, bitter fight,—and half my battalion were left behind there where they had stood. We were a few paces off, posted in a graveyard, when the French cavalry rode over old Marshal Vorwärts, lying under his horse. I saw the rush of the French, then the countercharge of the Prussian troopers when missed the General and drove the enemy back till they found him again; though what it all meant we never knew till it was over. Then, after mighty little rest, we marched fast and far, with cannon-thunder in our ears in a constant mutter, always growing louder, until in the afternoon we came at a quickstep through a piece of woods out upon the plain by Waterloo, where they had been fighting all day. Our feet sucked in the damp ground, the wet grain brushed our knees, as our compact column spread out into more open order and went into fire. What a smoke there was about La Haye Sainte and Hougomont, with now lines of red infantry, or a column in dark blue, or a mass of flashing cuirassiers hidden for a moment, then reappearing! It was take and give, hot and heavy, for an hour or so about Planchenoit. A ball grazed my elbow and another went through my cap; but at sunset the French were broken, and we swept after the rout as well as we could through the litter, along the southward roads. We were at a halt for a minute, I remember, when a rider in a chapeau with a plume, and a hooked nose underneath, trotted up, wrapped in a military cloak, and somebody said it was Wellington." Grandfather was sure to be at a white heat before he had finished, and so, too, his audience. The athletic student grandson, with a deep scar across his cheek from a Schläger cut, rose and paced the room. The Fräulien, his sister, to whom the retired grenadier has told the story of the feather-beds at Weimar, showed in her eves she remembered it all. "Yes, friend American!" breaks in the father of the family, "and it all must be done over again. Sooner or later it must come, a great struggle with France; the Latin race or the Teutonic, which shall be supreme in Europe? We are ready now; arsenals filled, horses waiting, equipments for everybody. Son Fritz there has his uniform ready, and somewhere there is one for me. Donnerwetter! If they get into Prussia, they'll find a tough old Landsturm! Only let Vater Wilhelm turn his hand, and to-morrow close upon a million trained and well-armed troops could be stepping to the drum." It was an evening at the end of June. Napoleon was having the finishing touches put to the new Opera House at Paris, thinking, so far as the world could tell, of nothing more important than how many imperial eagles it would do to put along the cornice. King William was packing for Ems, designing to be back at the peaceful unveiling of his father's statue the first week in August. Bismarck was at his Pomeranian estate, in poor health, it was said, plotting nothing but to circumvent his bodily trouble. In less than a month full-armed Prussia was on the march. I could understand the readiness, when I thought of the spiked helmet I had seen in the Prussian home that quiet summer night.
The German Friedhof, or burying-ground, had never the extent or magnificence of some American cemeteries. Even near the cities it was small and quiet, showing, however, in the well-kept mounds and stones there was no want of care. Every old church, too, was floored with the memorial tablets of those buried beneath, and bare upon walls and columns monuments in the taste of the various ages that have come and gone since the church was built. Graves of famous men, here as everywhere, were places of pilgrimage, and here as everywhere to see which are the most honoured tombs, was no bad way of judging the character of the people. Among the scholars of Germany there have been no greater names than those of Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, brothers not far apart in the cradle, not far apart in death, who lived and worked together their full threescore years and ten. They were two wonderful old men, with faces—as I saw them together in a photograph shown me by Hermann Grimm, the well-known son of Wilhelm—full of intellectual strength, and yet with the sweetness and innocence of children. They lie now side by side in the Matthäi Kirchhof at Berlin, in graves precisely similar, with a lovely rose-bush scattering petals impartially on the turf above both, and solid twin stones at their heads, meant to endure apparently as long as their fame. Hither come a large and various company of pilgrims,—children who love the brothers Grimm for their fairy-tales, young students who have been kindled by their example, and grey old scholars who respect their achievements as the most marvellous work of the marvellous German erudition. The little North German city, Weimar, is closely associated with the great literary men of the last hundred years. Here several of them accomplished their best work under the patronage of an enlightened duke, and finally found their graves. An atmosphere of reverend quiet seemed to hang over it as I walked through its shaded streets,—streets where there is never bustle, and which appear to be always remembering the great men who have walked in them. In the burying-ground in the outskirts I found the mausoleum of the ruling house, a decorated hall of marble with a crypt underneath in which are the coffins. The members of the Saxe-Weimar family for many generations are here; the warlike ancestor with his armour rusting on the dusty lid, grand-duke and duchess, and the child that died before it attained the coronet. But far more interesting than any of these are two large plain caskets of oak, lying side by side at the foot of the staircase by which you descend. In these are the bones of Goethe and Schiller. The heap of wreaths, some of them still fresh, which lay on the tops, the number on the coffin of Schiller being noticeably the larger, showed how