The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (book)/Volume One/Chapter 09
CHAPTER IX
ON my errand I had to pass through the grand duchy of Baden, and saw from the window of my railroad carriage the castle tower of Rastatt, on which I had spent so many an hour. My first stopping place was Frankfurt-on-the-Main, where I was to find several persons who had been designated to me by the directors of my club at Zürich as worthy of confidence. From them I obtained various information about the condition of things in the western and middle part of Germany, and reported back what I learned to my friends in Switzerland. In general I faithfully carried out the instructions which I had received from them, and succeeded in keeping up the impression with regard to the object of my journey so completely that not one of my Zürich friends suspected me in the least of ulterior designs. Next I visited a number of cities, Wiesbaden, Kreuznach, Birkenfeld, Trier, where I found friends of our cause and established new communications. There were still among them people who hoped to bring on new revolutionary upheavals by means of secret conspiracies. This is one of the usual afterthroes of miscarried revolutionary movements. I traveled down the Moselle to Coblenz, where I passed a quiet day, intending to take the night mail coach to Bonn. In this I succeeded without trouble. As I approached my home, however, the journey became more precarious. At about two o'clock in the morning I arrived in Godesberg, where I decided to leave the coach. The remainder of the way to Bonn I did on foot. The house of my parents was outside of the city on the Coblenzer Strasse, and I reached it by three o'clock in the morning. By a fortunate accident I still possessed the latchkey which I had used as a student, and it opened the back door. In this way I got into the house and soon stood in the bedroom of my parents. Both were sleeping profoundly. After having sat for a while quietly on a chair until the light of dawn crept in through the windows I woke them up. Their surprise was indescribable. For some moments they could not persuade themselves that I was really there. Then their astonishment passed into the liveliest joy. My mother thought that I looked indeed a little fatigued, but otherwise very well. At once she would see to the breakfast. After I had given them the most necessary explanations about my sudden appearance, my father, who was beyond measure proud of me, wanted to know whom I desired to see in the course of the day. I had hard work to convince him that above all things my presence must be kept absolutely secret, and that therefore I did not wish to come into contact with anybody except the most trustworthy intimates.
Very fortunately it so happened that Frau Johanna Kinkel visited my parents that same morning, and I had opportunity for a confidential talk with her. I told her that I was ready to devote myself to the liberation of her husband if she would put the enterprise entirely into my hands, speak to nobody about it, and not ask me for more information than I might voluntarily give her. With touching enthusiasm she thanked me for my friendship and promised everything. After having agreed upon what was at the time to be done or to be left undone, I gave her a receipt for a magic ink which I had obtained in Zürich. With that ink our correspondence was to be carried on. It was simply a chemical solution, which, when used as ink, made no mark on the paper. A letter containing indifferent subject-matter was to be written over this in ordinary ink; the person receiving the letter then was to cover the paper, by means of a brush or sponge, with another chemical solution, which made what had been written in ordinary ink disappear. Thereupon the paper was to be warmed near a stove or a lamp to make the communication written with the magic ink become legible. Kinkel's eldest son, Gottfried, at that time a little boy, told me later that he had often looked on while his mother washed sheets of paper and then dried them near the stove.
When I had seen Frau Kinkel my most important business in Bonn was finished and I could give myself for some days, or so long as I could hope to remain undiscovered, to the joy of living once more with my family. With some of my oldest student friends I came together in the rooms of one of them, and there I met also a young student of medicine, Abraham Jacobi. Jacobi was a zealous democrat who afterwards won in America a great name for himself as a physician and scientist—so great, indeed, that many years later, when he had become one of the most prominent physicians of America, this revolutionary exile was distinguished by the university of Berlin with a call to a professorship. His invaluable friendship I have enjoyed down to this moment, and hope to enjoy it to the last.
In the darkness of night I went out to take my accustomed walks once more; and on one of those nightly expeditions I could not refrain from passing Betty's window in order, perhaps, to catch a gleam of light which might issue through the shutters; but all was dark. The next morning, however, I received more than an accidental gleam of light. One of my best friends, who also knew Betty, came to the house of my parents bringing a bouquet of flowers. “This bouquet,” he said to me, “is sent to you by a girl whom I could safely tell that you are here.” I blushed over and over in accepting the flowers and expressed my thanks. I put no further questions, for I did not doubt who the girl must be.
Before many days the number of my friends who had been informed of my presence was so large, and the danger that I might be betrayed by some accidental conversation between them became so great, that I thought it necessary to disappear. In response to my request my cousin, Heribert Jüssen, whose passport and name I bore, came to Bonn with his vehicle to take me during the night to Cologne. The parting from my parents and sisters was very sad, but after all they let me go in a comparatively cheerful state of mind. I left with them the same impression I had left with my friends in Switzerland—that I was exclusively engaged in business entrusted to me in Zürich. But we often talked about Kinkel's dreadful lot, and my parents repeatedly and emphatically expressed the hope that someone might be found to make an attempt to rescue him. Although they probably did not have me in mind when saying this, still it was sufficient to convince me that they would approve of my being that one. When I left Bonn nobody knew of my purpose except Frau Kinkel.
