The Son of Clemenceau written by Alexandre (fils) Dumas

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"Help!" repeated the songstress, redoubling her efforts--not to escape,
which was out of the question, but to shield her mouth from contact with
the red moustaches, hovering over it like the wings of a bloodstained
bird of rapine.

As this repetition of the appeal, steps clattered on the bridge, and the
officer lifted his head. He may have expected Baboushka or one of her
fraternity, and the tall, slender student, who had flung off his cloak
to run more swiftly, gave him a surprise. The agile and intelligent girl
took the opportunity with commendable speed, and glided out of the
major's relaxing grasp like a wasp from under the spider's claws. She
retreated as far as where her father tried to stand erect, and helping
him up, led him prudently down the bridge slope so that they might
continue their flight. It would have been the basest ingratitude to
depart without seeing the result of the interference, and the two
lingered, though it would have been wiser to let the two Christians bite
and tear each other without witnesses of another creed, and with the
witness of none.

It was a free spectacle, but, if it had cost their week's salary at the
casino, it would have been worth the money.

As the major had empty hands after the loss of his prize, the student
had the quixotic delicacy to make the offer in dumbshow to lay aside his
cane and undertake to chastise the insulter of womanhood with the naked
fist. But this is a weapon almost unknown in the sword-bearing class
which Von Sendlingen adorned, and, infuriated by the civilian
intervening at the culmination of his daring plan, to say nothing of
the annoying thought that his failure would be no secret from the old
hag, his accomplice, looking on at the extremity of the bridge, he
yielded to the worst devil in his heart. He inclined to the most
high-handed and hectoring measure. Whipping out his sabre with a rapid
gesture, and merely muttering a discourteous and grudging: "Be on your
guard!" he dealt a cut at the student which threatened to cleave him in
two.

The other was on the alert; he had suspected one capable of such an
outrage, likewise capable of worse, and he parried the coward's blow so
dexterously with his cane that it was the soldier who was thrown off his
balance. A second blow, with the tremendous sweep of the stick held at
arm's length, tested the metal of the blade to its utmost, and, as the
wielder's hand was thoroughly palsied, drove it out of the opening
fingers, and all heard it splash in the black and pestiferous waters
under the bridge.

Von Sendlingen would almost have preferred the blow falling on his head.
An officer, whose reputation in fencing was no mean one, to be disarmed
by a student who swung but his road-cane! This was not all: he had lost
his sabre, and, noble though he was, he had to pass the vigorous
inspection of his weapons like the humblest private soldier! The absence
of the regimental sword might cause degradation, ruin militarily and
socially! And all for a "music-hall squaller"--and a Jewess at that!

He ground his teeth, and his eyes were filled with angry fire. His face
bore a greater resemblance to a tiger's than a man's, and had not the
victor in this first bout possessed a stout heart, he might have
regretted that he had commenced so well, so terrible would be the
retaliation.

All the animal in the man being roused, he longed to throw himself on
his antagonist to grasp his throat, but the successful use of the cudgel
against the sword indicated that this was an adept at quarter-staff and
a man with naked hands would have easily been beaten if pitted with him.
Sendlingen, warily and rapidly surveying the limited field of combat,
caught sight of the Jew's walking-staff and sprang for it with an outcry
of savage glee and hope.

On perceiving this move, in spite of the pain still crippling him, the
old man started to retrace his steps to regain possession of his weapon,
but he was soon distanced by the younger one.

Armed with this staff, the officer, remembering his student days, when
he, too, was an expert swinger of the cane, a Bavarian mountaineer's
weapon with which duels to the death are not unseldom fought, he stood
before the student.

"Had you been a gentleman," began the major, with a sullen courtesy,
extorted from him by the gallantry of his antagonist.

"A stick to a dog!" retorted the latter, falling into the position of
guard with an ease and accuracy which caused the other to begin his work
by feints and attacks not followed up too rashly, in order to test him.

This time, it was the stouter and more brutal man who played cautiously
and the younger and more refined who was spurred into recklessness by
the contiguity of the fair Helen--or, rather, Esther--who had caused the
fray.

The girl stood at the end of the bridge, opposite to Baboushka at hers,
there making them simple lookers-on. The old Jew seemed eager to join
in the struggle, but the staves were in continual swing, and he could
not draw near without the risk of having a shoulder dislocated, or, at
least, his knuckles severely rapped. In the gloom, his hovering about
the involved pair would have led an opera-goer to have seen in him the
demon who thus actively presides at the fatal duel of Faust and
Valentine.

