THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
where we intended to go. “We want to go to Strasburg,” I answered haphazard. The mayor gave us thereupon a sort of passport, with the instruction that we should report ourselves at once in Strasburg to the prefect. The depressing seriousness came over me that I was now really a homeless man, a fugitive, and under police surveillance. After having written to my parents and described to them my escape, we started for Strasburg without further delay. The real goal, however, of my journey was Switzerland, where, as I learned, Anneke and many others of my friends might be found.
If I had remained only a few days longer in Selz I should have seen my father in the same inn in which I had slept my first night in freedom. The mischance happened in this wise: The letter I had written to my parents on the day of the surrender at Rastatt, in the expectation that I would be taken prisoner together with the rest of the garrison, struck them like a clap of thunder, and at once my father set out to look for his son. Arrived in Rastatt, he reported himself at the office of the Prussian commander, to learn something about my fate. The commander received him kindly, but on inquiry could not give him any further information than that my name was not on the list of the captives. This surprised my father very much, and he requested permission to visit the casemates in which the prisoners were kept. This permission he received, and an officer accompanied him on this anxious search. From casemate to casemate they went three days long, and of one man after another they inquired about me, but all in vain. Many of those they saw knew me, but nobody knew what had become of me. Nobody had seen me on the occasion of the surrender. My father found Kinkel among the crowd. “What,” Kinkel cried, “is Carl here, too? Alas, I believed him to be secure in Switzerland!”
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