In Cologne I found quarters in the upper story of a restaurant which was kept by a zealous democrat. My friend the “Red Becker,” the democratic editor, was there my special protector and confidant. I had made his acquaintance at the university. He was indeed at that time no longer a student. His examinations he had passed long before, but he was fond of visiting his Burschenschaft, the Allemania, in the old way; and nobody possessed a merrier humor and a more inexhaustible sitting power at the convivial meetings than he. Everybody knew and loved him. His nickname, the “Red Becker,” he owed to a peculiarity of appearance. He had thin gold-red hair and a thin gold-red beard; he also suffered from a chronic inflammation of his eyelids so that his eyes seemed to have been framed in red. Not only his amiable disposition and his bubbling wit, but also his keen, critical mind and his comprehensive knowledge made him a most agreeable and much-desired companion. Nobody would have anticipated at that time that this jolly comrade who found so much enjoyment in continuing his university life beyond the ordinary measure of years, and who had already, in a high degree, acquired the oddities of an incorrigible student loiterer, would later distinguish himself as a most excellent public administrator, as a popular burgomaster of Cologne, and as a member of the Prussian House of Lords.
We had become close friends in consequence of our common political sympathies. He was not only at that time the editor of a democratic paper, but also the leader of the democratic club in Cologne, and I could safely count upon it that if anybody cherished a purpose to liberate Kinkel during the impending trial for the Siegburg affair, he would certainly know it all. Becker told me with the utmost frankness what had been planned and that all the world talked about “something that must be done.” It became clear to me at once that if all the world talked about it, an attempt could not possibly succeed, and I was rejoiced to hear Becker himself share this conviction. Thus I was satisfied that nothing would be done in Cologne that might be apt to render later attempts more difficult of success.
The secret of my presence in Cologne was communicated to my nearest friends and to many others with such unconcern that I thought it was time to leave. Therefore I took a night train by way of Brussels to Paris. My intentions with regard to Kinkel I had confided to nobody in Cologne. Becker knew no more than that I had gone to Paris for the purpose of putting myself into communication with the German refugees living there, to write some letters about the situation of things in the French capital for his newspaper, and that I perhaps would spend some time in historical studies. In fact, all I had in view was to sit still in a secure place until the trial of the Siegburg affair, with all its excitements, was over, and Kinkel had been transported back to Naugard or to some other penitentiary, so that I might find him fixed at a certain place, and there begin my venturesome work.
Some impressions I received on the day of my arrival in Paris will always remain indelible in my mind. I was well versed in the recent history of France with its world-moving revolutionary events. Since the days of March, 1848, I had studied them with especial interest, hoping thus to learn more clearly to judge what was passing in my own surroundings, and now I had arrived at the theater of these great revolutionary actions in which the elementary forces of society in wild explosions had demolished the old and opened the way to the new order of things. From the railway station I went to the nearest little hotel, and soon, map in hand, I set out to explore the city. Eagerly I read the names of the streets on the corners. Here they were, then, those battlefields of the new era, which my excited imagination peopled at once with historic figures—here the Square of the Bastile, where the people won their first victory—there the Temple, where the royal family had been imprisoned; there the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, which on the days of great decision had sent the masses of the Blousemen upon the barricades into the bloody conflict; there the Carré Saint-Martin, where the first barricades of the February rising had been raised; there the Hôtel de Ville, where the commune had sat and where Robespierre with a bloody head had lain upon the table; there the Palais Royal where Camille Desmoulins, standing upon a chair, had fulminated his fiery speech and stuck a green leaf as a cockade on his hat; there the Place de la Concorde, where on the 10th of August the royal power of Louis XVI. fell into the dust.
Thus I wandered about for several hours as if entranced, when at a shop window I heard two men speaking German together. This woke me out of my reverie, and it occurred to me that it was time to look up the German refugees whose addresses I possessed. I therefore accosted the German-speaking men and asked them where I could find a certain street. I received a polite response and found myself soon in the room of a friend whose acquaintance I had made in the Palatinate—the Saxon refugee Zychlinski. He procured for me a furnished room in the neighborhood of the Church Saint-Eustache and instructed me quickly in the art of living in Paris on little money.
My sojourn in the French capital lasted about four weeks. My first care was to practice myself in the language of the country. I had appreciated already in Brussels that the instruction in French which I had received at the gymnasium hardly enabled me to order a breakfast. Now I began at once with a pocket dictionary in hand to read newspapers, including the advertisements, and then to avail myself of every opportunity to put the words and phrases I had thus learned to use in conversation with the concièrge of my house or the waiter at the restaurant or with anybody who would listen to me. After a few days I found that I could get along measurably well as to the everyday requirements of life. I did not make any important acquaintances in Paris at that time. Indeed I saw the leading men of the legislative bodies, but only from the distance of the gallery. Fellow-refugees brought me into contact with some Frenchmen who belonged to the extreme revolutionary class. From them I heard little more than the ordinary tirades against Louis Napoleon, who at that time was still president of the republic, but who gave significant indications of ulterior ambitions. In the circles in which I moved it was regarded as certain that this “Napoleonic business” could not possibly last long and that the new revolution doing away with the president would inevitably spread over the larger part of Europe. Although I took all possible pains to form a sober and impartial judgment of the condition of things in France, reading attentively to this end the journals of all parties, my conclusions did not escape from the influence of my wishes and illusions. If I should now in the light of historical events see again the letters which then I wrote in good faith as correspondent of Becker's newspaper, the reading would not be welcome. The errors of judgment which I then committed and which in less than two years I learned correctly to estimate, have been to me a lasting and salutary lesson. A large part of my time I spent in studying the treasures of art collected in Paris, which opened to me a world of charming vistas.