green their memory had been kept in the heart of the nation. I was only one of a great multitude of pilgrims who are coming always, their chief errand being to see the graves of these famous dead within the quiet town. In the side of the Schloss Kirche, in the city of Wittenberg, is an old archway, with pillars carved as if twisted and with figures of saints overhead, the sharpness of the cutting being somewhat broken and worn away through time. It is the doorway which rang loud three hundred years ago to the sound of Luther's hammer as he nailed up his ninety-five theses. Within the church, about midway toward the altar and near the wall, the guide lifts an oaken trap-door and shows you, beneath, the slab which covers Luther's ashes. Just opposite, in a sepulchre precisely similar, lies Melancthon, and in the chancel near by, in tombs rather more stately, the electors of Saxony that befriended the reformers. A spot worthy indeed to be a place of pilgrimage! attracting not only those who bless the men, but those who curse them. Charles V. and Alva stood once on the pavement where the visitor now stands, and the Emperor commanded the stone to be removed from the grave of Luther. Did the body turn in its coffin at the violation? It might well have been so, for never was there fiercer hate. For three centuries the generations have trooped hitherward, more often drawn in reverence, but sometimes through very hatred, a multitude too mighty to be numbered. But there is a grave in Prussia, where, if I mistake not, the pilgrims are more numerous and the interest, for the average Prussian, deeper than scholar or poet or reformer call out. The garrison church at Potsdam has a plain name and is a plain edifice, when one thinks of the sepulchre it holds. Hung upon the walls are dusty trophies; there are few embellishments besides. You make your way through the aisles among the pews where the regiments sit at service, marching from their barracks close by, then through a door beneath the pulpit enter a vault lighted by tapers along the wall. Two heavy coffins stand on the stone floor,—the older one that of Frederick William I., that despot, partially insane, perhaps, who yet accomplished great things for Prussia; the other that of his famous son, Frederick the Great, whose sword cut the path by which Prussia advanced to her vast power. On the copper lid formerly lay that sword, until the great Napoleon when he stood there, feeling a twinge of jealousy perhaps over the dead leader's fame, carried it away with him. Father and son lie quietly enough now side by side, though their relations in life were stormy. About the great soldier's sleep every hour rolls the drumbeat from the garrison close by. The tramp of the columns as they come in to worship jar the warrior's ashes. The dusky standards captured in the Seven Years' War droop about him. The hundred intervening years have blackened them, already singed in the fire of Zorndorf, Leuthen, and Torgau. The moth makes still larger the rent where the volleys passed. The spiked helmet is even here among the tombs; and schooled as the Prussians are among the din of trumpets and smoke of wars, no other among the mighty graves in their land holds dust, in their thought, so heroic.
Seven hundred years ago Frederick's ancestor Conrad, the younger son of a family of some rank, but quite undistinguished, riding down from the little stronghold of Hohenzollern in Swabia, with nothing but a good head and arm, won favour with the Emperor Barbarossa and became at last Burggraf of Nuremberg. I saw the old castle in which this Conrad lived and his line after him for several generations. It rises among fortifications the plan for which Albert Dürer drew, with narrow windows in the thick masonry of the towers, the battlements worn by the pacing to and fro of sentinels in armour, and an ancient linden in the court-yard, planted by an empress a thousand years ago it is said, with as green a canopy to throw over the tourist to-day as it threw over those old Hohenzollerns. Conrad transmitted to his descendants his good head and strong arm, until at length becoming masters of Baireuth and Anspach, they were Margraves and ranked among important princes. Their seat now was at Culmbach, in the great castle of the Plessenburg. I saw one May morning the grey walls of the old nest high on its cliff at the junction of the red and white Main, threatening still, for it is now a Bavarian prison. The power of the house grew slowly. In one age it got Brandenburg, in another the great districts of Ost and West Preussen; now it was possessions in Silesia, now again territory on the Rhine. Power came sometimes through imperial gift, sometimes through marriage, sometimes through purchase or diplomacy or blows. From poor soldiers of fortune to counts, from counts to princes, from princes to electors, and at last kings. Sometimes they are unscrupulous, sometimes feeble, sometimes nobly heroic and faithful; more often strong than weak in brain and hand. The Hohenzollern tortoise keeps creeping forward in its history, surpassing many a swift hare that once despised it in the race. I believe it is the oldest princely line in Europe. There is certainly none whose history on the whole is better. Margraf George of Anspach-Baireuth was perhaps the finest character among the Protestant princes of the Reformation, without whom the good fight could not have been fought. When Charles V. besieged Metz in the winter (which, with Lorraine, had just been torn from Germany by the French), and was compelled by the cold to withdraw, it was a Hohenzollern prince, one of the first soldiers of the time, who led the rear-guard over ground which another Hohenzollern, Prince Frederick Charles, has again made famous. Later, in Frederick the Great, the house furnished one of the firmest hands that ever held a royal sceptre. His successors have been men of power.
