The mouth of hell, p.20
THE MOUTH OF HELL, page 20
“But,” said Samuel, “how do you expect to extricate yourself from all this?”
“I have no idea. As best I can. I do not mind what I do. Ah! if I had to die that my mother might have bread, I would willingly do so.”
“Are you in earnest?”
“In sober earnest.”
“That is a good thing to know,”
Samuel added, “and I shall not forget it. But before coming to such a pass, why do you not appeal to Napoleon, since your mother’s brother was killed in his service? He has that quality common to all great men, that he knows how to reward those who serve him. He would give your mother a pension, a post, something which would enable her to live.”
Trichter held up his head proudly:
“I am German: can I ask anything of the tyrant of Germany?”
“You are German, it is true, but did you not tell me one day that your mother was French?”
“Yes, she is French.”
“Then your scruples are exaggerated. We can discuss this later on. For the present, it is more urgent that your debts be paid.”
“Oh! I have given up that Utopian idea.”
“You must never give up anything. This is the subject I wanted to talk to you about. Which of your creditors duns you most?”
“Would you believe it? it is not a taverner,” said Trichter. “The taverners treat me with respect and consideration, and give me encouragement as a rare and curious drinker, as an ideal difficult to attain, whom they hold up to the admiration of the public. My wagers result in enormous receipts for them, and naturally a number of little drinking encounters spring up around me in emulation of my example. I am the head of a school. Besides, I am an attraction in a tavern; I adorn the place; I am a luxury! A manager offered to engage me at thirty florins a week, on condition that he might put on his advertisement:
“‘Trichter will drink!’
“Dignity compelled me to refuse, but at heart I felt flattered. Oh! no, the taverners are not those who torment me. My most ferocious creditor is Muhldorf.”
“The tailor?”
“That’s the man! Under the pretext that he has made my clothes for the last seven years, and has not yet received payment of the first account, that cur pursues me everywhere. ‘For six years, each time he sent in his account, I ordered a new suit from him; but, this last year, he has utterly refused to supply me with any clothes at all. Not content with that, he literally persecutes me. The day before yesterday, as I passed his shop, he had the impertinence to rush out and tell me in the open street that the suit I was wearing was his, because I had not paid him for it, and, suiting the action to the word, he was about to lay a sacrilegious hand on my collar.”
“He would have dared to ignore to such an extent the privileges of the University! “Samuel exclaimed.
“Set your mind at rest,” said Trichter. “A haughty glance quieted down the bold man in time. I forgive him. I can imagine the rage of this full-blooded tradesman, exasperated by long waiting for a round sum, and who cannot bring his complaint before the courts, on account of the laws of the University, which forbid citizens to give us credit. Besides, as I tell you, his intention has not been carried into effect.”
“The intention even is too much,” Samuel exclaimed. “It behoves that Muhldorf be punished.”
“It would be well, certainly, but...
“But what?.... I sentence him to give you a receipt in full, and grant you, besides, a substantial indemnity. Does that suit you?”
“Admirably. But you are joking?”
“You shall see. Give me writing materials.”
Trichter scratched his head in perplexity.
“Well! something to write with? “Samuel repeated.
“The fact of the matter is,” said Trichter, “I have neither pens, ink, nor paper.”
“Ring; there must be some in the hotel.”
“I do not know; it is an hotel for students. I have never asked for any.”
In answer to Trichter’s ring, a waiter appeared, and soon returned with what was required.
“Wait,” Samuel said to the waiter.
He wrote:
“MY DEAR MONSIEUR MUHLDORF, “A friend begs to inform you that your debtor Trichter has just received five hundred crowns from his mother.”
“Are you writing to Muhldorf?” asked Trichter.
“I am.”
“And what are you writing to him?”
“A preface, an introduction to the subject, the argument to “comedy or a tragedy.”
“Ah!” said Trichter, satisfied but unable to understand.
Samuel sealed the letter, addressed it, and gave it to the waiter.
“Send round this letter by the first urchin you see, and give him this money for running the errand. He is to deliver the letter without saying where it comes from.”
The waiter went out.
“Now, Trichter,” Samuel went on, “you are to go at once to Muhldorf.”
“What for?”
“To order yourself a new suit.”
“He will ask me for money!”
“That’s evident, of course! But you just tell him to go to the devil!”
“Hum! He is capable of getting angry if I beard him in his own den!”
“You must insult him, exasperate him.”
“But....”
“Now then,” Samuel interrupted in a severe tone, “since when does my ‘Pet Fox ‘permit himself to raise objections when his ‘senior ‘has spoken? I guide you, it is not necessary for you to see; you have my eyes. Go to Muhldorf, be very insolent and very impertinent, and pray God that the tailor may put a finishing touch to his movement against you a few days since.”
“Ought I to tolerate it?” asked Trichter humbly.
“Oh! on that point, you may please yourself,” said Samuel. “I leave you to follow your own instinct.”
