The Whites and the Blues (4 page)

inquiring the way to Euloge Schneider's house, left the Hotel de la Lanterne to take the first step in the wide world, as the Germans say—that first step upon which the whole future life often depends.

He passed the cathedral; but as he was not looking about him, he came near receiving his death-blow. A saint's head fell at his feet, and was almost immediately followed by a statue of the Virgin embracing her Son.

He turned in the direction whence the double missile had come, and perceived a man, hammer in hand, astride the shoulders of a colossal apostle, who was making havoc with the saints, the first fruits of which labor had fallen at the boy's feet. A dozen men were laughing and approving this desecration.

The boy crossed the Breuil, stopped before a modest lit tle house, went up a few steps, and rang the bell.

A crabbed old servant opened the door and subjected him to a severe cross-examination. When he had replied satisfactorily to all her questions, she grumblingly admitted him Jo the dining-room, saying: "Wait there. Citizen Schneider is coming to breakfast, and you can talk to him then, since you say you have something to tell him.''

When Charles was left alone, he cast a rapid glance around the room. It was very plain, being ceiled with wood and having for sole ornament two crossed sabres.

And then the terrible judge-advocate of the Eevolution-ary Commission of the Lower Rhine entered behind the old woman.

He passed near the boy without seeing him, or at least without appearing to notice him, and seated himself at the table, where he bravely attacked a pyramid of oysters, flanked by a dish of anchovies and a bowl of olives.

Let us profit by this pause to sketch in a few lines the physical and moral portrait of the strange and terrible man whose acquaintance Charles was about to make.

Jean-Georges Schneider, who had either given himself or had been endowed with the name of Euloge, was a man

of thirty-seven or eight years of age, ugly, fat, short, com mon, with round limbs, round shoulders, and a round head. ;The most striking thing about his strange appearance was 'that he had his hair cut short, while he let his enormous eyebrows grow as long and as thick as they pleased. These eyebrows, bushy, black and tufted, shadowed yellow eyes, bordered with red rims.

He had begun by being a monk, hence his surname of the Monk of Cologne, which his name of Euloge had not been able to efface. Born in Franconia, of poor laboring parents, he had by his talents won the patronage of the vil lage priest in his childhood, and the latter had taught him the elements of Latin. His rapid progress enabled him to go to the Jesuit college at Wurzburg. He was expelled from the illustrious society on account of misconduct, sank. to the depths of misery, and finally entered a convent of Franciscans at Bamberg.

His studies finished, he was thought competent to be come professor of Hebrew, and was sent to Augsburg. Called, in 1786, to the court of Duke Charles of Wurtem-burg as chaplain, he preached there with success, and de voted three-fourths of the revenues which accrued to him to the support of his family. It is said that it was here that he joined the sect of the Illuminated, organized by the famous Weishaupt, which explains the ardor with which he adopted the principles of the French Eevolu-tion. At that time, full of ambition, impatient under re straint, and devoured by ardent passions, he published a catechism which was so liberal that he was obliged to cross the Khine and establish himself at Strasbourg, where, on the 27th of June, 1791, he was appointed episcopal vicar and dean of the theological faculty; then, far from refusing the civic oath, he not only took it, but preached in the cathe dral, mingling together comments on political incidents and religious teachings with singular zeal.

Before the 10th of August, he demanded the abdication of Louis XVI., the while protesting against being styled a

Republican. From that moment he fought with desperate courage against the royalist party, which had in Strasbourg, as well as in the neighboring provinces, many powerful ad herents. This struggle earned him, toward the end of 1792, the post of mayor of Haguenau.

Finally he was appointed to the post of public accuser of the Lower Ehine on the 19th of February, and was in vested on the 5th of the following May with the title of Commissioner of the Revolutionary Tribunal of Strasbourg. Then it was that the terrible thirst for blood, to which his natural violence drove him, burst forth. Urged on by feverish excitement, when he was not needed at Stras bourg, he went about the neighborhood with his terrible escort, followed by the executioner and the guillotine.

Then, upon the slightest pretext, he stopped at towns which had hoped never to see his fatal instrument, set up the guillotine, established a tribunal, tried, judged, and executed. In the midst of this bloody orgy he brought the paper money up to par, money that had hitherto been worth only eighty-five per cent. He also, by his own un aided efforts, procured more grain for the army, which was in need of almost everything, than all the other commission ers in the district put together. And finally, from the 5th of November to the llth of December, he had sent at least thirty-one persons to their death in Strasbourg, Mutzig, Barr, Obernai, Epfig, and Schlestadt.

Although our young friend was ignorant of most of these things, and especially of the latter, it was not with out a feeling of genuine terror that he found himself in the presence of the formidable pro-consul. But, reflecting that he, unlike the others, had a protector in the man by whom so many were menaced, he soon regained his composure, and after seeking how best to open the conversation, he thought he had found a way in the oysters that Schneider was eating.

"Kara concha in terra," he said, in Ms clear, flute-like voice, smiling as he spoke.

Euloge turned his head. "Do you mean to insinuate that I am an aristocrat, baby?" he asked.

"I do not mean to say anything at all, citizen Schneider; but I know you are a scholar, and I wanted to attract your attention to a poor little boy like me, and I thought to do it by quoting a language that is familiar to you, and a saying from an author whom you like."

"Faith, that is well said I"

"Eecommended to Euloge much more than to the citizen Schneider, I ought to speak as well as possible in order to be worthy of the recommendation.''