They are good types of their stock, and Prussia is worthy of the leadership to which she is advancing. In the cathedral of Speyer stand the statues of the mighty German Kaisers, who six hundred years ago wore the purple, and, after their wild battle with the elements of disorder about them, were buried at last in its crypts. They are majestic figures for the most part, idealised by the sculptor, and yet probably not far beyond nature; for the imperial dignity was not hereditary, but given to the man chosen for it, and the choice was often a worthy one. They were leaders in character as well as station, and it is right to give their images the bearing of men strong in war and council. I felt that if the ancient dignity was to be revived in our own day, and the sceptre of Barbarossa and Rudolph of Hapsburg to be extended again over a united Germany, there had been few princes more worthy to hold it than the modern Hohenzollern.
In speaking of this great people so as to give the best idea of them in a short space, I have seized on what seemed to me in those days the most salient thing, and described various phases of their life as pervaded by it. The fighting spirit was bred in their bones. They were a nation of warriors almost as much as the Spartans, and stood ready on the instant to obey the tap of the drum calling to arms. Such constant suggestions of war were painful. The spiked helmet is never an amiable head-dress; "but," said the representative Prussian, "there is no help for it. We have been a weak people wedged in between powerful unscrupulous neighbours, and have had a life-and-death struggle to wage almost constantly with one or the other of these, or all at once. And in what way is our situation different now? Is Russia less ambitious? How many swords has France beaten into ploughshares? What pruning-hooks have been made from the spears of Austria? Let us know on what conditions we can live other than wearing our spiked helmets, and we will embrace them." It was not an easy matter to argue down your resolute Prussian when he turned to you warmly, after you had been crying peace to him.
As I pondered, I thought perhaps it is a necessity, since the world is what it is, that Europe should still be a place of discord. America, however, is practically one, not a jarring company of nations repeating the protracted agony of the Old World. We have no question of the "balance of power" coming up in every generation, settled only to be unsettled amid devastation and slaughter. We can grow forward unhindered, with hardly more than a feather's weight of energy taken for fighting from the employments of peace. America stands indeed a nation blessed of God; and there is nothing better worth her while to pray for than that a happier time may come to her giant brother over the sea; that the strength of such an arm may not always waste itself wielding the sword; that the sensibilities of such a heart may not be crushed or brutalised in carnage that forever repeats itself; that the noble head may some time exchange the spiked helmet for the olive chaplet of peace.
CHAPTER V
A STUDENT'S EXPERIENCE IN THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR
We rememberers lie under certain suspicion. "Uncle Mose," said an inquirer, his intonation betraying scepticism, "they say you remember General Washington." "Yaas, Boss," replied Uncle Mose, "I used to 'member Gen'l Washington, but sence I jined de church I done forgot." Not having joined Uncle Mose's church, my memory has not experienced the ecclesiastical discouragement that befell him. I humbly trust, however, it needs no chastening, and aver that I do not go for my facts to my imagination. I am now in foreign parts dealing with personages of especial dignity and splendour and must establish my memory firmly in the reader's confidence.
I was a student in Germany in 1870. In the spring at Berlin, passing by the not very conspicuous royal palace on Unter den Linden, one day I studied the front with some interest. The two sentinels stood in the door saluting with clock-work precision the officers who frequently passed. A watchful policeman was on the corner, but there was little other sign that an important personage was within the walls. With some shock I suddenly caught sight, in a window close at hand, of a tall, robust figure with a rugged but not ungenial face surmounted by grizzled hair, in uniform with decorations hanging upon the broad breast, who, as I glanced up, saluted me with an unlooked-for nod. I knew at once it was the King of Prussia, who before the year was ended was to be crowned as Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse at Versailles. I was thoroughly scared, as I did not know that it was the habit of the King to stand in the window and good-naturedly greet the passer-by.
That was my first sight of a real king. But there is another figure which I contemplate with more interest. The 31st of May of 1870 was a day sent from heaven, brilliant sunshine after a period of cloud; the spring lording it in the air, the trees and grass in their freshest luxuriance. I was at Potsdam that day; in the wide-stretching gardens that surround the New Palace. As I walked, I came to a cord drawn across the path, indicating that visitors were to go no farther. Close by stood a tall young grenadier on duty as a sentinel, but willing to chat. Looking beyond the cord into the reserved space I presently saw coming up from a secluded path, a low carriage drawn by a pony led by a groom in which was seated a lady dressed in white. She was not of distinguished appearance but my grenadier told me that it was the Crown Princess of Prussia, the daughter of the Queen of England. From the screen of the bush I watched her with natural interest. The carriage paused and a group of little boys and girls came running out from the thicket attended by a governess or two and a tutor. The little girls had their hands full of flowers, which, running forward, they threw into the carriage. The boys, too, ran up with pretty demonstrations, and a straight little fellow of ten years or so hurried to the groom and began to pat the pony's nose. These, I learned, were the princes and princesses of the royal family. The little fellow patting the pony's nose was the eldest and destined to emerge into history as Kaiser Wilhelm the Second.