I remember an occurrence which, although unimportant in itself, has frequently in later times risen up in my mind and set me to thinking. I was in the habit of meeting Zychlinski and some other Germans in a certain Quartier Latin café. One evening I failed to find my friend there. This was especially disagreeable to me, for I had wished to ask Zychlinski to lend me some money. A remittance due me from Becker had not come, and all the change in my pocket consisted of a few sous, which were sufficient only for a cup of coffee and the tip to the waiter. I sat down and ordered my cup as usual, with the confident expectation that either one or the other of my friends would soon appear. I drank my coffee as slowly as possible, but when I had emptied the cup not one of my expected friends was there. I put the remainder of my sugar into a glass of water, and prepared my “eau-sucré” in the manner of the thrifty guests of the French cafés. I read one journal after another, sipping my sugar-water with painful slowness, but nobody came. I may have sat there more than two hours and it began to be very late. The “dame du comptoir,” to whom payment was made, yawned, and even Monsieur Louis, the attendant of the billiard table, who for more than an hour had been unoccupied, became sleepy. I still see the amiable Monsieur Louis before me, from time to time rolling the ivory balls on the billiard table with his finger from one spot to another and then looking at me. I felt as if both had become annoyed at the long time that I devoted to my cup of coffee. So I resolved to pay with my last sous and to go home. But when I got up from my chair an accident happened. By an awkward movement I pushed the coffee cup off the little table upon the marble floor, and it broke into many pieces. I thought that as a matter of course I must pay for the broken cup. I had money enough for the coffee, but not for the broken cup. The dame du comptoir exchanged glances with Monsieur Louis. Those glances darted into the depth of my guilty conscience. What should I do? At this moment several new guests came in, French students, of whom two or three began to joke with the dame du comptoir. Could I now step into this group and in my clumsy French make to the Dame du Comptoir a confession of my embarrassment? Would I not expose myself to the laughter of the whole company? In the excitement of the moment I recklessly resolved to order another cup of coffee, taking a last chance of my friends still turning up. I waited long, but not in vain. Zychlinski really came. The terrible burden fell from my soul. I had to restrain myself not to cry out for delight. I told him my story, and we laughed heartily about it, but with all this I did not feel at ease. Zychlinski lent me the needed money, but when I got up to leave and asked the dame du comptoir how much I owed for the broken cup, she replied with a gracious condescending smile that in this café no payment was ever accepted for accidentally broken crockery. My anguish had therefore been altogether superfluous. When I returned to my quarters I found a letter from Becker containing the delayed check.
This little adventure has in later life frequently come to my mind again. As a result of my ruminations I give to those who read this story the serious advice not to follow my example under similar circumstances and never to add to one obligation an unnecessary new one, trusting to a happy chance for payment. It was a cause of that false pride which has led so many men, originally honest, down the inclined plane of mischief. Many a man has gone to destruction for not having the moral courage to face embarrassing situations or on occasion frankly to confess: “I have not money enough to do that which others do.”
While I was in Paris the trial of the participants in the Siegburg affair took place in Cologne. At an early hour on the 10th day of April, Kinkel left the penitentiary at Naugard accompanied by three police officers and arrived in Cologne on the 13th. On the journey, which was made in great secrecy, he was permitted to wear an ordinary overcoat and a little black hat, but as soon as he arrived in the penitentiary in Cologne he had to don the penitentiary garb again. A few days later Frau Kinkel was permitted to see her husband in the prison, but only in the presence of the turnkeys. She took with her her six-year-old Gottfried, who did not recognize his father with his closely clipped hair, his drawn features, and his convict dress, until he heard his voice.
The public trial before a jury of burghers opened on the 29th of April. Ten persons were accused “of an attempt to upset the present constitution of the kingdom, to excite the citizens or inhabitants of the state to sedition, to arm themselves against the royal authority, and to bring about a civil war by arming the citizens or inhabitants of the state against one another, or by inciting them so to arm themselves.” Of the defendants, four were present, six having fled the kingdom, of whom I was one.
The population of Cologne was in feverish excitement. The court house was surrounded by an immense multitude eager to see Kinkel and to manifest their sympathy for him, the captive defender of liberty, the poet condemned to the penitentiary. The authorities had taken the most extensive measures to prevent any possibility of his being liberated. The carriage in which Kinkel rode from the prison to the court house was surrounded by a strong force of cavalry with drawn sabers. The streets he passed through, as well as all the approaches to the court house, were bristling with bayonets. On the court house square stood two cannon with an ammunition wagon, and the artillerymen ready for action. When Kinkel appeared he was, in spite of all this, received by the assembled multitude with thundering cheers. He had again been put into ordinary citizen's dress. On the way he appeared stolid and impassive. The aspect and the acclaim of the people revived him. Boldly and proudly he lifted up his closely clipped head as he strode from the carriage between lines of soldiers into the hall of justice. There his wife had, early in the morning, secured a place which she continued to occupy every day throughout the trial. The public prosecutor moved in Kinkel's case the penalty of death. The testimony of the various witnesses brought out the facts of the case as they were generally known; the public prosecutor, as well as the attorneys of the defendants, pleaded their causes with coolness and skill. My friend and fellow-student, Ludwig Meyer, made a manly speech in his own defense, and at last, on the 2d of May, Kinkel himself asked to be heard.
The assembled audience, aye, the whole nation, were in a state of anxious expectancy. People asked one another: “What will he say? Will he humiliate himself, and bow his head like a penitent sinner? Will he present the picture of a broken and thenceforth harmless man in order to purchase grace? Or will he defy those in power by maintaining all his former professions, by standing by what he has said and done, and thereby forfeit the last claim to a mitigation of his awful lot?” The grievously suffering man would probably have been forgiven by public opinion had he by a yielding attitude sought an alleviation of his misery.
