The Son of Clemenceau. Александр Дюма-сын

      CHAPTER V.

       UNDER MUNICH.

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      After an instant's reflection in the impenetrable shades, Claudius concluded to follow the advice of the variety theatre's prima donna. While a stranger to the City of Breweries, he knew that its predestination toward thirst was due to its being the site of an ancient rock-salt mine. In other cities, subterraneans were melodramatic; here, a labyrinth under the surface and at the level of the dancing and drinking cellars was so natural that a child of Munich, dropped into a well, would have no misgivings as to his worming his way up into the outer air.

      At the worst, when pressed by hunger, he could no doubt make an appeal to the mounted patrol by night or the foot-passengers by day, whom he would hear overhead, and be released from this living burial at the cost of the imprisonment and trial which he had temporarily evaded.

      Remembering that he had a box of cigar-lights, and regretting again the want of the cloak so useful in these damp passages, he lighted a match and began his flight by the sole opening that he spied. An odor of sausages, cheese and coarse tobacco was here and there strong, and he correctly divined that at these points, fugitives, probably from the same enemy as he fled, had recently made halts. Once assured that he was in a kind of thoroughfare, though one for the nefarious, he felt bolder and more hopeful about reaching a desirable goal.

      He did not pause to think, as he continued, choosing, where there was a bifurcation, the most trampled corridor, hewn originally by the miners' pick. But he had much on his mind for future elaboration. Heretofore no man could have lived a less eventful life, passed among books, globes, drawing tools and lecture notes. In a few hours the change was great. The quiet student, with no aspirations but the completion of his wandering-year in Italian picture-galleries, had become a fugitive from justice, and on the hands, groping in a lugubrious earthen alley, were the stains of a fellow-creature's blood. Then, too, the singular friendships he had formed, the old Jew and his daughter, who were awaiting him—and this still more remarkable creature who had glanced across his path, like the divinities from above in antique poems, to point out the safe retreat.

      But too long a time elapsed without his finding such an evidence of his security as he had too confidently expected. He might have mistaken the true line, for while at any point of divergence there were marks in the earth, where traces of saline flows still glistened, and even stones and bits of stick placed in cavities in the manner of the gypsy clues familiar to social outcasts, he could not interpret them; for once, his university education proved faulty.

      A new alarm arose from the presence of swarms of rats; larger and more hideous than their fellows of which one catches a fleeting view in houses and in the streets, they seemed to be less afraid of the lord of creation than fables teach. They scuttled off in front of him, it is true, but he began to think that they followed him when he went by. One ray of comfort came in the two beliefs that his flashing matches frightened them, and that, for certain portions of the way, well-regulated droves of the vermin had districts assigned them; those that ventured in chase of him too far were beaten back by those on whose grounds they rashly trespassed.

      This latter consolation was lost almost at the same time as the other: his stock of fuses ran out, while with the last flash he feared that he saw a larger mass than ever before in his track. The rats had united to overwhelm him.

      Seized with panic, spite of his philosophy, dropping the all but empty wax-light case in his haste, he dashed madly forward, groping to save his head and shoulders from contact with the capacious gallery sides, but unable to take a step with any certainty how it would end. Fortunately, he had strayed back into an often-traveled path, and while the scamper of the rats died away at the close of his frantic race, he heard a sound but little above his level revealing the presence of man. It was not a cheerful sound; being the tolling of a bell such as is swung when a dead body is entering a cemetery, is carried to the chapel before interment.

      Nevertheless, fellow beings would be near and he had only to find the opening by which this burial-ground could be reached. He remembered that the old cemetery had been immensely extended, if the guide-books were to be credited, and, while he had no clear idea of the direction he had rambled, he might have reached the town of twenty thousand dead. The idea was gruesome of having to call for the aid of a grave-digger, but he felt that he could not much longer support this journey in the underworld without the bodily support of food or the mental one of human fellowship.

      Silence most oppressive had followed the patter of the myriad of rats' feet, and it checked his efforts. They were brought to a termination just when he looked forward with joy to a grey light dimly indicating some aperture on the other side of which shone the day. The ground seemed to give way under him, and he was hurled senseless into the pit which he had not suspected.

      When he returned to consciousness, the bell had ceased to toll; the silence was once more heavy. But the pangs of hunger—remorseless master over the young—spurred him into rising.

      He was thankful that he had not been attacked in his helplessness by the vermin, and he muttered a prayer in his first stride toward where he recalled the feeble light. The rats' compact column had figured in his dreams, and while they were led by the fair waltz-singer and dancer in order to devour him, unable to resist, the benignant fairy, for once dark—contrary to all precedent—wore the appearance of Rebecca.

      He could not see the light; but a current of warm air stealing steadily into the underground indicated the orifice. It was a welcome draft, for it differed in many features from the noisome, dank and earthy exhalations to which he had luckily become accustomed in his indefinite sojourn.

      His surmise was correct. Through a grating of iron bars, straight at the side and semi-circular at the top, set in massive masonry of some building, in the foundation of which he crouched, he saw, in the vagueness of clouded starlight, the domain of the dead.

      On being assured of this, the panic, mastering him before, resumed its sway; it gave him a giant's strength to escape the fancied, grisly pursuers, and he moved the whole series of bars far enough away to enable him to crawl through the gap.

      He stood, exhausted, panting, glad of the relief from the waking nightmare which the darkness encouraged. His weakness could be accounted for, as his wandering had lasted long; the syncope could not be brief since nearly thirty hours must have transpired from his rush out of the variety music-hall.

      Before him, for at his back stood the chapel for services, stretched out the vast cemetery. Some of the cracked, dilapidated tombs dated back to 1600; others marked the addition in 1788 to the original God's-acre. All was hushed; it was difficult to imagine a phantom where neglect seemed to rule. It was not in this olden part that descendants of the departed flocked on All Saints' Day to decorate the mausoleums with evergreens, plaster images and artificial immortelle garlands. Except for a screeching-sparrow, which his first steps dislodged, not a sign of life appeared in this town around which the living city slept as quietly.

      His eyes clearing, he believed he descried the gateway and, sure that so large a campo santo would have a warder in hourly attendance, he made his way, deviating as the tombs compelled, toward the entrance. To his surprise, all was still there, and though a lamp burned in the little stone lodge, it was certainly untenanted. The gate was ajar; there was no fear of the tenants flitting out bodily for a night's excursion.

      Claudius was dying for refreshment and he was not fastidious about intruding. A man who has traversed the underlying catacombs need not be delicate about taking a nip of spirits or a hunch of bread. Both were in a cupboard in the little domicile, supplied with a porter's chair so ample as to be the watcher's bed, and a stove where a fire merrily burned, crackling with billets