And now, from a door of the palace, not far distant, came striding a notable figure, tall and stalwart, in the undress uniform of a Prussian General. Under his fatigue cap the blond hair was abundant; a wave of brown beard swept flown upon his breast. The face was full of intelligence and authority, but at that moment most kindly as his blue eyes sought the group that stood in the foreground. It was the Crown Prince of Prussia, destined at length to be the Emperor Friedrich. The carriage passed on, the Crown Prince walking, with his hand on the side, while the Princess held her parasol over his head, laughing at the idea evidently, that so sturdy a soldier needed that kind of a screen.
The Crown Prince Friedrich was unpopular in those days as too domestic, standing too much withdrawn from the bustling world, but there was no failure when the stress came. Only a few weeks passed before the stout soldier, whom I had seen throwing lilies and sheltered from the sun by his wife's parasol, was at the head of a great army corps, crushing the power of France at Worth and Weissembourg; but the report was that he had said, "I do not like war, and if I am ever King I shall never make war."
A few weeks after the Potsdam incident I was in the city of Vienna. One morning, like thunder out of a clear sky, news came of the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war. I read the paper, but, not feeling that the news need interfere with my sight-seeing, went to the Hofbourg, the old palace, in the heart of the city, of the Imperial family of Austria. The building is extensive; the streets of the city at that time running under it here and there in tunnels. I visited the Schatz Kammer, the treasure-room, and saw men go almost demented at the spectacle of the gold and jewels heaped up in the cases. The sight of the splendour, the heaped-up jewels, the batons, the faded, and sometimes bloody, garments, the trinkets and decorations, associated with towering personalities of the past, attuned my spirit for some adventure above the commonplace. As I came down into the street, narrow and overhung by the confining arch, a soldier passed me on the run into an open space just beyond, where instantly a battalion hurried out to stand at present. Then in the distance I heard galloping of horses and an open carriage rapidly approached, in which were seated four figures, protected from the light rain by grey overcoats, wearing the chapeaux which have come down from Napoleonic times. The carriage passed so near that I was obliged to press back against the wall to save my feet from the wheels, and a figure on the back seat, who, for the moment, was within arm's reach, I recognised as Francis Joseph.
He was then a man in his best years, a strong, sensible if not impressive face, and a well-knit frame. He had driven in from Schönbrunn to attend a council meeting, and the day for him was no doubt a most critical one. War had come. It was only four years after Königgrätz. His old enemy, Prussia, was about to hurl herself, with who could tell what allies, against France. What stand should Austria take? If the Kaiser was agitated, his face did not show it; it was significant of quiet, cool poise. Excitement was repressed, while good sense weighed and determined. Few sovereigns have been obliged to face so often situations of the utmost difficulty. I can believe that with similar imperturbability Francis Joseph has confronted the series of perplexities which make up the tangled story of his long career, and I count it good fortune that I witnessed, in a moment of supreme embarrassment, the balance and resolution with which the good ruler went to his task. Austria, as the world knows, decided that day to be neutral in the Franco-Prussian quarrel.
The disorder in the land made me feel that I must get nearer to my base, so I hurriedly left Vienna for Munich, which I found seething with agitation, for, like Austria, Bavaria had only a few years before been Prussia's enemy, and so far as the populace was concerned all was in doubt as to what course would now be taken. The rumour was that McMahon had crossed the Rhine at Strassburg with 150,000 men, and was marching to interpose between Northern and Southern Germany.
At the Ober-Pollinger I heard in the inn, amid the stormy discussion of the crisis, something quite out of harmony with the spirit of the hour. The first performance was to be given in the Royal Opera House of a work of Richard Wagner, the Rheingold. Wagner in those days had not attained his great fame, and, to a man like me, who had no especial interest in music, was a name almost unknown, but I went with the crowd, thinking to help out a dreary evening rather than to enjoy a masterpiece. The house was crowded. In the centre before the stage an ample space was occupied by the royal box, richly carved and draped. Presently the King entered, a slender, graceful figure in a dress suit, his dark rather melancholy face looking handsome in the gorgeous setting of the theatre. The crowded audience rose to their feet in a tumult of enthusiasm. The air resounded with "Hoch! Hoch!" the German cheer, and handkerchiefs waved like a snow-storm. The King bowed right and left in acknowledgment of the plaudits, and the performance of the evening was kept long in waiting. The line of Bavarian kings has perhaps little title to our respect. The Ludwig of fifty years ago was a voluptuary, vacillating, like another Louis Quinze, between debauchery and a weak pietism. He probably merited the cuts of the relentless scourge of Heine than which no instrument of chastisement was ever more unsparing, and which in his case was put to its most merciless use; but he loved art and lavished his revenues upon pictures, statues, and churches, which the world admires, imparting a benefit, though his subjects groaned. His successor, whom I saw, was a man morbid and without force, who early came to a sorrowful end. His redeeming quality was a fine aesthetic taste, which he had no doubt through heredity, together with a sad burden of disease. The world remembers kindly that he was a prodigal patron of art.
