The Son of Clemenceau | Page 8

fatal, the student took to flight in the direction the beautiful
girl had chosen. He well knew that this was a grave matter, and that he
trod on burning ground. At twenty paces farther, he remembered his
cloak, but on the bridge were now clustered several shadows vying
with Baboushka in picking up the coin before raising the unfortunate
Von Sendlingen.
Not a light had appeared at the windows of the houses, not a window
had opened for a night-capped head to be thurst forth, not a voice had

echoed the Jewess's call for the watch. It was not to be doubted that
Footbridge street had allowed more murderous outrages to occur
without anyone running the risk of catching a cold or a slash of a sabre.
"A cut-throat quarter, that is it," remarked the student, still too excited
to feel the cold and want of his outer garment. "After all, one cannot
travel from Berlin to Paris without getting some soot on the cheek and
a cinder or two in the eye. In the same way it is not possible to see life
and go through this world without being smeared with a little blood or
smut."
While talking to himself, he smoothed his dress and curled his dark and
fine moustache, projecting horizontally and not drooping. He had
walked so fast that he had overtaken the Jews, delayed as the girl was
by her father's lameness, and having to carry the violin in its case which
she had recovered and preciously guarded.
"What an audacious bully that was," the student continued; "but even a
good cat loses a mouse now and then."
The pair seemed to expect him to join them, but as he was about to do
so, at the mouth of a narrow and unlighted alley, he heard the measured
tramp of feet indicating the patrol.
Already the character of the streets and houses changed: there were
vistas of those large buildings which give one the impression that
Munich is planned on too generous a scale for its population. Only here
and there was a roof or front suggestive of the Middle Ages, and they
may have been in imitation; the others were stately and were classical,
and the avenues became spacious.
All at once, while the student was watching the semi-military
constables approach, he heard an uproar toward the bridge. The major
had been discovered by quite another sort of folk than the allies of
Baboushka, and the alarm was given.
To advance was to invite an arrest which would result in no pleasant
investigation.

He had tarried too long as it was. The watchman's
horn--tute-horn--sounded at the bridge and the squad responded
through their commander; whistles also shrilled, being police signals.
The student was perceived. It was a critical moment. The next moment
he would be challenged, and at the next, have a carbine or sabre
levelled at his breast. He retired up the alley, precipitately, wondering
where the persons whom he befriended had disappeared so quickly.
A very faint light gleamed from deeply within, at the end of a crooked
passage through a lantern-like projection at a corner. A number of iron
hooks bristled over his head as if for carcasses at a butchers, although
their innocent use was to hang beds on them to air. On a tarnished plate
he deciphered "ARTISTES' ENTRANCE," and while perplexed, even
as the gendarmes appeared at the mouth of this blind-alley, a long and
taper hand was laid on his arm and a voice, very, very sweet, though in
a mere murmur, said irresistibly:
"Come! come in, or you will be lost!" He yielded, and was drawn into a
corridor under the oriel window, where the air was pungent with the
reek of beer, tobacco-smoke, orange-peel, cheese and caraway seeds.

CHAPTER III.
"THE JINGLE-JANGLE."
The person to whom the shapely hand and musical voice belonged,
conducted the student along the narrow passage to a turning where she
halted, under a lamp with a reflector which threw them in that position
into the shade. The passage was divided by the first lobby, and on the
lamp was painted, back to back: "Men," "Ladies;" besides, a babble of
feminine voices on the latter side betrayed, as the intruder suspected
from the previous placard, that he had entered a place of entertainment
by the stage-door, a Tingel-Tangel, or Jingle-Jangle, as we should say.
It was the Jewess who was the Ariadne to this maze. Seen in the light,
at close range, with the enchanting smile which a woman always finds

for the man who has won her gratitude by supplementing her deficiency
in strength and courage with his own, she was worthier love than ever.
At this view, too, he was sure that, unlike too many of the divas of
these