THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
struggle for and against liberty in Europe, and I might have taken up the musket and fought with the republicans on the barricades on the 2d of December. So it may be, that, if it had otherwise been my intention to remain in Paris, the police saved me from participating in a hopeless enterprise, and possibly from a miserable end.
The last weeks of my sojourn in Paris were devoted to visits to galleries, museums, and interesting architectures, and to merry conviviality with my friends. To one of them, a young Frenchman from Provence who had studied medicine in Paris, my departure was especially hard. I had made his acquaintance as one of the lodgers of the Petit house, and I mention him because he furnished a remarkable example of the effect of German philosophy upon a French brain, which I would not have deemed possible had I not personally witnessed it. Soon after we had become acquainted he attached himself to me and to several others among my German friends, and as he was a modest, agreeable, and able young man taking life seriously, we reciprocated his friendly feelings. He loved Germans, so he said, because they were the nation of thinkers. He had made the acquaintance of some products of German literature in translations, and tried to possess himself of the language, mainly for the purpose of studying the works of German philosophers; but he seemed to find it very difficult. Thus he had to content himself with French renderings of German philosophical works, and he frequently came to us for the explanation of phrases which he did not understand. Sometimes we could give him such explanations, but many of the dark expressions we did not understand ourselves. Suddenly we became aware that our young Provençal, whose conduct of life had always been very regular and irreproachable, visited the German beerhouses, of which there were a great many in Paris, and drank heavily. This went
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