Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/278

 landed near a little village called Münchhausen. The officers told us that in the town of Selz, near by, there were many German fugitives, and to Selz therefore we went. On the way we gazed at one another in the clear sunlight, and discovered that we looked like savages. For days and nights we had waded or squatted in wet clothes in water, mud and dust. Our hair was matted and our faces were streaked with dirt. A near rivulet furnished us the indescribable luxury of a washing, and thus restored to human shape, we soon reached the inn at Selz.

The refugees there from Baden, none of whom had been in Rastatt, welcomed us heartily, and asked us at once for the story of our adventures. But our first wish was for a hot bath, a breakfast, and a bed. All this we obtained. I slept twenty-four hours with slight interruptions. Then I acquainted the company of refugees in the inn with the circumstances of our escape from Rastatt. From them I learned also for the first time that Kinkel had been captured by the Prussians in a fight near the fortress, before the beginning of the siege. When we left the Palatinate and he could no longer make himself useful in the offices of the provisional government, he had joined a battalion of volunteers and shouldered his musket as a private soldier. Thus he would share the lot of the revolutionary army. In the fight on the line of the Murg River he was wounded in the head and fell into the hands of the attacking Prussians. He was then incarcerated in one of the casemates at Rastatt, together with the captured garrison, in order to have him tried by court-martial, which would, no doubt, order him to be shot. This news threw a black veil over my joy at my own recovered freedom.

On the day after our arrival in Selz a police officer appeared at the inn, by the authority of the mayor, to learn our names, and also whether we expected to remain, or, if not,