(A.S.)
3 In 1 848 there was an insurrection in Baden, headed by Struve and Hecker, which aimed at establishing a republic. The troops sided with the insurgents, the Grand Duke fled, and in May 1 848 a Constituent Assembly was called. After several battles the Grand Duke was reinstated by Prussian aid in July of the same year. ( Tr. ) 4 Gorgei, Arthur ( 1 8 1 8- 1 916), Commander-in-Chief of the Hungarian forces in 1848, was victorious over the Austrians in the spring of that year, but was defeated early in August by the Russian general, Paskevich, and on the 1 3th of that month surrendered the Hungarian army unconditionally to Rudiger, another Russian general. He was accused of treachery. ( T r.)
5 Coblenz was one of the chief centres to which the emigres of the great French Revolution flocked from 1 790 onwards. ( Tr. ) 6 The Commission of Inquiry was presided over by Odilon Barrot; the report, drawn up by one Bauchart, is described as a 'monument imphissable de mauvaise foi et de basse fureur.' (Tr. )
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some looking for a republic both democratic and socialistic, others for one that should be democratic and not at all socialistic.
A few days after my arrival, as I was walking in Les Paquis, I met an elderly gentleman who looked like a Russian village priest, wearing a low, broad-brimmed hat and a black white overcoat, and walking along with a sort of priestly unction; beside him walked a man of terrific dimensions, who looked as though he had been casually put together of huge chunks of human flesh. F. Kapp,7 the young writer, was with me.
'Don't you know them ?' he asked me.
'No; but, if I 'm not mistaken, it must be Noah or Lot out for a walk with Adam, who has put on a badly cut overcoat instead of his fig-leaves.'
'They are Struve and Heinzen,' he answered, laughing;
'would you like to make their acquaintance?'
'Very much.'
He introduced me.
The conversation was trivial. Struve was on his way home, and invited us to come in ; so we went with him. His small lodging was crowded with people from Baden. A tall woman, very good-looking from a distance, with a mass of luxuriant hair flowing loose in an original fashion, was sitting in the midst of them; this was his wife, the celebrated Amalie Struve.
Struve's face made a strange impression on me from the very first; it expressed that moral rigidity which fanaticism gives to bigots and schismatics. Looking at his strong, narrow forehead, at the untroubled expression of his eyes, at his uncombed beard, his slightly grizzled hair, and his whole figure, I could have fancied that this was either a fanatical pastor of the army of Gustavus Adolphus who had forgotten to die, or a Taborite8
preaching repentance and communion in both kinds. There was a surly coarseness about the appearance of Heinzen,9 that 7 Kapp, Friedrich ( 1 820--84), a German historian, after the revolution of 1 848 went to New York, but returned to Berlin in 1 870, and became a Liberal member of the Reichstag. ( Tr.)
8 The more thoroughgoing of the followers of John Huss were called Taborites, from their headquarters at Mt. Tabor in Bohemia. ( Tr.) 9 Heinzen, Karl Peter ( 1 827-80) , wrote for the Leipzige Allgemeine Zeitung and the Rheinische Zeitung, and his articles led to the suppression of these two papers. He published an attack on the government, 'Die preussische Bureaukratie,' for which he was prosecuted. In 1 848 he was one of the leaders of the Baden revolution. Later on he escaped to America, where he edited The Pioneer. ( Tr.)
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Sobakevich10 of the German revolution; full-blooded and clumsy, he looked out angrily from under his brows, and was sparing of words. He wrote later on that it would be sufficient to massacre two millions of the inhabitants of the globe and the cause of revolution would go swimmingly. Anybody who had once seen him would not be surprised at his writing this.
I cannot refrain from relating an extremely funny incident which happened to me in connection with this cannibalistic project. There was, and indeed still is, living in Geneva a Dr R., one of the most good-natured men in the world and one of the most constant and Platonic lovers of the revolution, the friend of all the refugees; he doctored them gratis as well as giving them food and drink. However early one might arrive at the Cafe de la Paste, the Doctor would already be there and already reading his third or fourth newspaper; he would beckon one mysteriously and murmur in one's ear:
'I fancy it will be a hot day in Paris to-day.'
'Why so?'
'I can't tell you from whom I heard it, but only that it was a man closely connected \Vith Ledru-Rollin; he was here on his way through . . . .'
'Why, you were expecting something yesterday and the day before yesterday too, weren't you, my dear Doctor?'
'Well, what of that? Stadt Rom war nicht in einem Tage gebaut.'
So it was to him as a friend of Heinzen's that I appealed in the very same cafe when the latter published his philanthropic programme.
'Why,' I said to him, 'does your friend write such pernicious nonsense? The reaction is making an outcry, and indeed it has every reason to: he's a regular ;\iarat in a German setting! And how can one ask for two m illion heads?'
R. was confused, but did not like to give up his friend.
"ListPn,' he said at last; 'you ha,-e lost sight of one fact, perhaps: Heinzen is speaking of the v..lwle human race; in that number there would be at least tZL'o hundred thousand Chinese.'
'Oh, \Yell, that's a different matter; why spare them?' I answered and for a long time afterwards I could never think of this mitigating consideration without bursting into insane laughter.
Two days aftPr our meeting in Les Paquis, the gan;on of the Hotel des Bergues, ,..-here I was staying, ran up to my room and announced with an air of importance :
10 A character in Dead Souls hy K \'. Gogo!. (A.S.)
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'General Struve and his adjutants.'
I imagined either that someone had sent the gar�on up as a joke, or that he had made some blunder; but the door opened and-Mit bediichtigem Schritt
Gustav Struve trill . . . u
and with him four gentlemen: two were in the military uniform worn in those days by German Freisclziirler,12 and had in addition red armlets adorned with various emblems. Struve presented his suite to me, democratically referring to them as
'brothers in exile.' I learnt with pleasure that one of them, a young man of twenty, who looked like a Bursch who had recently emerged from being a 'Fuchs,'13 was already successfully occupying the post of Minister of Home Affairs per interim.
Struve at once began instructing me in his theory of the seven scourges, der sieben Geisseln-Popes, priests, kings, soldiers, bankers, etc.-and of the establishment of some new democratic, revolutionary religion. I remarked that, if it depended upon us whether to found a new religion or not, it would be better not to found one, but to leave it to the \Vill of God, since from the very nature of the affa ir it was more His concern. We argued, Struve made some remark about the W eltseele; I observed that, in spite of Schelling's having so clearly defined the world-soul by calling it das Schwebende, I found great difficulty in grasping it. He jumped up from his chair and, coming as close to me as possible, with the words, 'Excuse me, allow me,' began playing on my head with his fingers, pressing it \Vith them, as though my skull had been composed of the keyboard of a concertina. 'Yes, indeed,' he commented, addressing his four brothers in exile,