EULOGE SCHNEIDER
Charles, before leaving Besançon, had learned all that he could
concerning his future preceptor, Euloge Schneider, and his habits. He
knew that he rose every morning at six o'clock, worked until eight,
breakfasted at that hour, smoked a pipe, and resumed work until he went
out, which was at one or two o'clock.
He therefore judged it expedient not to go to sleep again. Daybreak is
late in Strasbourg in the month of December, and the narrow streets keep
the light from the ground floors. It must be about seven. Supposing that
it took him an hour to dress and to go to M. Schneider's house, he would
arrive there just about breakfast time. He finished an elegant toilet
just as Madame Teutch entered.
"Lord!" she cried, "are you going to a wedding?"
"No," replied the boy, "I am going to see M. Schneider."
"What are you thinking of, my dear child! You look like an aristocrat.
If you were eighteen years old instead of thirteen, they would cut off
your head on account of your appearance. Away with your fine clothes,
and bring out your travelling suit of yesterday; it is good enough for
the Monk of Cologne."
And citizeness Teutch, with a few dexterous movements, soon had her
lodger clothed in his other garments. He let her do it, marvelling at
her quickness and blushing a little at the contact of her plump hand,
whose whiteness betrayed her innate coquetry.
"There, now go and see your man," she said; "but be careful to call him
citizen, or else, no matter how well you are recommended, you will come
to grief."
The boy thanked her for her good counsel, and asked her if she had any
other advice to give him.
"No," she said, shaking her head, "except to come back as soon as
possible, for I am going to prepare a little breakfast for you and your
neighbor in No. 15, the equal of which he has never eaten, aristocrat as
he is. And now go!"
With the adorable instinct of maternity which exists in the hearts of
all women, Madame Teutch had conceived a tender affection for her new
guest, and took upon herself the direction of his conduct. He on his
side, young as he was and feeling the need of that gentle affection
which makes life easier for all, was willing to follow her instruction,
as he would have obeyed the commands of a mother.
He therefore let her kiss him on both cheeks, and, after inquiring the
way to Euloge Schneider's house, left the Hôtel 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 little 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 to 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 Revolutionary 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, common, 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
village 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 become professor of
Hebrew, and was sent to Augsburg. Called, in 1786, to the court of Duke
Charles of Wurtemburg as chaplain, he preached there with success, and
devoted 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
Revolution. At that time, full of ambition, impatient under restraint,
and devoured by ardent passions, he published a catechism which was so
liberal that he was obliged to cross the Rhine 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 cathedral, 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
adherents. 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
Rhine on the 19th of February, and was invested 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 Strasbourg, 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 unaided efforts, procured
more grain for the army, which was in need of almost everything, than
all the other commissioners in the district put together. And finally,
from the 5th of November to the 11th 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 without 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.
"_Rara concha in terra_," he said, in his 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!"
"Recommended 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 betrayed his lack of
appreciation of a fare at once so luxurious and so frugal.
"No, I understand," laughed Schneider; "a young stomach like yours needs
something more solid than anchovies and olives. Come to dinner; I dine
to-day informally 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?"
"Oh! 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 Republic,"
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 tenderness. "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 Français'; 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 ordered 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 Vendée,
having made an attempt upon the city of Angers, 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 Van Deniver, her lover. The old prostitute completely
lost her head before the executioner cut it off. She wept and struggled,
and called for help; but the people replied to her appeals with hoots
and maledictions. They remembered the extravagances of which she and
such as she had been the cause, and the public misery that had
resulted.'"
"The infamous creature!" said Schneider. "After having 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 himself. 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 regiment 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
bodyguard, 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 attractive 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, shouting: "I am almost starved! Here I
am!"