Gottfried Kinkel.--[Page 25.]
Richard Wagner.--[Page 25.]
Almost nightly, in the winter, at least, the little circle came together, shook hands, and sat around that table. Each paid for his own beer. To offer to “treat” would have been an offense. “How many glasses, gentlemen?” the pretty waitress would ask. Each told what he had drunk and how much cheese or how many hard-boiled eggs he had added; the pretzels were free. “Gute Nacht, meine Herren, und baldiges Wiedersehen,” called out the little waitress, as they would again shake hands and go out into the fog and darkness. For years that little waiting-girl lighted the lamp over the table, served us the beer, and found a half-franc piece under one of the empty glasses. She knew what it was for. Had she been a shorthand reporter, she could have stopped passing beer long ago, and the Orsini Café might have been her own.
[CHAPTER III]
1870
IN THE ORSINI CAFE--GREAT NEWS FROM FRANCE--WHAT THE EXILES THINK--LETTER FROM GENERAL SHERMAN--I GET PERMISSION TO GO AND LOOK AT THE WAR--IN THE SNOW OF THE JURAS--ARRESTED--THE SURRENDER OF THE 80,000--ZURICH IN THE HANDS OF A MOB--A FRIENDLY HINT.
August 15, 1870.--At six in the evening of this day I was sitting with these other friends in the little corner of the Orsini, when a boy called out:
“Great news from France!”