I went to Heidelberg in February, 1870, bent upon a quiet year of study in Germany and France. Fate had a different programme for me. My plans were badly interfered with but to see Europe in such a turmoil was an experience well worth having. Heidelberg that spring was very peaceful. The ice in the Neckar on which skaters were disporting on my arrival passed out in due course of time to the Rhine, the foliage broke forth in glory on the noble hills and the nightingales came back to sing in the ivy about the storied ruins. There was no suggestion in the air of cannon thunder. At Berlin, however, as I have described, I found things wearing a warlike air. I was eager to perfect my German and sought chances to talk with all whom I met, and often had pleasant converse with the young soldiers who when off duty numerously flocked to the gardens and street corners. I recall in particular three young soldiers whose subsequent fate I should like to know. The first was a handsome young grenadier who had talked with me affably as we stood together screened by the bush in the garden of the New Palace at Potsdam watching the family of the Crown Prince, that beautiful forenoon in May…. When I told him I had myself mitgemacht the Civil War in America he at once accorded me respect as a veteran. I think he was a Freiwilliger, one of the class, who, having reached a high status in the Gymnasium, enjoyed the privilege of a shorter term of service. He had the bearing of a cultivated gentleman and there was strength in his firm young face which I have no doubt made him a good soldier in the time of stress. We shook hands at last in the friendliest way and I saw him no more. A few days later the train in which I was riding stopped at Erfurt and among the groups at the station was one that interested me much. In the centre stood a sturdy young Uhlan gaudy in full dress which I fancied he had only lately assumed, his stature was increased by his lofty horse-hair plume and he wore his corselet over a uniform in which there was many a dye. A bevy of pretty girls thronged around him, freshly beautiful after the German type, blond and blue-eyed in attractive summer draperies, and I speculated pleasantly as to which among them were sisters and which sweethearts. As the train departed the young Uhlan climbed into my compartment and we sat vis-à-vis as we rode on through the country. He was a frank ingenuous boy of twenty with eyes that danced with life, and a mobile play of features. My claim that I had seen service in the tented field again served me in good stead as an introduction; it was a passport to his confidence and I had a pleasant hour or two with him until he left me at length at his rendezvous.
Best of all I remember a third encounter. When I stepped from my car at Weimar I asked a direction from a young grenadier off duty who stood at hand on the platform. He too possessed the usual Teutonic vigour and strength. A conversation sprang up in which I explained that I was an American and desired to see as well as I could in a few hours the interesting things in that little city so quiet and renowned. I had found out by this time that my small veteranship was a good asset and paraded it for all it was worth and as usual it told. He was off duty for a few hours and had never visited the shrines of Weimar, and if I had no objection he would like to go with me on my tour of inspection, so together we walked through those shadowed streets, which seemed to be haunted even in that bright sunshine by the ghosts of the great men who have walked in them. We saw the homes of Goethe and Schiller, the noble statues of the Dichter-Paar, and the old theatre behind it in which were first performed the masterpieces of the German drama. We went together to the cemetery and descending into the crypt of the mausoleum stood by the coffins of Goethe and Schiller, the men most illustrious in German letters. It was a memorable day of my life, the outward conditions perfect, the June sunshine, the wealth of lovely foliage, the bird songs, and right at hand the homes and haunts of the inspired singers whom I especially reverenced. I was most fortunate in my companionship, the bearing of the youth was marked by no flippancy, he venerated as I did the lofty spirits into whose retreats we had penetrated. He was familiar with their masterpieces and we felt for them a like appreciation. His soldierly garb accorded perhaps ill with the peaceful suggestions of the hour and place, but in his mind plainly the sentiment lay deep, a warm recognition of what gave his country its best title to greatness. We took thought too of Wieland and looked in silence at the fine statue of Herder standing before the church in which he long ministered; but the supreme personages for us were Goethe and Schiller. What became of my sympathetic young soldier I have never known. If he escaped from Mars-la-Tour and Gravelotte and Sedan I am sure that he must have matured into a high-souled man.