Kinkel's speech in his own defense was a full answer to all these questions, in the highest degree imposing, and touching at the same time. He began with a concise description of the public situation in Germany after the revolution in March, 1848. “The people,” he said, “had then won their sovereignty. This sovereignty of the people had been embodied in the constituent assemblies elected by universal suffrage—in the Prussian assembly in Berlin, as well as in the national parliament in Frankfurt. It had so been understood by all the world. The national parliament had proceeded with signal moderation; it had created a magna charta of popular rights in a constitution for the empire, and it had elected as the head of the empire and the protector of that magna charta the king of Prussia, the same king who on the 18th of March had put himself at the head of the movement for German unity and freedom. The realization of this idea had been the great hope of the nation. But the king of Prussia had refused to complete the work of national unity by declining the imperial crown. He had dissolved the Prussian constituent assembly, which had urged him to accept the charge, and thereby annihilated the possibility of an agreement with the people, and with it also all hope of the accomplishment of social reforms. Then nothing had remained but an appeal to arms. He too, the accused, had taken up his musket, and he declared now in the presence of his judges his belief that he had done right. He stood to-day by the acts he had committed in the preceding May. What he had done, he had done as a patriot and a man of honor.” He went still farther in his avowal. He called himself a socialist—although in the now-accepted party sense Kinkel had really never been that. He had never been an adherent of any of those systems which contemplate a complete subversion of the traditional institutions of society. When he called himself a socialist he meant only that, as he said, “his heart was always with the poor and oppressed of the people, and not with the rich and powerful of this world.” He expressed, therefore, only those sympathies which had taken possession of so many hearts, and in order to designate them he chose the name of socialist because it was nearest at hand. “And because I am a socialist,” Kinkel continued, “therefore I am a democrat, for I believe that only the people themselves can feel their own deep wounds and cleanse and heal them. But because I am a democrat, because I consider the democratic state as the only and certain possibility to banish misery from the world, therefore I also believe that when a people have once won democratic institutions they have not only the right, but also the duty to defend those institutions to the last with all means within their reach, even with musket and pointed steel. In this sense I profess to accept the principle of revolution for which my own blood has flowed, and even to-day, wholly in the power of my adversaries, I confess with the pale lips of the prisoner that this principle is mine. And therefore I also believe that together with the friends at my side I was right when I took up the battle and offered to my principles the highest sacrifice. A high aim was before our eyes. Had we conquered we would have saved to our people peace within itself; the unity of the Fatherland, this fundamental idea of the German revolution, and with it the key to all future developments of prosperity and greatness. Gentlemen, we have not conquered. The people have not carried this struggle through, but have abandoned us, us who advanced in the lead. The consequences fall upon our heads.”
Now he declared how in this struggle he had not hesitated to associate himself with persons without education and even of doubtful repute. “For,” he said, “no great idea had ever been disgraced because the populace and the publicans accepted it.” Then he explained how the penal provisions of the Code Napoleon, which was still the law in the Rhineland, could not be applied to the public conditions of 1848; that this code had been designed for an absolute military monarchy; that after the revolution the Germans were entitled to arm themselves as a people with free choice of their leaders—and this for the purpose of enabling the people to protect their rights against encroachments. “We are told that we attempted to subvert the existing constitution of the kingdom. What constitution is meant? The new Prussian? Who ever thought of that? Or the Frankfurt national constitution? To protect this we took up arms. Upon your conscience, gentlemen, are we the men that made attempts upon that constitution? But we are charged to have incited civil war. Who dares to assert this? Who will deny that in the face of the uprising of the whole people in arms, a grand solemn uprising, the crown would have been urged upon the path of progress, without civil war? Yes, if all were true that is asserted in the indictment, if we had really conspired to oppose force to force, if we had armed ourselves to storm an armory, if we had put arms into the hands of citizens for such an enterprise, even then, yes, even then, we would, after a defeat, be only unfortunates, but not punishable culprits. We would have done it, not to destroy a constitution, but to support one that was attacked; we would have done it not to incite civil war, but to prevent civil war, that horrible civil war, which drove the Landwehr of Iserlohn into the deadly fire of the German riflemen on the tower of Durlach, that condemned, in consequence, Dortu to be shot and Corvin to penal labor. What has become of the Fatherland now that we have not conquered? That you know. But if we had conquered in this struggle, before God, gentlemen, instead of the guillotine with which the prosecuting attorney threatens us, according to the law of the French tyrant, we would receive from you to-day the civic crown.” This part of his speech was heard by all those assembled in the hall with astonishment and by many with admiration. The presiding officer found it difficult to suppress the storm of applause which at times would break out, but everybody felt that this accused man who faced so boldly and proudly those in power, even if he escaped a new sentence, had now forfeited all hope for a mitigation of the punishment already imposed upon him. But what now followed overwhelmed the audience to an unexpected degree. In a few sentences Kinkel pointed out the contradictions and weak points in the testimony of the witnesses, and then he continued:
