Lippincotts Magazine, October 1873 | Page 3

the last remaining moments of his sight. "Come, laggard," said the
persecuting magistrate, who had brought a crowd of spectators, "you
are taxing the patience of this kind audience." "But one touch remains,"
said the old mechanic, "to complete my work;" and he busied himself a
moment among the wheels. While he suffered the agonies of his torture
a fearful whir was heard from the clock: the weights tumbled crashing
to the floor as his eyes fell from their sockets. He had removed the
master-spring, and his revenge was complete. The lovers devoted their
lives to the comfort of the blind clockmaker, and the wicked magistrate
was hooted from society. The clock remained a ruin until 1842, when
parts of it were used in the new one constructed by Schwilgué.
[Illustration: THE GREAT CLOCK.]
I found my bluebottle professor to be a Swiss, thirty years resident in
the city, very accessible and talkative, and, like every citizen by
adoption, more patriotic than even the native-born.
"It was a cheerless time for me, sir," said he as we contemplated
together the façade of the church, "when I saw that spire printed in
black against the flames of the town."
I begged frankly for his reminiscences.
"The bombardment of 1870," said the professor, "was begun purposely,
in contempt of the Bonapartist tradition, on the 15th of August, the
birthday of Napoleon. At half-past eleven at night, just as the fireworks
are usually set off on that evening, a shell came hissing over the city
and fell upon the Bank of France, crushing through the skylight and
shivering the whole staircase within: the bombardment that time lasted
only half an hour, but it found means, after much killing and ruining
among the private houses, to reach the buildings of the Lyceum, where
we had placed the wounded from the army of Woerth. While the city

was being touched off in every direction, like a vast brush heap, we had
to take these poor victims down into the cellars."
"Do you think the bombs were purposely so directed?" I asked.
"Don't talk to me of stray shots!" said the burgher, hotly enough. "The
enemy was better acquainted with the city than we were ourselves, and
his fire was of a precision that extorted our admiration more than once.
Cannons planted in Kehl sent their shells high over the citadel, like
blows from a friend. An artillery that, after the third shot, found the
proper curve and bent the cross on the cathedral, cannot plead
extenuating circumstances and stray shots."
"Was the greatest damage done on that first night?"
[Illustration: CHURCH OF SAINT THOMAS.]
"Ah no! The bombardment was addressed to us as an argument,
proceeding by degrees, and always in a _crescendo_: after the 15th
there was silence until the 18th; after the 18th, silence up to the 23d.
The grand victim of the 23d, you know, was the city library, where lay
the accumulations of centuries of patient learning--the mediæval
manuscripts, the Hortus deliciarum of Herrade of Landsberg, the
monuments of early printing, the collections of Sturm. Ah! when we
gathered around our precious reliquary the next day and saw its
contents in ashes, amid a scene of silence, of people hurrying away
with infants and valuable objects, of firemen hopelessly playing on the
burned masterpieces, there was one thought that came into every
mind--one parallel! It was Omar the caliph and the library of
Alexandria."
"And you imagine that this offence to civilization was quite
voluntary?" I argued with some doubt.
"It is said that General Werder acted under superior orders. But, sir,
you must perceive that in these discretionary situations there is no such
dangerous man as the innocent executant, the martinet, the person of
routine, the soldier stifled in his uniform. I saw Werder after the
capitulation. A little man, lean and bilious. Such was the opponent who
reversed for us successively, like the premisses of an argument, the
bank, the library, the art-museum, the theatre, the prefecture, the
arsenal, the palace of justice, not to speak of our churches. A man like
that was quite capable of replying, as he did, to a request that he would
allow a safe-conduct for non-combatants, that the presence of women

and children was an element of weakness to the fortress of which he did
not intend to deprive it.' The night illuminated by our burning
manuscripts was followed by the day which witnessed the
conflagration of the cathedral. Look at that noble front, sir,
contemplating us with the hoary firmness of six hundred years! You
would think it a sad experience to see it, as I have seen it, crowned with
flames which leaped up and licked the spire, while the copper on the
roof curled up like paper in the heat; and to