"Why should our consul be indignant at disaster?" I demanded.
"Why, sir, the throng that rolled toward the grave Prussian troops was composed of desperadoes inflamed with wine, flourishing broken guns and stumps of sabres, and insulting equally, with many a drunken oath, the conquerors and our own loyal general Uhrich. The American consul, blushing with shame for our common humanity, said, 'This is the second time I have watched the capitulation of an army. The first time it was the soldiers of General Lee, who yielded to the Northern troops. Those brave Confederates came toward us silent and dignified, bearing arms reversed, as at a funeral. We respected them as heroes, while here—' But I cannot repeat to you, sir, what your representative proceeded to add. That revolting sight," continued my informant, "was the last glimpse we had of France our protector. When we returned to the city a Prussian band played German airs to us at the foot of Kleber's statue. We are Teutonized now. At least," concluded the burgher, taking me by the shoulders to hiss the words through my ears in a safe corner, "we are Germans officially. But I, for my part, am Alsatian for ever and for ever!"
Greatly delighted to have encountered so near a witness and so minute a chronicler of the disasters of the town, I invited the professor to accompany me in exploring it, my interest having vastly increased during his recital; but he pleaded business, and, shaking both my hands and smiling upon me out of a sort of moulding formed around his face by his shirt-collars, dismissed me. So, then, once more, with a hitch to my tin box, I became a lonely lounger. I viewed the church of Saint Thomas, the public place named after Kleber, who was born here, some of the markets and a beer establishment. In the church of Saint Thomas I examined the monument to Marshal Saxe, by Pigalle. I should have expected to see a simple statue of the hero in the act of breaking a horseshoe or rolling up a silver plate into a bouquet-holder, according to the Guy-Livingstone habits in which he appears to have passed his life, and was more surprised than edified at sight of the large allegorical family with which the sculptor has endowed him. In the same church I had the misfortune to see in the boxes a pair of horrible mummies, decked off with robes and ornaments—a count of Nassau-Saarwerden and his daughter, according to the custodian—an unhappy pair who, having escaped our common doom of corruption by some physical aridity or meagreness, have been compelled to leave their tombs and attitudinize as works of art. In Kleber's square I saw the conqueror of Heliopolis, excessively pigeon-breasted, dangling his sabre over a cowering little figure of Egypt, and looking around in amazement at the neighboring windows: in fact, Kleber began his career as an architect, and there were solecisms in the surrounding structure to have turned a better balanced head than his. In the markets I saw peasants with red waistcoats and flat faces shaded with triangles of felt, and peasant-girls bareheaded, with a gilded arrow apparently shot through their brains. I traversed the Street of the Great Arcades, and saw the statue of Gutenberg, of whom, as well as of Peter Schöffer, the natives seem to be proud, though they were but type-setters. Finally, in the Beer-hall, that of the dauphin, I tasted a thimble-ful of inimitable beer, the veritable beer of Strasburg. Already, at half-past eight on that fine May morning, I persuaded myself that I had seen everything, so painful had my feet become by pounding over the pavements.
My friend the engineer had agreed to breakfast with me at the hotel. When I entered the dining-room with the intention of waiting for him, I found two individuals sitting at table. One was no other than the red-nosed Scotchman, the Eleusinian victim whom I had watched through the bottle-rack at Épernay. Of the second I recognized the architectural back, the handsomely rolled and faced blue coat and the marble volutes of his Ionic shirt-collar: it was my good friend of the cathedral. Every trace of his civic grief had disappeared, and he wore a beaming banquet-room air, though the tear of patriotism was hardly dry upon his cheek.
As I paused to dispose of my accoutrements the red nose was saying, "Yes, my dear sir, since yesterday I am a Mason. I have the honor," he pursued, "to be First Attendant Past Grand. It will be a great thing for me at Edinburgh. Burns, I believe, was only Third Assistant, Exterior Lodge: the Rank, however, in his opinion, was but the guinea's stamp. But the advantages of Masonry are met with everywhere. Already in the train last night I struck the acquaintance of a fine fellow, a Mason like myself."
"Allow me to ask," said the cheerful bluebottle, "how you knew him for a Mason like yourself?"
"I'll tell you. I was unable to sleep, because, you see, I had to drink Moët for my initiation: as I am unaccustomed to anything livelier than whisky, it unnerved me. To pass the time I went softly over the signals."
"What signals, if I may be so indiscreet?"
"Number one, you scratch the nose, as if to chase a fly; number two, you put your thumb in your mouth; number three—"
"H'm!" said the professor doubtfully, "those are singular instructions, scratching the nose and sucking the thumb. It strikes me they have been teaching you nursery signals rather than Masonry signals."
"My good friend," said the Scot with extreme politeness, yet not without dignity, "you cannot understand it, because you were not present. I received a Light which burned my eyelashes. The sage always examines a mystery before he decides upon it. My Masonic friend will be here at breakfast to-day: he promised me. Only wait for him. He can explain these things better than I, you will see. The little experiments with our noses and thumbs, you understand, are symbols—Thummim and Urim, or something of that kind."
"Or else nonsense. You have been quizzed, I fear."
The North Briton bridled his head, knitted his brows and pushed back his chair; then, after a moment of pregnant and stormy silence, he turned suddenly around to me, who was enjoying the comedy—"Hand me the cheese."
To be taken for a waiter amused me. Never in the world would a domestic have dared to present himself in a hotel habited as I was. I was in the same clothes with which I had left Passy the morning previous: my coat was peppered with dust, my linen bruised and dingy, my tie was nodding doubtfully over my right shoulder. A waiter in my condition would have been kicked out without arrears of wages.
The professor, looking quickly around, recognized me with a ludicrous endeavor to relapse into the fiery and outraged patriot. He expended his temper on the red nose. "Take care whom you speak to," he cried in a high, portly voice, and pointing to my japanned box, which I had slung upon a curtain-hook. "Monsieur is not an attaché of the house. Monsieur is doubtless an herb-doctor."
There are charlatans who pervade the provincial parts of France, stopping a month at a time in the taverns, and curing the ignorant with samples according to the old system of simulacra—prescribing kepatica for liver, lentils for the eyes and green walnuts for vapors, on account of their supposed correspondence to the different organs. I settled my cravat at the mirror to contradict my resemblance to a waiter, threw my box into a wine-cooler to dispose of my identity with the equally uncongenial herbalist, and took a seat. Nodding paternally to the coat of Prussian blue, I proceeded to order Bordeaux-Léoville, capon with Tarragon sauce, compôte of nectarines in Madeira jelly—all superfluous, for I was brutally hungry, and wanted chops and coffee; but what will not an unsupported candidate for respectability do when he desires to assert his caste? I was proceeding to ruin myself in playing the eccentric millionaire when the door opened, giving entrance to a group of breakfasters.