“That’s all right then!” cried Trichter, on his mettle at once.
“Take your stick.”
“I should think so!”
Trichter took up his stick, and walked out.
“That is how all great wars begin! “Samuel said to himself, “and always because of a woman! Christiane will be satisfied.”
CHAPTER XXXIX.
WHAT COULD ONE DO AGAINST THREE?
FIVE minutes later, Trichter entered! Muhldorf’s, his hat on one side, arrogant, quarrelsome, aggressive, in anticipation of the reception which he expected to receive from the tailor.
Muhldorf received him with a gracious smile.
“Pray be seated, my dear Monsieur Trichter,” said he, “I am delighted to see you.”
“Bah!” said Trichter. “Have you any idea what I come for?”
“I can guess,” the tailor answered, rubbing his hands together.
“I come to order a new suit.”
“Capital! When do you want it?”
“At once,” said Trichter, lost in astonishment at the tailor’s pleasant manner. “Be quick and take my measure.”
The tailor obeyed with alacrity. When he had finished he said:
“It will be ready for you on Saturday.”
“Very well. Send it on to me,” said Trichter, turning to go away.
“You are going?” said Muhldorf.
“What should I stay here for?”
“I do not ask you to stay, but I hope you are going to leave me something.”
“What do you want?”
“A hundred florins at any rate, simply on account.”
“My good fellow,” rejoined Trichter, “you have been too polite to me to-day, and have taken my measure in too friendly a manner for me to answer you as an honest student should reply to a vulgar demand for money. The remembrance of the clothes you have made me for seven years, and the expectation of the suit you are to let me have on Saturday, induce me not to take exception to your call on my pocket. I forgive you.”
“Forgive and give,” said Muhldorf, putting out his hand.
Trichter grasped the tailor’s hand.
“A handshake if you like,” said he; “but I have not a penny.”
And he turned towards the door.
Mulhdorf stood in his way.
“Not a penny!” he exclaimed, “and what about the five hundred florins your mother has sent you?”
“Five hundred florins? my mother? “Trichter repeated. “Ah! that’s a good joke! Muhldorf, you are getting witty.”
“That is to say,” cried Muhldorf, attempting to suppress his rising anger, “that, not content with not paying for your previous suits, you have come to laugh at me in my own shop by ordering new ones.”
“That is to say,” retorted Trichter, already a little excited too, “that your reason for receiving me so obsequiously, and taking my measure with such cringing politeness, is just to poke fun at me.”
“So,” snapped Muhldorf, taking up Samuel’s letter from his counter and putting it, in a fury of rage, under Trichter’s very nose, “this letter is a hoax?”
“So,” roared Trichter, throwing an angry glance at the letter, “when you were promising me a complete suit of clothes for Saturday, it was for the money with which you imagined my pockets were plentifully lined, not for the inestimable honour of making my clothes?”
And he brandished his heavy stick about. But Muhldorf snatched up his yard measure.
“It is not a question of the clothes I was going to make you,” cried the exasperated creditor, “but of those I have made you and which you are going to pay for or give me back.”
He advanced on Trichter, holding the yard measure aloft.
Muhldorf had barely raised his yard measure against Trichter ere Trichter’s stick descended on Muhldorf.
Muhldorf uttered a cry, stepped back quickly, drove his elbows through two of his front windows, and turned again on Trichter, who was waving his stick wildly in the air.
At the cry of the tailor, two neighbours, a pork butcher and a shoemaker, rushed in.
The noble Trichter struck the shoemaker in the eye, in nowise alarmed at the number of his assailants. But suddenly he became sensible of an attack on his left calf which he had neither parried nor foreseen. It was the pork butcher’s dog that had come to his master’s assistance. Trichter instinctively looked down to see what had happened. The three adversaries took advantage of this movement to throw themselves upon him and kick him out of doors.
The impetus was such that the gallant Trichter went rolling into the gutter, pell-mell with the dog, which had the good sense not to loose his hold of the leg.
At the first onslaught all Trichter had been able to do as he shot past was to twist his stick about in such a manner as to throw it straight through the shop front, reducing all the remainder of the glass to atoms.
But, as he fell, he caught sight of two foxes passing at the end of the road.
“Help! help!” cried he at the top of his voice.
CHAPTER XL.
THE TABOO.
LET us relate with exciting brevity the rapid and important events which followed:
At Trichter’s call the two foxes rushed up, rescued their comrade from the grip of the dog, and, grasping the situation at a glance, attacked the house of the tailor.
It was a stiff fight, the noise of which soon attracted other neighbours and other students to the spot. The fray was on the point of becoming general, when the police arrived.
Trichter and his friends found themselves hemmed in between the townsmen on one side and the police on the other. Although they made a gallant resistance, it was in vain — their position was a hopeless one. They had to yield. Some of the students managed to escape; but Trichter and the two other foxes were arrested.