I had an opportunity, during a visit to Strassburg in the spring, to see the soldiery of France. At the time the prestige of the Second Empire was at its height, Magenta and Solferino were considerable battles and the French had won them. Turcos and Zouaves had long passed in the world as soldiers of the best type and in our Civil War we had copied zealously their fantastic apparel and drill. When the Franco-Prussian War broke out the world felt that Germany had the hardest of nuts to crack and in many a mind the forecast was that France would be the victor, but even to my limited judgment the shortcomings of the French troops were plain. They were inferior in physique, lacking in trimness and even in cleanliness, and imperfectly disciplined. I wondered if the rather slovenly ill-trained battalions of small pale men could stand up against the prompt rigid alignment of the broad-shouldered six-footers I had seen manoeuvring on the other side of the Rhine.
I had received word in the spring from my bankers in Paris that my letter of credit was not in regular shape and they advised me to draw at Berlin a sum of money sufficient for present needs and transmit the letter to them, promising to adjust the matter in such a way that both they and I would be relieved of some inconvenience. In June I drew a small sum and sent my letter to Paris in accordance with their instructions, the agreement being that I was to call a month or so later on the correspondents at Munich of the Paris bankers and receive from them the corrected letter. I then travelled as far as Vienna where all unforeseen the news startled me of the outbreak of the war. I hurried to Munich, my little store of money being by that time much depleted. At the banking house I learned to my consternation that they had heard nothing of me or my letter of credit. Still worse, there was no prospect of hearing, communication with Paris was completely broken off. The rumour was that McMahon had crossed the Rhine at Strassburg with one hundred and fifty thousand men on the march to interpose between Southern and Northern Germany. The house had not heard from Paris and could not expect to hear. Acting on their advice I sent a distressful telegram roundabout through Switzerland to Paris. There was a possibility that such a message might go through; otherwise there was no hope. I then spent at Munich one of the most anxious weeks of my life. I was nearer the pavement than I have ever been before or since. There was a charming German family at the inn at which I stopped, gentle, courteous people, father, mother, and a little blue-eyed daughter. When the little girl found I was from America I can now see her innocent wide-open eyes as she asked me if I had ever seen an Indian. I could tell her some good stories of Indians for in boyhood I had lived near a reservation of Senecas, at that time to a large extent, in their primitive state. When I ventured one day to tell the polite father of my present embarrassment I at once noticed a sudden cooling off. The little girl no longer came to talk with me and the family held aloof. Plainly I had become an object of suspicion, I was now penniless, my story might be true or perhaps I was paving the way for asking a loan. How could he tell that I was not a dead-beat? I was really in a strait. The Americans had very generally left the city in consequence of the turmoil. I could hear of no one excepting our Consul who was still at his post. Calling upon him and telling my story, I found him cool to the point of rudeness. I had excellent letters from Bancroft and others which I showed him and which ought to have secured me a respectful hearing. I asked only for sympathy and counsel but I received neither, and could not have been treated worse if I had been a proved swindler. The Consul afterwards wrote a book in which he told of experiences with inconvenient countrymen who had recourse to him in their straits, and possibly I myself may have figured as one of his examples. My feeling is that he was a man not fit for his place, for in the circumstances he might certainly have shown some kindness. My few pieces of silver jingled drearily in my pocket; perhaps my best course would be to enlist in the German army. I thought the cause a just one for the atmosphere had made me a good German, and as a soldier I might at least earn my bread. To my joy, however, in one of my daily visits to the banking house the courteous young partner told me that a telegram had come in some roundabout way from Paris and they were prepared to pay me the full amount on my letter of credit. I clutched the money, two pretty cylinders of gold coin done up in white paper, which I sewed securely into the waist-band of my trousers and felt an instant strengthening of nerve and self-respect.
I departed then for Switzerland where I enjoyed a delightful fortnight. The rebound from my depression imparted a fine morale. Switzerland was practically deserted, no French or Germans were there for they had enough to do with the war; the English for the most part stayed at home, for Europe could only be crossed with difficulty, and the crowd from America too was deterred by the danger. Instead of the throngs at the great points of interest, the visitors counted by twos and threes. The guides and landlords were obsequious. We few strangers had the Alps to ourselves and they were as lavish of their splendours to the handful as to the multitude. At Geneva at last I found letters from home which caused me anxiety; I was referred for later news to letters which were to be sent to Paris; so there was nothing for it but for me to cross France, though by that time France had become a camp. Fortunately I had met in Switzerland an American friend who was proficient in French as I was not and who likewise found it necessary to go to Paris, and we two started together. After crossing the frontier we found no regular trains; those that ran were taken up for the most part by the multitudes of conscripts hurrying into armies that were undergoing disaster in the neighbourhood of Metz. The case of two American strangers was a precarious one involved in such a mass, with food even very uncertain and the likelihood of being side-tracked at any station, but we were both strong and light-hearted and I felt at my waist-band the comfortable contact of my bright yellow Napoleons which would pull us through. Constantly we beheld scenes of the greatest interest. The August landscape smiled its best about us, we passed Dijon and many another old storied city famous in former wars, and now again humming with the military life with which they had been so many times familiar. The Mobiles came thronging to every depot from the vineyards and fields and the remoter villages. As yet they were usually in picturesque peasant attire, young farmers in blouses or with bretelles crossing in odd fashion the queer shirts they wore. Careless happy-go-lucky boys chattering in the excitement of the new life which they were entering, only half-informed as to the catastrophes which were taking place, but the mothers and sisters, plain country women in short skirts, quaint bodices and caps, looked upon their departure with anxious faces. I was familiar enough with such scenes in our own Civil War; thousands of those boys were never to return.
