CHAPTER VI
A SNOWSTORM
Professor Garlach received the next day a neatly-written note. It was thrust under the door of his private apartment, just as he was getting ready to go to breakfast.
“Ach! Dis is a letter,” he said, carefully looking at the envelope, as if there was some doubt of it. “I vunder who can haf sent it to me?”
He turned it over several times, but seeing no way of learning what he wished to know save by opening the epistle, he did so.
“Vot is dis?” he murmured as he read. “Ha! dot is der best news vot I haf heard in a long time. Ach! now I gets me efen mid dot wienerwurst of a Socrat! I vill vanquishes him!”
This is what the German professor read:
“I am a lover of the Fatherland, and I understand that an insult has been offered her glory by a Frenchman who is a professor in the same school where you teach. I understand that he said a small body of the despised French beat a large army of Germans. This is not true, but I am in a position to prove the contrary, namely, that in the Hanoverian or Seven Years’ War, in 1756, a small troop of Germans, under Frederic II, defeated a large army of the French. The incident is little known in history, but I have all the facts at hand, and I will give them to you.
“The information is secret, and I cannot reveal to you my name, or I might get into trouble with the German war authorities, so I will have to ask you to proceed cautiously. I will deposit the proofs of what I say in the hollow of the old oak tree that stands near the shore of the lake, not far from the school. If you will go there at midnight to-night, you may take the papers away and demonstrate to your classes that the Germans are always the superiors of the French in war. I must beg of you to say nothing about this to any one. Proceed in secret, and you will be able to refute the base charges made against our countrymen by a base Frenchman. Do not fail. Be at the old tree at midnight. For obvious reasons I sign myself only
“Bismark.”
“Ha!” exclaimed Professor Garlach. “I vill do as you direct. T’anks, mine unknown frient! T’anks! Now vill I make to der utmost confusionability dot frog-eater of a Socrat! Ha! ve shall see. I vill be on der spot at midnight!”