But the conflict, whatever the major's wariness, could not be long
protracted, for canes of this sort are tiring to the arm, unlike
smallswords; he was still on the defensive when the student assailed him
with a shower of blows which taxed all his skill and nerve, and the
strength of the staff which he had borrowed from his foe. Well may one
suspect "the gifts of an enemy!" as the student might have cited:
"_Timeo danaos_," etc. At the very moment when the officer's head was
most in peril, while he guarded it with the staff held horizontally in
both hands separated widely for the critical juncture, it ominously
cracked at the reception of a vigorous blow--it parted as though a steel
blade had severed it, and the unresisted cane came down on his skull
with crushing force.

Out of the two cavities which the broken staff now presented, rattled
several gold coins. At the sight, the old hag scrambled toward where the
major had fallen senseless. The Jew, after picking up the broken pieces
of wood, would have lingered to recover those of the precious metal
though at cost of a scuffle with Baboushka. But his daughter rebuked him
in their language with an indignant tone, which brought him to his
senses in an instant. She seized him by the arm, and hurried him away at
last.

After a brief survey of the defeated man, wavering between the fear
that he had killed him and the prompting to see to his hurts, if the
case were not 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 _spielungs_, or dens, she was not one of the stray creatures who
sell pleasure to some and give it to others, and for themselves keep
only shame--fatal ignominy, wealth at best very unsubstantial, and if,
at last, winners, they laugh--one would rather see them weeping.

"What's your name?" she inquired, quickly. "I am Rebecca Daniels, whom
they call on the Bills 'La Belle Stamboulane'--though I have never been
farther east than Prague," she added with a contemptuous smile. "That
was my father, whose maltreatment you so promptly but I fear so severely
chastised. But your 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 tongue fluently, pronounced it
after the University manner, and felt that he could not sustain a
dialogue with one who followed the Italian usage. He could speak
Italian, however, for he had long studied it to be at home in the world
of Art.

"The officer was not killed," remarked the Jew, and before his new
acquaintance could express his relief, he added gravely, "but he has
been spirited away."

"Then it's those vagabonds--"

"Of whom that old _Tausend-Kunstlerin_ (witch of a thousand tricks) is
in the position of parent? I guess as much. He said he had connived with
her, one who is the actual though occult ruler of the filthy region. We
have had to pay her blackmail regularly, like the other artists, for we
are obliged to go home after midnight. Well, if he is in their hands, it
is among congenial spirits. Tell me your name and as much of your
affairs as you please to enlighten me with. I am bound to assist you as
far as possible--though my debt to you will ever remain uncanceled. I am
Daniel Daniels, of Odessa, Marseilles, and elsewhere, and an
introduction to my correspondent nearest where you sojourn is not to be
despised."

Impressed with his tone, the young man related his life-story
succinctly.

He had a dreamy remembrance of a long journey, lastly in a sledge,
buried in fur robes, his clearer later memories were of a happy home in
Poland, in the country, where, though strangers, all were kind to the
lonely orphan. There was a mystery about his parentage; his mother was
probably a native as he acquired the language as easily as the art of
eating, the peasants said. His father had been killed, he thought, on
one of those riots which, in a small way, repeat the olden revolutions
of Poland against the triumvirate of oppression, Austria, Prussia and
Russia. But he had heard a tutor say, when he was not supposed in
hearing, that he had perished by the executioner's steel.

"A death honorable as under the bullets," said Claudius, but half
doubtingly.

As became a man who abhorred homicide in any shape, Daniels made no
reply.

"At the age of eighteen, while at the University, I was given a private
tutor in art and architecture, to which I had a bent. He was a Frenchman
and I acquired his elegant tongue with that well-known facility of us
Poles in attaining proficiency in the Western ones. Armed with that and
Italian--"

"Which you speak with finish," interrupted the Jew.

"I expect my Italian and French tour to be delightful. But I am not over
the frontier yet, and hardly will be soon if my passport is commented
upon by an authority cognizant of this night's adventure."

"I regret to find that it was deliberately planned," resumed Daniels.
"My daughter's virtue has raised more hostility under this roof than
even her talent. The proprietor is a notorious rascal, but he is too
useful to the profligate among the town officials to be reprimanded. The
police, too, wink at his personal misdoings, because he is always their
friend to deliver the criminals who make this haunt their rendezvous.
All those painted women, as well as the waiter-girls, are spies and
Dalilahs who betray the Samsons of crime to the police at any given
moment. That would be neither here nor there, however, if my daughter
and I were allowed to conclude our engagement--which, believe me, would
never have been signed if we had guessed the character of the resort.
Not only would they lodge me in prison for a pretended attempt to elude
my contract, but they seek to throw my poor Rebecca into the arms of
such reprobates as this Major the Baron. The hag whom you noticed is not
unconcerned in the plot. It is a protege of hers--a lovely young girl,
guileless in appearance as a cherub, whom they would substitute for my
girl, if she had been detained to-night. In fact--"

