CHAPTER V
One morning, toward the end of February, 1848, I sat quietly in my attic-chamber, working hard at my tragedy of “Ulrich von Hutten,” when suddenly a friend rushed breathlessly into the room, exclaiming: “What, you sitting here! Do you not know what has happened?”
“No; what?”
“The French have driven away Louis Philippe and proclaimed the republic.”
I threw down my pen—and that was the end of “Ulrich von Hutten.” I never touched the manuscript again. We tore down the stairs, into the street, to the market-square, the accustomed meeting-place for all the student societies after their midday dinner. Although it was still forenoon, the market was already crowded with young men talking excitedly. There was no shouting, no noise, only agitated conversation. What did we want there? This probably no one knew. But since the French had driven away Louis Philippe and proclaimed the republic, something of course must happen here, too. Some of the students had brought their rapiers along, as if it were necessary at once to make an attack or to defend ourselves. We were dominated by a vague feeling as if a great outbreak of elemental forces had begun, as if an earthquake was impending of which we had felt the first shock, and we instinctively crowded together. Thus we wandered about in numerous bands—to the “Kneipe,” where our restlessness, however, would not suffer us long to stay; then to other pleasure resorts, where we fell into conversation with all manner of strangers, to find in
[ 112 ]