“The only thing that remains is that I have incited citizens to take up arms. I will tell you how this incitement came about. I am glad to tell you, because in my action there is only one thing that might appear ambiguous, and that is, that I endeavored rather to dissuade others from the enterprise which I myself undertook. With perfect clearness that 10th of May still stands before my mind, for that day on which I, a happy man, took leave of all the happiness of my life, has etched itself into my soul with burning needles of pain. The strain and stress of that time tore piece after piece from my heart; but at five o'clock in the afternoon I had not yet formed a final resolution. I went to the university. I delivered my lecture with quiet composure. It was my last. At six o'clock arrived the tidings from Elberfeld and Düsseldorf. They struck hot fire into my breast. I felt that the hour had come for me when honor commanded to act. From the meeting of citizens I went to my dwelling to say farewell. I took leave of the peace of my house; of the office which for twelve years had made me happy, and which I believe I had faithfully administered; leave of my wife, for whose possession I had already once risked my life; leave of my sleeping children, who did not dream that in this hour they lost their father. But when I crossed my threshold and stepped into the darkening street, then I said to myself, ‘You have taken this resolution prepared for whatever may follow; for you know what the consequences may be. You will always have the consolation of the ideas and convictions you cherish. You have no right to persuade another husband, another father, to the same terrible decision.’ In this state of mind I mounted the platform of the citizens' meeting; and I warned every one of my hearers whose heart was not firm like mine—and out of this speech the public prosecutor makes an incitement to revolt! Do not think, gentlemen, that I wish to appeal to your emotions and to awaken your pity. Yes, I know it, and the ‘acts of grace’ of the year 1849 have taught me that your verdict of guilty means a sentence of death; but in spite of this, I do not want your compassion; not for my fellow-defendants, for to them you owe not pity, but satisfaction for the long and undeserved imprisonment; not for me, for however inestimable your sympathy as citizens and men may be to me, your compassion for me would have no value. The sufferings I have to bear are so terrible that your verdict can have no added terrors for me. Beyond the measure of the punishment at first imposed upon me, the authorities have increased mine by the horrible solitude of the isolated cell, the desolate stillness, in which no trumpet call of the struggling outside world will penetrate, and no loving look of faithful friends. They have condemned a German poet and teacher who in more than one breast has lighted the flame of knowledge and beauty, they have condemned a heart full of sympathy slowly to die in soulless mechanical labor, in denial of all mental atmosphere. The murderer, the lowest, most hideous criminal, is permitted as soon as the word of grace and pardon has descended upon him to breathe the air of his Rhenish home, to drink the water of his beloved river. The fourteen days I have been here have taught me how much consolation there is in the air and light of the homeland. But I am kept in the far-away gloomy north, and not even behind the iron bars of my prison I am allowed to see the tears of my wife, to look into the bright eyes of my children. I do not ask for your commiseration, for however bloody this law may be you cannot make my lot more terrible than it is. The man whom the public prosecutor has insinuatingly dared to accuse of cowardice has in this last year looked death in its various forms into the eyes so often, so nearly, so calmly, that even the prospect of the guillotine can no longer shake him. I do not want your compassion, but I insist upon my right. My right I put upon your consciences, and because I know that you citizens, jurymen, will not deny this right to your Rhenish compatriot. Therefore I expect with quiet confidence from your lips the verdict of not guilty. I have spoken; now it is for you to judge!”
The impression produced by these words has been described to me by eyewitnesses. At first the audience listened in breathless silence, but before long the judges upon the bench, the jurors, the densely crowded citizens in the hall, the prosecuting attorney who had conducted the case, the police officers who watched the accused, the soldiers whose bayonets gleamed about the door, burst out in sobs and tears. It took several minutes after Kinkel concluded his speech before the presiding judge found his voice again. At last the case was given to the jury. The jury instantly returned a verdict of “Not guilty.” Then a thundering cheer broke forth in the hall, which was taken up by the multitude outside and resounded in the streets far into the city. Frau Kinkel pressed through the crowd to her husband. A police officer ordered his subordinates who surrounded Kinkel to hold her back, but Kinkel, rising to his full height, cried out with a commanding voice, “Come, Johanna! Give your husband a kiss. Nobody shall forbid you.” As if yielding to a higher power the police officers stepped back and made way for the wife, who threw herself into her husband's arms.
The other defendants were now free to go home; only Kinkel, still under the former sentence imposed upon him by the court-martial in Baden, was again quickly surrounded by his guards, taken to the carriage amid the resounding acclamations of the people and the rolling of the drums of the soldiers, and carried back to the jail.
As was to be expected, the authorities had taken every possible measure to prevent an attempt to liberate Kinkel in Cologne. The government had meanwhile also resolved not to take him back to the penitentiary at Naugard, but to imprison him in Spandau, probably because in Naugard warm sympathies with the sufferer had manifested themselves. To mislead Kinkel's friends and to avoid all difficulties on the way, he was not, as generally expected by the public, transported by rail, but in a coach, accompanied by two police officers. The departure took place on the day after the trial in all secrecy, but just these arrangements had made possible an attempt at escape which Kinkel undertook of his own motion and without help from the outside, and which he narrated to me later as follows:
One evening the police officers stopped the coach at a wayside tavern of a Westphalian village where they intended to take supper. Kinkel was placed in a room in the upper story, where one officer remained with him, while the other went down to make some arrangements. Kinkel noticed that the door of the room was left ajar and that the key was in the lock outside. The idea to take advantage of this circumstance occurred to him instantly. Standing near the window he directed the attention of the police officer who guarded him, sitting near the door, to a noise outside on the street. As soon as the police officer stepped to the window, Kinkel sprang with a rapid jump through the door and turned the key in the lock outside. Then he ran as fast as he could down the stairs through the back door into the yard, into the kitchen garden, and in the direction that was open to him, into the fields. Soon the fugitive heard voices behind him and turning saw lights in the distance moving to and fro. He ran with furious speed, spurred on by the pursuit, which was evidently at his heels. Suddenly he struck his forehead against a hard object and fell down stunned.