He paused. The orchestra had played and two or three vocalists had
appeared and sang, without Claudius, absorbed in this conversation,
noticing that the entertainment had commenced. A little fat man in a
ruffled and embroidered shirt, buff waistcoat with crystal buttons, knee
breeches and silk stockings of reproachless black, and steel buckled
shoes, had come before the curtain, sticking one thumb in his waistband
and the other in his vest armhole, to display a huge seal ring and a
mammoth diamond hoop, respectively, as well as his idea of ease in
company. He announced in a high flute-like voice that in consequence of
indisposition, which a sworn medical affirmation confirmed--here he
raised a laugh by sticking his tongue in his cheek--"La Belle
Stamboulane" would not appear--might have to depart for Constantinople
for convalescence, but that the bewitching Fraulein von Vieradlers--one
of the few authentic _noble_ vocalists on the variety stage--following
in the footsteps of certain princesses--would oblige, for the first time
on any stage, with selections from her repertoire, etc.

This was concerted, for the outburst of applause, started by the most
sinister of aspect among the auditors, was vehement and so contagious
that the _hussah_ was unanimous as the stage-manager retired.

La Belle Stamboulane was already eclipsed! so evanescent is theatrical
fame. Of all the audience, only one felt indignant, and that was the
student Claudius, who had not heard her sing or wear stage costumes!

"All is over," observed Daniels placidly. "I cannot cope with these
rogues. I must go and join my daughter and get our dresses to our
lodgings; thankful if we succeed so far. In about an hour, will you not
call, when we will resume our conversation which I wish to have, and
with practical gain to you. This is the card of our hotel. It is not
aristocratic, but once there, you will be safe."

He spoke with such tranquil assurance that Claudius had not a doubt. He
took the card, read the address: "Hotel Persepolitan," so that if he
lost the card, it might be in his mind, and nodded with a kind of
gratefulness. The father of a beautiful woman is not like any other man
in the world to a young man, who is not indifferent to her.

Following the old Jew with his gaze to the narrow side-door leading to
behind-the-scenes, Claudius thought that, in the brief period of its
opening and closing, he spied the bright black orbs of the Jewess
striving to catch a glimpse even so transient of him. It did not need
this encouragement to make him resolve to respond to the invitation.

An hour would soon pass, even in this tedious recreation. He felt also
some resentment and curiosity to see the person whom the director of
these Munich circeans considered in adequate succession to the peerless
Stamboulane. The announcement had at least kindled the public: being
plebeian, the promised aristocrat was already discussed. The family was
existent, whether this variety vocalist was legitimately a daughter
being another question. Vieradlers was a barony that had a right to fly
its four eagles--as the name signifies--in the face of the double-headed
king of the tribe. The baron was the latest of an old Bavarian line,
famous in story. One of his ancestors was eagle-bearer to Caesar after
the defeat of Hermann. The continuators had always been near the
emperors. There might be a drop of imperial blood in the child who had
so strangely degenerated as to prefer royalty on the stage to that of
the court and country-house.

"She may be good-looking," thought Claudius, "for I have noticed that
where the men are uncomely the women are often the reverse. A Berlin
professor has boldly likened the male Bavarian to the gorilla and the
caricaturists have taken his cue. They are of the beer-barrel shape,
coarse, rough, quarrelsome and quick to enter into a fight. It is the
national dish of roast goose--a pugnacious bird--and bread of oatmeal
that does it. They may well have one beauty of the sex among them. And
the carnation on the cheeks of these waitresses is so remarkable that
they find rouge superfluous. They are dull, and yet the twinkle in their
eyes indicates cunning."

Before him, the next seat was occupied by two gentlemen. They spoke in
French, thinking no one would comprehend their conversation. They were
discussing the ascending star, about which one had a deeper knowledge
than the subjects of Baboushka.

"She is the cause of the disgrace of the Grand-Chamberlain of a northern
kingdom," said this well-informed man. "He has been obliged to send in
his grand cross of the Royal Order and his rank in the Holy Empire,
after what was almost a revolution in the palace. He is a man over
sixty, who was in Russia on an important mission, when he met by chance
this young girl, whose mother was married to a noble, although the elder
sister of one of those beauties notorious for their depravity in Paris.
Perhaps, though, she secured her husband before her sister won this
dubious celebrity. At all events, she lived blamelessly, but _bad_ blood
does not lie! This girl seems to aim at the reputation of her aunt, the
celebrated Iza, whose portrait was painted, her figure copied in
immortal marble, and her charms sung by French bards. At all events, she
bewitched the old Count von Raackensee, who took her on a tour through
our country and Austria. It was at Vienna that he, an old statesman and
courtier, committed the folly of presenting her as his daughter! The
truth came out--Austria and Prussia made remonstrances, and he was
compelled to resign his office or this witch. He would not give her up
and so he was punished."

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