Master Hediger, however, might have been proud of the appearance he presented in his neatly kept little back room. He looked almost more like an American settler than a tailor. A strong and intelligent face with heavy whiskers, surmounted by a powerful, bald dome was bending over "The Swiss Republican," while he read the leading article with a critical expression. There were at least twenty-five well-bound folio volumes of this "Republican" in a little walnut bookcase with a glass door, and they contained scarcely anything that Hediger, for twenty-five years, had not lived and fought through. The case also held Rotteck's "Universal History," a Swiss history by Johannes Müller, and a handful of political brochures and such like; a geographical atlas and a portfolio full of caricatures and pamphlets--mementoes of bitterly passionate days--lay on the lowest shelf. The wall of the little room was adorned with the portraits of Columbus, Zwingli, Hutten, Washington, and Robespierre; for Hediger was not to be trifled with and sanctioned the Reign of Terror, after it was over. Besides these world-famous heroes, there were portraits of several progressive Swiss to which were affixed in their own handwriting highly edifying and discursive inscriptions, regular little essays. Leaning against the bookcase was a well-kept, shining musket with a short side-arm hanging on it and a cartridge-pouch in which, at all times, there were thirty cartridges. That was his fowling-piece with which he went out, not for hares and partridges, but for aristocrats and Jesuits, for breakers of the constitution and traitors to the people. Until now his lucky star had kept him from shedding any blood, owing to lack of opportunity; nevertheless more than once he had seized his musket and hurried to the square. That was at the time of the riots, when he kept the gun standing between the bed and the wardrobe and would not allow it to be moved, "for," he used to say, "no government and no battalions can protect justice and liberty where a citizen is not able to step out of doors and see what is going on."
While the stout-hearted master was absorbed in his article, now nodding approvingly, now shaking his head, his youngest son Karl, a fledgling clerk in a government office, came in.
"What do you want?" asked Master Hediger harshly, for he did not like to be disturbed in his little den.
Karl, somewhat uncertain as to the success of his request, asked whether he might have his father's gun and cartridge-pouch for the afternoon as he had to go to the drill-ground.
"No use to ask, I won't hear of it!" said Hediger shortly.
"But why not? I won't hurt it," his son continued humbly and still insistently, because he simply had to have a gun if he did not want to be marched off to the detention room. But the old man only repeated in a louder tone:
"Won't hear of it! I can only wonder at the persistence of these gentlemen sons of mine who show so little persistence in other things that not one of them has stuck to the occupation which I allowed him to learn of his own free choice. You know that your three older brothers, one after another, as soon as they had to begin to drill, wanted my gun and that they none of them got it. And yet now here you come slinking along after it. You have your own fair pay, no one to support--get your own weapons, as becomes a man of honor. This gun doesn't leave its place except when I need it myself."
"But it's only for a few times. You surely don't expect me to buy an infantry rifle when I'm going to join the sharpshooters later and shall have to get myself a carbine."
"Sharpshooters! That's good too! I should only like to know why you feel it to be so necessary to join the sharpshooters when you've never yet fired a single shot. In my day a man had to have burnt a good deal of powder before he might make such an application. Nowadays a man turns sharpshooter haphazard, and there are fellows wearing the green coat who couldn't bring down a cat off the roof, but who, to be sure, can smoke cigars and act the gentleman. It's no concern of mine."
"Oh," said the boy almost whimpering, "give it to me just this once. I'll see about getting another to-morrow, but it's impossible for me to do anything today, it's too late."