The pursuers also had their difficulties. The police officer who had been in the room with Kinkel jumped for the door, and finding it locked, he hurried back to the window, which in the excitement of the moment he did not succeed in opening quickly. He smashed it with his fist and shouted into the street that the “rogue” had escaped. The whole house was promptly alarmed; the police officers told the servants that the fugitive was one of the most dangerous criminals of the Rhineland, and offered a reward of at least a hundred thalers for his capture. Of course, the village folk believed all they were told. The postilion who had driven the coach, not suspecting that his passenger was Kinkel, showed himself especially active. At once lanterns were brought to look for the tracks of the fugitive. The postilion soon discovered them, but Kinkel had gained considerable headway by these delays, and only his running against a pile of wood, a projecting log of which struck his forehead, had neutralized this advantage. In less than a quarter of an hour he was in his benumbed condition discovered by the postilion, who really believed that he had before him an escaped highwayman, and soon the police officers, hurrying on, again laid their hands upon him. These now redoubled their watchfulness until finally the door of the penitentiary of Spandau closed upon the unfortunate man.
When the excitement caused by the trial in Cologne had subsided, and Kinkel, sitting quietly in the Spandau penitentiary, had temporarily ceased to occupy public attention in an extraordinary degree, I left Paris for Germany. I had in the meantime received new instructions from the Zürich committee which I faithfully carried out. To this end I visited several places in the Rhineland and in Westphalia, and even attended a meeting of democratic leaders which took place in July in Braunschweig, where I hoped to establish useful connections. There I made the acquaintance of the Mecklenburg deputy, Moritz Wiggers, with whom soon I was to have very interesting transactions.
At the beginning of August I returned to Cologne, where I had another meeting with Frau Kinkel. She reported that the sum collected for the liberation of her husband had grown considerably, and I was rejoiced to hear that it was sufficient to justify the beginning of active work. We agreed that the money should be sent to a confidential person in Berlin from whom I might receive it according to my requirements. Frau Kinkel also told me that she had found a method to convey to Kinkel information in a manner not likely to excite suspicion, if anything were undertaken in his behalf. She had written to him about her musical studies and put into her letters long explanations about the word “fuge.” Kinkel had made her understand by words which were unintelligible to the officers who reviewed his letters, that he appreciated the significance of the word “fuge,” Latin, “fuga,” English, “flight,” and that he was anxious to correspond more with her upon that subject. Frau Johanna promised me to be very circumspect with her letters and not to cause him any unnecessary excitement, also not to become impatient herself if she should hear from me but seldom. So we parted and I started for the field of my operations.
At the railroad station I found my friend Jacobi, who was on his way to Schleswig-Holstein, to offer his services as a physician to our struggling brethren. A part of the way we could journey together. This was an agreeable surprise, but a much less agreeable surprise was it when in the coupé in which we took seats we found ourselves directly opposite to Professor Lassen of the University of Bonn, who knew me. We were greatly startled. Professor Lassen looked at me with evident astonishment, but as Jacobi and I began to chat and laugh as other young men would have done with apparent unconcern, the good orientalist probably thought that he was mistaken and that I could not possibly be the malefactor whom I resembled in appearance. On the 11th of August I arrived at Berlin. My passport, bearing the name of my cousin, Heribert Jüssen, and fitting me admirably in the personal description, was in excellent order, as the passports of political offenders venturing upon dangerous ground usually are, and thus I had no difficulty in entering Berlin, the gates and railroad stations of which were supposed to be closely watched by an omniscient police bent upon arresting or turning away all suspicious characters. Without delay I looked up some student friends who had been with me members of the Burschenschaft Franconia at the university of Bonn, and they gave me a hearty welcome, although they were not a little astonished to see me suddenly turn up in Berlin. They were discreet enough not to ask me for what purpose I had come, and thus made it easy for me to keep my own secret. Two of them, who occupied a small apartment on the Markgrafen Strasse, invited me to share their quarters; and as I went out and in with my friends the police officers on that beat no doubt regarded me as one of the university students, a good many of whom lived in that neighborhood.
It was at that period customary in Berlin, and perhaps it is now, that the tenants of apartment houses were not furnished with latchkeys for the street doors, but that such keys were entrusted to the night-watchman patrolling the street, and that a tenant wishing to enter his house during the night had to apply to the watchman to open the door for him. Having been seen by our watchman once or twice coming home with my friends, I was regarded by him as legitimately belonging to the regular inhabitants of the street; and as it happened several times that, returning late in the night alone from my expeditions to Spandau, where I was preparing for the deliverance of a man sentenced to imprisonment for life, I called upon this same police officer to open for me—for me, who was then virtually an outlaw—the door of my abode, which he always did without the slightest suspicion. This afforded me and my friends much amusement, and, indeed, considering the great reputation of the Berlin police for efficiency, the situation was comical enough. It is, therefore, not surprising that I became a little reckless and did not resist the temptation to see the famous French actress, Rachel, who at that period, with a company of her own, was presenting the principal part of her repertoire to the Berlin public.
RACHEL
From the Painting by Edouard Dubufe
Rachel had then reached the zenith of her fame. Her history was again and again rehearsed in the newspapers: how that child of poor Alsatian Jews, born in 1820 in a small inn of the canton of Aargau in Switzerland, had accompanied her parents on their peddling tours through France; how she had earned pennies by singing with one of her sisters in the streets of Paris; how her voice attracted attention; how she was taken into the Conservatoire; how she soon turned from singing to elocution and acting, and how her phenomenal genius, suddenly blazing forth, at once placed her far ahead of the most renowned of living histrionic artists. We revolutionary youths remembered with especial interest, the tales that had come from Paris after those February days of 1848, when King Louis Philippe was driven away and the republic proclaimed, describing Rachel as she recited the “Marseillaise” on the stage, half singing, half declaiming, and throwing her hearers into paroxysms of patriotic frenzy.
