THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
myself to go up to headquarters. Then a new idea suddenly flashed through my head. I remembered that only a few days previously my attention had been attracted to a subterranean sewer for the waters of the street gutters which, near the Steinmauerner gate, led from the interior of the city, under the fortifications, into an open field outside. This sewer was probably a part of an uncompleted drainage system. The entrance to it in the interior of the city was situated in a trench near a garden hedge. Outside it emptied into a ditch overgrown with shrubbery, which bordered a corn field. When these circumstances had first come to my knowledge, it had occurred to me that if the opening as well as the exit of that sewer were not well watched, spies might easily pass through it from the outside into the town. I had reported the matter to the governor, but immediately afterwards came the negotiations with the enemy, the mission of Corvin, and the excitement about the impending capitulation, which drove the affair of the sewer out of my mind.
Now at the last moment before the surrender the remembrance came back to me like a ray of light. Would it not be possible for me to escape through that sewer? Would it not, if I thus gained the open in this way, be possible in some manner to reach the Rhine, there to procure a boat and to cross the river to the French side? My resolution was promptly taken—I would at least try.
I called my servant, who had prepared my belongings for the surrender. “Adam,” I said, “you are a Palatinate man, a volunteer. I believe if you surrender to the Prussians you will soon be sent home. I am a Prussian, and us Prussians they will probably shoot dead. I will therefore try to escape, and I know a way. Let us therefore say good-bye.”
“No, Herr Lieutenant,” Adam exclaimed, “I shall not
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