Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/306

 with a bloody head had lain upon the table; there the Palais Royal where Camille Desmoulins, standing upon a chair, had fulminated his fiery speech and stuck a green leaf as a cockade on his hat; there the Place de la Concorde, where on the 10th of August the royal power of Louis XVI. fell into the dust.

Thus I wandered about for several hours as if entranced, when at a shop window I heard two men speaking German together. This woke me out of my reverie, and it occurred to me that it was time to look up the German refugees whose addresses I possessed. I therefore accosted the German-speaking men and asked them where I could find a certain street. I received a polite response and found myself soon in the room of a friend whose acquaintance I had made in the Palatinate—the Saxon refugee Zychlinski. He procured for me a furnished room in the neighborhood of the Church Saint-Eustache and instructed me quickly in the art of living in Paris on little money.

My sojourn in the French capital lasted about four weeks. My first care was to practice myself in the language of the country. I had appreciated already in Brussels that the instruction in French which I had received at the gymnasium hardly enabled me to order a breakfast. Now I began at once with a pocket dictionary in hand to read newspapers, including the advertisements, and then to avail myself of every opportunity to put the words and phrases I had thus learned to use in conversation with the concièrge of my house or the waiter at the restaurant or with anybody who would listen to me. After a few days I found that I could get along measurably well as to the everyday requirements of life. I did not make any important acquaintances in Paris at that time. Indeed I saw the leading men of the legislative bodies, but only from the