Reaching Paris we found an atmosphere of depression. A week or two before the streets had resounded with the Marseillaise and echoed with the fierce cry, "A Berlin! A Berlin!" That confidence had all passed, I heard the Marseillaise sung only once, and that in disheartened perfunctory fashion, perhaps by order of the authorities in a futile attempt to stimulate courage that was waning. Rage and mortification over the fast-accumulating German successes possessed the hearts of men. In the squares companies of civilians were industriously drilling, often in the public places men wearing hospital badges extended salvers to the passers-by asking for contributions, "Pour les blessés, monsieur, pour les blessés!" Now and then well-disciplined divisions crossed the Place de la Concorde, the regiments stacking arms for a brief halt. I studied them close at hand; these at least looked as might have looked the soldiers of the First Empire, strong and resolute, with an evident capacity for taking care of themselves even in the small matter of cooking their soup, and providing for their needs there on the asphalt. Their officers were soldierly figures on horseback, dressed for rough work, and the gaitered legs, with the stout shoes below dusty already from long marching, were plainly capable of much more. There was a pathos about it all, however, a marked absence of élan and enthusiasm, the faces under the képis were firm and strong enough but they had little hope. Nothing so paralyses a soldier as want of confidence in the leadership and these poor fellows had lost that. The regiments passed on in turn, the sunlight glittering on their arms. Through the vista of the boulevard the eagles of the Second Empire rose above, the grave colonels were conspicuous at the head, and the drum-beats, choked by the towering buildings, sounded a melancholy muffled march that was befitting. It was the scene pictured by Détaille in Le Régiment quì Passe. Could he have been with us on the curbstone making his studies? It was indeed for them a funeral march, for they were on they way to Sedan. The Prussians, it was said, were within four days' march of the city, and the barrier at Metz had been completely broken down.
In most minds Paris is associated with gayety, my Paris, on the other hand, is a solemn spot darkened by an impending shadow of calamity. The theatres were closed. No one was admitted to the Invalides, so that I could not see the tomb of Napoleon. The Madeleine was open for service, but deep silence prevailed. In the great spaces of the temple the robed priests bowed before the altar and noiseless groups of worshippers knelt on the pavement. It was a time for earnest prayers. The Louvre was still open and I was fortunate enough to see the Venus of Milo, though a day or two after I believe it was taken from its pedestal and carefully concealed. The expectation was of something dreadful and still the city did not take in the sorrow which lay before it. "Do you think the Prussians will bombard Paris?" I heard a man exclaim, his voice and manner indicating that such a thing was incredible, but the Prussian cannon were close at hand. For our part, my companion and I thought we were in no especial danger. We quartered ourselves comfortably at a pension, walked freely about the streets, and saw what could be seen with the usual zest of healthy young travellers. The little steamboats were still plying on the Seine and we took one at last for the trip that opens to one so much that is beautiful and interesting in architecture and history. It was a lovely afternoon even for summer and we passed in and out under the superb arches of the bridges, beholding the noble apse of Notre Dame with the twin towers rising beyond, structures associated with grim events of the Revolution, the masonry of the quays and the master work of Haussmann who was then putting a new face upon the old city. Now all was bright and no thought of danger entered our minds as we revelled in the pleasures of such an excursion. At length as we stood on the deck we became aware that we were undergoing careful scrutiny from a considerable group who for the most part made up our fellow-passengers. We had had no thought of ourselves as especially marked. My clothes, however, had been made in Germany and had peculiarities no doubt which indicated as much. I was fairly well grounded in French but had no practice in speaking. In trying to talk French, my tongue in spite of me ran into German, which I had been speaking constantly for six months. This was particularly the case if I was at all embarrassed; my face and figure, moreover, were plainly Teutonic and not Latin. The French ascribed their disasters largely to the fact that German spies were everywhere prying into the conditions, and reporting every assailable point and element of weakness. This belief was well grounded; the Germans probably knew France better than the French themselves and skilfully adapted their attacks to the lacks and negligences which the swarming spies laid bare. The group, of whose scrutiny we had become aware, was made up of ouvriers and ouvrières, the men in the invariable blouse, with dark matted hair and black eyes, sometimes with a ratlike keenness of glance as they surveyed us. The women were roughly dressed, sometimes in sabots, with heads bare or surmounted by conical