They were led to prison, securely handcuffed. Fortunately the gaol was close by; for the students were beginning to appear in groups, and there were even some attempts made to rescue the prisoners. But the police, aided by the tradespeople, held out, and the three foxes were incarcerated safe and sound.
Reports of the skirmish and of the insult offered to the University were soon noised abroad. In ten minutes every student knew of it. In the twinkling of an eye the lecture halls were deserted and even the most popular professors addressed their words first to backs, finally to empty benches.
Groups collected in the streets. Three students arrested because of a dispute with a tradesman! the matter was a serious one and demanded vengeance. It was decided to deliberate on it in conclave, and all wended their way towards the hotel where Samuel lodged, The circumstance was of sufficient importance for the king to be informed of it.
Samuel had them all to enter into the immense hall which we have already seen made use of at the “Foxes’ Comtnerz He presided over the meeting and each one was able to express his opinion. It was a most memorable meeting, and as little parliamentary as possible. Needless to say that nearly all the suggestions proposed were violent, furious, inflammatory. The most extreme measures were those which received greatest applause.
One ‘mossy head ‘suggested that Muhldorf’s shop should be set on fire.
A ‘finch ‘was hustled out with an explosion of hisses for having insinuated that it might be best to rest satisfied with the removal from office of those police officers who had arrested Trichter and his worthy defenders.
“Thunder and lightning!” roared a ‘branded fox ‘; “the dismissal of their chiefs is the least we require, and even that would not be enough.”
This was greeted with loud applause.
Then arose a perfect hubbub of the wildest and most extravagant proposals.
One suggested that all the tailors of the town should be punished for the crime of Muhldorf, that every beggar in the neighbourhood should be assembled and clothed gratis with all the cloth to be found in all the shops.
Another, whose speech it was said ought to be printed, maintained that that would be but scant satisfaction, that a tailor was not the only one mixed up in the affair, there was also a pork butcher and a shoemaker; that it was not only as tailor, pork butcher and shoemaker that they had thrashed the students, but as townsmen, in consequence of that natural and undying hatred between townsmen and students; and that therefore they must be revenged, not only on tailors, shoemakers and pork butchers, but on the citizens in a body, and that the University would not be truly revenged but by the sacking of the town.
The discussion, fanned into a flame by the heated imaginations of the fiery students, was now at its height. Samuel Gelb stood up.
There was a deep silence and the president addressed the meeting in these words:
“GENTLEMEN AND DEAR COMRADES, “Many excellent things have been said, and the University will only have to make its choice between the different schemes of vengeance which have been proposed and expounded. -But the honourable last speakers will, permit me to say that there is perhaps something more pressing than to be revenged on our enemies (‘Hear! hear’); we must first rescue our friends! (Applause.).
“Whilst we are deliberating here, three of our men are in prison; they expect us, they wonder at not seeing us come to their aid; they have the right to lose confidence in us! (‘Bravo! that’s true! that’s true! ‘)
“What! some of our students have been already imprisoned half-an-hour, and are not yet released! (Sensation.)
“Let us begin with them and end with. the others. (‘Good! hear! hear! ‘) Let us fling open the door, and give them the pleasure of participating with us in the punishment of their insulters! “(Loud cheers.)
The meeting dispersed with enthusiasm. The word of command was given. The students hastily armed themselves with stakes, crowbars and beams., A quarter of an hour later the prison was besieged.
All this had happened so quickly that the authorities had not had time to be warned. The prison was protected only by the ordinary guard. On seeing the’ students swarming round the corner of the street, the chief of the guard gave orders, to lock the gates. But of what use were a dozen men against four hundred students?
“Forward!” cried Samuel. “We must not give time for the soldiers to come up.”
And, placing himself at the head of a group which carried a formidable beam of timber, he marched first against the gates.
“Fire!” said the chief, and a volley was discharged against the assailants.. Not a student retreated an inch. A few pistol shots replied. Then, before the - guard had had time to reload their, muskets, twenty battering-rams struck the principal gates with tremendous force. The gates yielded.
“Courage, lads!” exclaimed Samuel, “one more blow, and we shall be inside. But wait.”,; He let go the beam, seized a crowbar and put it under the gates. Ten or twelve foxes did the same, and their united: efforts slightly raised the gates.
“Now strike!” said Samuel.
The shock of twenty battering rams was heard, and the gates burst open with a crash.
Ay second volley crashed into the students’ ranks. Samuel was already in the courtyard, A soldier took aim at him. He rushed at; the man with the leap of a panther, and stretched him dead with a blow from his crowbar.
“Lay down your arms!” he commanded the guard.
But the order was unnecessary. The students had crowded in after him, and already the courtyard was so thronged that it would have been impossible to take aim.
Besides the soldier filled by Samuel, three others lay bleeding on the ground, more or less seriously wounded by pistol-bullets. Seven or eight “studiosi” had received wounds, but fortunately none were dangerous.
The assailants disarmed the guard, and rushed to the cells where Trichter and his two comrades were confined and released them.
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