Some of my student friends having witnessed Rachel's first performance in Berlin, gave me extravagantly enthusiastic reports. My desire to see her became very great. Indeed, the attempt would not be without risk. In thus venturing into a public place I might fall into the hands of the police and go from there straightway to prison. But my friends told me that the government detectives would hardly look for state criminals in a theater, and that I would be safe enough in the large crowd of Rachel enthusiasts. I could put myself into some dark corner of the parterre without danger of meeting a detective for one night at least. Finally, with the light-heartedness of youth, I resolved to take the risk.
So I saw Rachel. It was one of the most overpowering impressions of my life. The play was Racine's “Phèdre.” I had read most of the tragedies of Corneille, Racine and Voltaire, and was well enough acquainted with them to follow the dialogue. But I had never liked them much. The stilted artificiality of the diction in the tedious monotony of the rhymed Alexandrine verse had repelled me, and I had always wondered how such plays could be made interesting on the stage. That I was to learn. When Rachel stepped upon the scene, not with the customary stage stride, but with a dignity and majestic grace all her own, there was first a spell of intense astonishment and then a burst of applause. She stood still for a moment, in the folds of her classic robe like an antique statue fresh from the hand of Phidias. The mere sight sent a thrill through the audience: her face a long oval, her forehead, shadowed by black wavy hair, not remarkably high, but broad and strong; under her dark arched eyebrows a pair of wondrous eyes that glowed and blazed in their deep sockets like two black suns; a finely chiseled nose with open, quivering nostrils; above an energetic chin a mouth severe in its lines, with slightly lowered corners, such as we may imagine the mouth of the tragic Muse. Her stature, sometimes seeming tall, sometimes little, very slender, but the attitude betraying elastic strength; a hand with fine tapering fingers of rare beauty; the whole apparition exciting in the beholder a sensation of astonishment and intense expectancy.
The applause ceasing, she began to speak. In deep tones the first sentences came forth, in tones so deep that they sounded as if rising from the innermost cavities of the chest, aye, from the very bowels of the earth. Was that the voice of a woman? Of this you felt certain—such a voice you had never heard, never a tone so hollow and yet so full and resonant, so phantomlike and yet so real. But this first surprise soon yielded to new and greater wonders. As her speech went on that voice, at first so deep and cavernous, began, in the changing play of feelings or passions, to rise and roll and bound and fly up and down the scale for an octave or two without the slightest effort or artificiality, like the notes of a musical instrument of apparently unlimited compass and endless variety of tone color. Where was now the stiffness of the Alexandrine verse? Where the tedious monotony of the forced rhymes? That marvelous voice and the effects it created on the listener can hardly be described without a seemingly extravagant resort to metaphor.
Now her speech would flow on with the placid purl of a pebbly meadow brook. Then it poured forth with the dashing vivacity of a mountain stream rushing and tumbling from rock to rock. But her passion aroused, how that voice heaved and surged like the swelling tide of the sea with the rising tempest behind it, and how then the thunderstorm burst, booming and pealing, and crashing, as when the lightning strikes close, making you start with terror! All the elementary forces of nature and all the feelings and agitations of the human soul seemed to have found their most powerful and thrilling language in the intonations of that voice and to subjugate the hearer with superlative energy. It uttered an accent of tender emotion, and instantly the tears shot into your eyes; a playful or cajolling turn of expression came, and a happy smile lightened every face in the audience. Its notes of grief or despair would make every heart sink and tremble with agony. And when one of those terrific explosions of wrath and fury broke forth you instinctively clutched the nearest object to save yourself from being swept away by the hurricane. The marvelous modulations of that voice alone sufficed to carry the soul of the listener through all the sensations of joy, sadness, pain, love, hatred, despair, jealousy, contempt, wrath, and rage, even if he did not understand the language, or if he had closed his eyes so as not to observe anything of the happenings on the stage.
But who can describe the witcheries of her gestures and the changeful play of her eyes and features? They in their turn seemed to make the spoken word almost superfluous. There was, of course, nothing of that aimless swinging of arms and sawing of the air and the other perfunctory doings of which Hamlet speaks. Rachel's action was sparing and simple. When that beautiful hand with its slender, almost translucent, fingers, moved, it spoke a language every utterance of which was a revelation to the beholder. When those hands spread out with open palms and remained for a moment in explanatory attitude—an attitude than which the richest fancy of the artist could not have imagined anything more beautifully expressive—they made everything intelligible and clear; at once you understood it all and were in accord with her. When those hands stretched themselves out to the friend or the lover, accompanied by one of those smiles which were rare in Rachel's acting, but which, whenever they appeared, would irradiate all surroundings like friendly sunbeams breaking through a clouded sky—a tremor of happiness ran all over the house. When she lifted up her noble head with the majestic pride of authority, as if born to rule the world, everyone felt like bowing before her. Who would have dared to disobey when, the power of empire on her front, she raised her hand in a gesture of command? And who could have stood up against the stony glare of contempt in her eye and the haughty toss of her chin, and the disdainful wave of her arm, which seemed to sweep the wretch before her into utter nothingness?