caps. They belonged to the proletariat, the class out of which had come in the Reign of Terror the sans-culottes of evil memory and the tricoteuses who had sat knitting about the guillotine, the class which, within a few months, was again to set the world aghast as the mob of La Commune. As we stood disconcerted by their intent gaze, they put their heads together and talked in low and rapid tones; then their spokesman approached us, a man of polite bearing but ominously stern. He was not a clumsy fellow, but darkly forceful and direct, a man capable of a quick, desperate deed. At the moment there was the grim tiger in their eyes and from the soft paw the swift protrusion of the cruel claw. One thought of the wild revolutionary song, "Ça ça, ça ira, les aristocrats à la lanterne!" They were the children of the mob that had sung that song. With a bow, the spokesman said: "Messieurs, we think you are Germans and we wish to know if we are right." We protested that we were Americans, but the spokesman said he was unconvinced, and as he pressed for further evidence I gave way to my companion whose readier French could deal better with the situation. He demanded to see our passports with which fortunately we were both provided; I had not thought of a passport as a necessity, and almost by chance had procured one the week before from our Minister in Switzerland, a careful description, vouching for my American citizenship, signed and sealed by the United States official. This perhaps saved my life. We surrendered our passports to our interrogator; he carried them back to the throng behind him who were now glowering angrily at us, as they chattered among themselves. Half-amused and half-alarmed, we waited while the documents were passed from hand to hand, carefully conned and inspected. We could not believe that we were in danger, here in the bright day in beautiful Paris, with the sacred towers of Notre Dame soaring close at hand. There were no gendarmes on the boat or on the quays, but how could it he that we needed protection? After a quarter of an hour's suspense, during which there had been a voluble counselling among the group, the spokesman came forth again with our passports in hand carefully folded, these he returned to us, touching his hat with a stiff and formal bow. "We have persuaded ourselves," said he, "that you are what you claim to be, Americans, and it is fortunate for you that it is so, for we had intended to throw you into the Seine as Prussian spies." Here was a surprise indeed! The group then dispersed about the boat apparently satisfied. Still rather amused than alarmed we pocketed our passports. Under the arch of one of the stately bridges close by, the Seine flowed in heavy shadows on its way, and we looked down upon the dark waters. Throbbing with life as we were, could it be possible that we had just escaped a grave in its watery embrace? Presently we landed light-hearted, and were again in the streets, but in days that followed immediately my heart was often in my throat, as I read in the papers of the corpses of men taken out of the river who undoubtedly had been thrown in under suspicion of being German spies. After a sojourn of not quite a week in Paris we made up our minds it was no place for us. My plans for study were quite broken up, it was scarcely possible to get back to Germany and nothing could be done in France. I had letters which in a time of peace would have opened the way for me to many a pleasant circle. My intention had been to study for some time in France, but under the circumstances it would be a comfortable thing to have the Atlantic rolling between me and Europe, and therefore, I prepared to depart for home. At the pension, on the day I had fixed for departure, while coming down the staircase waxed and highly polished, I slipped and fell heavily, so bruising my knee that I was nearly crippled. Fortunately no bones were broken and with much pain I managed to hobble to the official from whom I must obtain a pass to leave the city. I set out for the North, on almost the last train that left the city, at the end of August. The sights were gloomy, the towns which we passed seemed associated with ancient bloodshed. We touched St. Quentin and crossed the field of Malplaquet, and finally near Mons passed the Belgian frontier. Marlborough and the names associated with former wars were suggested to my thoughts by these historic spots. I was heartily glad when at length in cheerful Brussels I was beyond danger. On the fateful day when the Second Empire went down at Sedan, I was on the field of Waterloo where half a century before the First Empire had perished. The news of the morning made it plain that on that day the great débâcle was to culminate. We listened all day for cannon thunder; under certain conditions of the atmosphere the sound of heavy guns may reverberate as far perhaps, as from Sedan to Waterloo. That day, however, there was no ominous grumble from the eastward, the sky was cloudless, the flowers bloomed about the Château d'Hougomont, and the birds twittered in peace at the point before La Haie-Sainte to which the First Napoleon advanced in the evening and where for the last time he heard the shout then so long familiar but forever after unheard, "Vive l'Empereur!" Humiliation now after half a century had overwhelmed in turn his unhappy successor.