The Whites and the Blues. Alexandre DumasЧитать онлайн книгу.

CHAPTER III

       Table of Contents

EULOGE SCHNEIDER

       Table of Contents

      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