It was in the portrayal of the evil passions and the fiercest emotions that her powers rose to the most tremendous effects. Nothing more terrible can be conceived than was her aspect in her great climaxes. Clouds of sinister darkness gathered upon her brow; her eyes, naturally deep-set, began to protrude and to flash and scintillate with a truly hellish fire. Her nostrils fluttered in wild agitation as if breathing flame. Her body shot up to unnatural height. Her face transformed itself into a very Gorgon head, making you feel as if you saw the serpents wriggling in her locks. Her forefinger darted out like a poisoned dagger against the object of her execration; or her fist clenched as though it would shatter the universe at a blow; or her fingers bent like the veriest tiger's claws to lacerate the victim of her fury—a spectacle so terrific that the beholder, shuddering with horror, would feel his blood run cold, and gasp for breath, and moan, “God help us all.”
This may sound like wild exaggeration, like an extravagant picture produced by the overheated imagination of a young man charmed by a stage-goddess. I must confess that I was at first somewhat suspicious of my own sensations. I, therefore, at that as well as at later periods, repeatedly asked persons of ripe years who had seen Rachel, about the impressions they had received, and I found that theirs hardly ever materially differed from mine. Indeed, I have often heard gray-haired men and women, persons of cultivated artistic judgment, speak of Rachel with the same sort of bewildered enthusiasm that I had experienced myself. I am sure, there was in my admiration of Rachel nothing of the infatuation of an ingenuous youth for an actress which we sometimes hear or read of. If anybody had offered to introduce me personally to Rachel, nothing would have made me accept the invitation. Rachel was to me a demon, a supernatural entity, a mysterious force of nature, anything rather than a woman with whom one might dine, or speak about every-day things, or take a drive in a park. My enchantment was of an entirely spiritual kind, but so strong that in spite of the perils of my situation in Berlin I could not withstand it. So I visited the theater to see Rachel as often as the business I had in hand, which then required occasional night drives to Spandau, permitted such a luxury. Of course, I was not altogether unmindful of the danger to which I was exposing myself. I always managed to have a seat in the parterre near the entrance. While the curtain was up, I was sure that all eyes would be riveted on the scene. Between the acts, when people in front of me would turn around to look at the audience, I kept my face well covered with an opera glass examining the boxes. And as soon as the curtain fell after the last act, I hurried away in order to avoid the crowd.
But one night, when the closing scene enchained me in an unusual degree, my exit was not quick enough. I found myself wedged in among the multitude pressing for the street, and suddenly in the swaying throng, a face turned toward me which I knew but too well for my comfort. It was that of a man who two years before had been a student at the university at Bonn, who had been a member of our democratic club, and who, by some exceedingly questionable transaction, had become suspected of acting for the police as a spy. I had heard of his presence in Berlin, and there, also, he was talked of among my friends as one whom it would be well to avoid. Now he looked at me in a manner clearly indicating that he recognized me, but as if he were astonished to see me there. I returned his gaze, as if I resented the impertinence of a stranger looking at me so inquisitively. So we stood face to face for a few moments, both unable to move. When the pressure of the crowd relaxed, I made the greatest possible haste to disappear among the passersby on the street. That was my last Rachel night in Berlin.
But I saw her again later in Paris, and still later in America. In fact, I have seen her in all her great characters, in not a few of them several times, and the impression was always identically the same, even during her American tour when her fatal ailment had already seized upon her, and her powers were said to be on the wane. Endeavoring to account more clearly for those impressions, I sometimes asked myself, “But is this really the mirror held up to nature? Did ever a woman in natural life speak in such tones? Have such women as Rachel portrays ever lived?” The answer I uniformly arrived at was that such questions were idle; if Phèdre, Roxane, Virginia ever lived, so they must have been as Rachel showed them; or, rather, Rachel in her acting was happiness, misery, love, jealousy, hatred, revenge, anger, rage—all these things in an ideal grandeur, in their highest poetic potency, in gigantic reality. This may not be a very satisfactory definition, but it is as precise as I can make it. It was to see, to hear, and to be carried away, magically, irresistibly. The waves of delight or of anguish or of horror with which Rachel flooded the souls of her audiences baffled all critical analysis. Criticism floundered about in helpless embarrassment trying to classify her performances, or to measure them by any customary standard. She stood quite alone. To compare her with other actors or actresses seemed futile, for there was between them not a mere difference of degree, but a difference of kind. Various actresses of the time sought to imitate her; but whoever had seen the original simply shrugged his shoulders at the copies. It was the mechanism without the divine breath. I have subsequently seen only three actresses—Ristori, Wolter, and Sarah Bernhardt—who now and then, by some inspired gesture or intonation of voice, reminded me of Rachel; but only at passing moments. On the whole, the difference between them was very great. It was the difference between unique genius which irresistibly overpowers and subdues us and to which we involuntarily bow, and extraordinary talent which we simply admire. Rachel has therefore remained with me an overshadowing memory, and when in later years in my familiar circle we discussed the merits of contemporaneous stage performances, and someone among us grew enthusiastic about this or that living actor or actress, I could seldom repress the remark—in fact, I fear I made it often enough to become tiresome—“All this is very fine, but, ah!—you should have seen Rachel.”
A few days after the meeting with the spy a real misfortune befell me. I went with my friends Rhodes and Müller to a public bath. I slipped and fell on the wet floor, injuring my left hip so much that I was unable to rise. After I had been carried to my quarters in the Markgrafen Strasse, two surgeon friends examined my injury. It turned out that I was suffering only from a strong contusion, which threatened to keep me in bed a considerable time. There I lay immovable and helpless while the city teemed with police agents to whom the catching of an insurrectionist from Baden or the Palatinate, who was, moreover, prosecuted on account of other political sins and now engaged in a further mischief, would have been an especial pleasure. My invalid condition lasted two weeks. As soon as I could leave the house again I took up with redoubled zeal my task, the story of which I shall now endeavor to give in a coherent report.