of the head from so abstruse a subject.  I was on my way home, deep in conversation with this man, whose pale face and troubled look betrayed that he foresaw the disaster that was imminent, when, just as we reached the Postplatz, near the fountain erected from Semper’s design, the clang of bells from the neighbouring tower of St. Ann’s Church suddenly sounded the tocsin of revolt.  With a terrified cry, ‘Good God, it has begun!’ my companion vanished from my side.  He wrote to me—­afterwards to say that he was living as a fugitive in Berne, but I never saw his face again.

The clang of this bell, so close at hand, made a profound impression upon me also.  It was a very sunny afternoon, and I at once noticed the same phenomenon which Goethe describes in his attempt to depict his own sensations during the bombardment of Valmy.  The whole square looked as though it were illuminated by a dark yellow, almost brown, light, such as I had once before seen in Magdeburg during an eclipse of the sun.  My most pronounced sensation beyond this was one of great, almost extravagant, satisfaction.  I felt a sudden strange longing to play with something hitherto regarded as dangerous and important.  My first idea, suggested probably by the vicinity of the square, was to inquire at Tichatschek’s house for the gun which, as an enthusiastic Sunday sportsman, he was accustomed to use.  I only found his wife at home, as he was away on a holiday tour.  Her evident terror as to what was going to happen provoked me to uncontrollable laughter.  I advised her to lodge her husband’s gun in a place of safety, by handing it to the committee of the Vaterlands-Verein in return for a receipt, as it might otherwise soon be requisitioned by the mob.  I have since learned that my eccentric behaviour on this occasion, was afterwards reckoned against me as a serious crime.  I then returned to the streets, to see whether anything beyond a ringing of bells and a yellowish eclipse of the sun might be going on in the town, I first made my way to the Old Market-place, where I noticed a group of men gathered round a vociferous orator.  It was also an agreeable surprise to me to see Schroder-Devrient descending at the door of a hotel.  She had just arrived from Merlin, and was keenly excited by the news which had reached her, that the populace had already been fired upon.  As she had only recently seen an abortive insurrection crushed by arms in Berlin, she was indignant to find the same things happening in her ‘peaceful Dresden’ as she termed it.

When she turned to me from the stolid crowd, which had complacently been listening to her passionate outpourings, she seemed relieved at finding some one to whom she could appeal to oppose these horrible proceedings with all his might.  I met her on another occasion at the house of my old friend Heine, where she had taken refuge.  When she noticed my indifference she again adjured me to use every possible effort to prevent the senseless, suicidal conflict.  I heard afterwards that a charge of high treason on account of sedition had been brought against Schroder-Devrient by reason of her conduct in regard to this matter.  She had to prove her innocence in a court of law, so as to establish beyond dispute her claim to the pension which she had been promised by contract for her many years’ service in Dresden as an opera-singer.