t and roared incessantly: when Mary squeezed me, for the last
time, the tears came out of me as if I had been neither more nor less
than a great wet sponge. My cousin's eyes were stoically dry; her
ladyship had a part to play, and it would have been wrong for her to
be in love with a young chit of fourteen--so she carried herself with
perfect coolness, as if there was nothing the matter. I should not have
known that she cared for me, had it not been for a letter which she
wrote me a month afterwards--THEN, nobody was by, and the consequence
was that the letter was half washed away with her weeping; if she had
used a watering-pot the thing could not have been better done.

Well, I arrived at Strasburg--a dismal, old-fashioned, rickety town in
those days--and straightway presented myself and letter at Schneider's
door; over it was written--

COMITE DE SALUT PUBLIC.

Would you believe it? I was so ignorant a young fellow, that I had no
idea of the meaning of the words; however, I entered the citizen's room
without fear, and sat down in his ante-chamber until I could be admitted
to see him.

Here I found very few indications of his reverence's profession; the
walls were hung round with portraits of Robespierre, Marat, and the
like; a great bust of Mirabeau, mutilated, with the word Traitre
underneath; lists and republican proclamations, tobacco-pipes and
fire-arms. At a deal-table, stained with grease and wine, sat a
gentleman, with a huge pigtail dangling down to that part of his person
which immediately succeeds his back, and a red nightcap, containing a
TRICOLOR cockade as large as a pancake. He was smoking a short pipe,
reading a little book, and sobbing as if his heart would break. Every
now and then he would make brief remarks upon the personages or the
incidents of his book, by which I could judge that he was a man of
the very keenest sensibilities--"Ah, brigand!" "O malheureuse!" "O
Charlotte, Charlotte!" The work which this gentleman was perusing is
called "The Sorrows of Werter;" it was all the rage, in those days, and
my friend was only following the fashion. I asked him if I could see
Father Schneider? he turned towards me a hideous, pimpled face, which I
dream of now at forty years' distance.

"Father who?" said he. "Do you imagine that citizen Schneider has not
thrown off the absurd mummery of priesthood? If you were a little older
you would go to prison for calling him Father Schneider--many a m