for a long while I watched the peculiar bearing of the patriots as they marched out.  I noticed in particular a Vogtland regiment, whose marching step was fairly orthodox, following the beat of a drummer who tried to vary the monotony of his instrument in an artistic manner by hitting the wooden frame alternately with the drumhead.  The unpleasant rattling tone thus produced reminded me in ghostly fashion of the rattling of the skeletons’ bones in the dance round the gallows by night which Berlioz had brought home to my imagination with such terrible realism in his performance of the last movement of his Sinfonie Fantastique in Paris.

Suddenly the desire seized me to look up the friends I had left behind, and travel to Chemnitz in their company if possible.  I found they had quitted the Town Hall, and on reaching Heubner’s house I was told that he was asleep.  I therefore went back to the coach, which, however, was still putting off its departure, as the road was blocked with troops.  I walked nervously up and down for some time, then, losing faith in the journey by coach, I went back again to Heubner’s house to offer myself definitely as a travelling companion.  But Heubner and Bakunin had already left home, and I could find no traces of them.  In desperation I returned once more to the coach, and found it by this time really ready to start.  After various delays and adventures it brought me late at night to Chemnitz, where I got out and betook myself to the nearest inn.  At five o’clock the next morning I got up (after a few hours’ sleep) and set out to find my brother-in-law Wolfram’s house, which was about a quarter of an hour’s walk from the town.  On the way I asked a sentinel of the town guard whether he knew anything about the arrival of the provisional government.

‘Provisional government?’ was the reply.  ’Why, it’s all up with that.’  I did not understand him, nor was I able to learn anything about the state of things when I first reached the house of my relatives, for my brother-in-law had been sent into the town as special constable.  It was only on his return home, lute in the afternoon, that I heard what had taken place in one hotel at Chemnitz while I had been resting in another inn.  Heubner, Bakunin, and the man called Martin, whom I have mentioned already, had, it seemed, arrived before me in a hackney-coach at the gates of Chemnitz.  On being asked for their names Heubner had announced himself in a tone of authority, and had bidden the town councillors come to him at a certain hotel.  They had no sooner reached the hotel than they all three collapsed from excessive fatigue.  Suddenly the police broke into the room and arrested them in the name of the local government, upon which they only begged to have a few hours’ quiet sleep, pointing out that flight was out of the question in their present condition.  I heard further that they had been removed to Altenburg under a strong military escort.  My brother-in-law