The Son of Clemenceau | Page 9

name?" impatiently.
"I am a student of Wilna University, traveling according to custom of the college, through Germany and to make the Italian Art Tour. I am Claudius Ruprecht."
"Not noble?" she inquired, sadly, on hearing two Christian names and none of family, for her people treasure the pride of ancestry.
"I am an orphan. I never knew my family. Perhaps, as I am of age, I shall soon be informed. But--"
"Enough! time is getting on, and we cannot long stay in privacy here--the passage-way for the performers. This is Freyers' Hall, where I sing--where I was a player. But my father can speak to you in the public room and see to your safety--for I fear this night's affair will end ill. But do not you fear! neither my father nor I have the powerlessness which that noble ruffian seemed to think is ours. You, at least, shall be saved--even though you killed that brute."
"I do not think that, unless his head is not so hard as his heart."
She opened a narrow door in the dirty wall. It was brighter in the capacious place thus shown.
"Go in and sit down anywhere. My father will be with you in a few minutes. We were so delayed that they feared we would not arrive for 'our turn.' They were glad of the excuse--I fancy they were told it might occur--and they are trying to break our agreement. But never mind! that is but a bread-and-butter business for us. For you, it will be life and death, if that officer be slain."
Claudius, the student, mechanically obeyed the gentle impulsion her hand imparted to him on the shoulder, and walked through the side-door. A number of benches were before him with corresponding narrow tables, and he sat down at one, and looked round.
He found himself in a very long, rectangular hall, low in the ceiling in proportion to the length, once brightly decorated, but faded, smoked and tarnished. On the walls, in panels, between tinted pilasters of a pseudo-Grecian design, were views of the principal towns of Germany and Austria, the details obliterated in the upper part by smoke and in the lower by greasy heads and hands. Around the sides, a dais held benches and tables similar to those on the floor. At the far end was a bar for beer and other liquors less popular, and an entrance from a main street, screened and indirect, down steps at another level than the rear or stage door. Where Claudius sat was a small stage with footlights and curtain complete, and an orchestra for a miniature piano such as are used in yachts, and six musicians; the performers sat to face the audience respectfully in the good Old German style.
The lighting was by means of clusters of gas-jets at intervals in the long ceiling and along the walls. The announcement of the items of attraction appearing on the stage was made by changeable sliding cards in framework at the sides of the stage; to the left the name of the scena was exhibited, that of the artist on the other.
When Claudius took his seat, the other places were almost all empty; but they soon began to fill up. The majority of the spectators seemed to be of the tradesman and workman class, with their wives and daughters, but the stranger, who had been so surreptitiously "passed in," was not blind to the presence of a more offensive element. There were faces as villainous as any under the immediate command of Grandmother "Baboushka;" and their dress was not much better. More than one dandy of the gutter nursed the head of a club called significantly the "lawbreaker's canes of crime," with a distant air of the fop sucking his clouded amber knob or silver shepherd's-crook. In more than one group were horse-copers, and their kin the market-gardeners' thieves and country wagoners' pests, who not only lighten the loads on the way to the city market on the road, but plunder the drivers after they receive their salesmoney by cheating at cards.
The student, crowded in by this mixed throng, began to doubt the providential quality of the intervention saving him from an explanation to the police; it was very like leaping from the proverbial frying-pan into the fire.
At this stage in his reflections, he felt that a person in the next seat had risen and he soon perceived that he had politely, or from a stronger reason, given up his place to another. This was the old Jew, but he would not have known him by his dress, it was so changed for the better; the fine profile, the venerable beard which an Arab Sheikh would have reverenced, and the sharp, intelligent eyes were unaltered.
"Do you speak Latin?" inquired Daniels in that tongue.
But Claudius, though reading the dead