"And who recommended you?" asked Euloge, wheeling his chair so as to face the boy.

"My father. Here is his letter."

Euloge took the letter and recognized the handwriting.

'' Ah, ha! an old friend.'' He read it from one end to the other; then he said, "Your father certainly writes the purest Latin of any one living." Then, holding out his hand to the boy, he asked, "Will you breakfast with me?"

Charles glanced at the table, and his face probably be trayed his lack of appreciation of a fare at once so luxuri ous and so frugal.

"No, I understand," laughed Schneider; "a young stomach like yours needs something more solid than an chovies and olives. Come to dinner; I dine to-day infor mally with three friends. If your father were here he would make the fourth, and you shall take his place. Will you have a glass of beer to drink your father's health?"

"OhI with pleasure," cried the boy, taking the glass and clinking it against that of the scholar. But as it was an enormous one, he could only drink half.

"Well?" asked Schneider.'

"We can drink the rest a little later to the welfare of the Eepublic," answered the boy; "but the glass is too big for me to empty at a single draught.''

Schneider looked at him with something akin to tender ness. "Faith! he is very nice," he observed. Then, as the

old servant brought in the French and German papers at that moment, he asked: "Do you know German?"

"Not a word."

"Very well; then I will teach you."

"With the Greek?"

"With the Greek. So you are ambitious to learn Greek?"

" It is my only wish.''

*' We will try to satisfy it. Here is the ' Moniteur Fran-gais'; read it while I look over the 'Vienna Gazette.''

There was a moment's silence as they both began to read.

"Oh, oh!" said Euloge, as he read. " 'At this hour Strasbourg will have been taken, and our victorious troops are probably on the march to Paris.' They are reckoning without Pichegru, Saint-Just, and myself."

" 'We are masters of the advanced works of Toulon,' " said Charles, also reading; " 'and before three or four days will have passed we shall be masters of the entire town, and the Republic will be avenged.' '

"What is the date of your 'Moniteur' ?" asked Euloge.

"The 8th," replied the child.

"Does it say anything else?"

" 'In the session of the 6th, Robespierre read a reply to the manifesto of the Allied Powers. The Convention or dered it to be printed and translated into every language.' "

"Go on," said Schneider. The child continued:

" 'The 7th, Billaud-Varennes reported that the rebels of the Vendee, having made an attempt upon the city of An gers, were beaten and driven away by the garrison, with whom the inhabitants had united.' "

"Long live the Republic!" cried Schneider.

" 'Madame Dubarry, condemned to death the 7th, was executed the same day, with the banker Yan Deniver, her lover. The old prostitute completely lost her head before the executioner cut it oil. She wept and struggled, and called for help; but the people replied to her appeals with

tSU THE WHITES AND Tl

hoots and maledictions. They remembered the extrava gances of which she and such as she had been the cause, and the public misery that had resulted.' ''

"The infamous creature!" said Schneider. "After hav ing dishonored the throne, nothing must do but she must dishonor the scaffold also."

Just then two soldiers entered, whose uniforms, though familiar to Schneider, made Charles shiver in spite of him self. They were dressed in black, with two crossbones above the tri-color cockade on their caps. White braid on their black cloaks and jackets gave the effect of the ribs of a skeleton; and their sabre-taches were ornamented with a skull and crossbones. They belonged to the regi ment of "Hussars of Death," in which no one enlisted without having first vowed not to be made a prisoner. A dozen soldiers from this regiment formed Schneider's body guard, and served him as messengers. When he saw these men, Schneider rose.

"Now," said he to the young boy, "you can stay or go as you please. I must go and send off my couriers. Only do not forget that we dine at two o'clock, and that you dine with us."

Then, bowing slightly to Charles, he entered his study with his escort.

The offer to remain did not appear to be particularly at tractive to the boy. He rose as Schneider left the room, and waited until he had entered his study, and the door had shut upon the two sinister guards who accompanied him. Then, seizing his cap, he darted from the room, sprang down the three steps at the entrance, and, running all the way, reached good Madame Teutch's kitchen, shout-; ng: "I am almost starved! Here I am!"

CHAPTER IY

EUGENE DE BEAUHARNAIS

AT THE call of her "little Charles " as she called him, Madame Teutch came out of a little dining-room which opened upon the courtyard and entered the kitchen. "Ah, there you are, thank God!" she cried. "Then the ogre did not'eat you, poor little Tom Thumb!' 7

"He was charming, on the contrary; and I don't believe that his teeth are as long as they say."

"God grant that you never feel them! But if I heard right, yours are the long ones. Come in here, and I will go call your future friend, who is working as usual, poor child!"

And the citizeness Teutch ran upstairs with a youthful-ness which indicated an excess of exuberant force.

In the meantime Charles examined the preparations for one of the most appetizing breakfasts that had ever been placed before him. He was diverted from his occupation by the sound of the door opening. It admitted the youth of whom the citizeness Teutch had spoken. He was a lad of fifteen, with black eyes and curly black hair which fell over his shoulders. His attire was elegant, and his linen of un usual whiteness. In spite of the efforts that had evidently been made to disguise it, everything in him betrayed the aristocrat. He approached Charles smilingly, and held out his hand to him.

"Our good hostess tells me, citizen," he said, "that I am to have the pleasure of spending some time with you; and she added that you had promised to like me a little. I am very glad of that, for I am sure I shall become very much attached to you."

"And I, too," cried Charles, "with all my heart."

"Bravo, bravo!" cried Madame Teutch, coming in at

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