Here I found very few indications of his reverence’s profession; the walls were hung round with portraits of Robespierre, Marat, and the like; a great bust of Mirabeau, mutilated, with the word _Tratîre_ underneath; lists and Republican proclamations, tobacco-pipes, and firearms. At a deal table, stained with grease and wine, sat a gentleman with a huge pigtail dangling down to that part of his person which immediately succeeds his back, and a red nightcap containing a tricolour cockade as large as a pancake. He was smoking a short pipe, reading a little book, and sobbing as if his heart would break. Every now and then he would make brief remarks upon the personages or the incidents of his book, by which I could judge that he was a man of the very keenest sensibilities--‘Ah, brigand!’ ‘Oh, malheureuse!’ ‘Oh, Charlotte, Charlotte!’ The work which this gentleman was perusing is called _The Sorrows of Werther_; it was all the rage in those days, and my friend was only following the fashion. I asked him if I could see Father Schneider. He turned towards me a hideous pimpled face, which I dream of now at forty years’ distance. ‘Father who?’ said he. ‘Do you imagine that Citizen Schneider has not thrown off the absurd mummery of priesthood? If you were a little older you would go to prison for calling him Father Schneider--many a man has died for less!’ And he pointed to a picture of a guillotine, which was hanging in the room. I was in amazement. ‘What is he? Is he not a teacher of Greek, an abbé, a monk, until monasteries were abolished, the learned editor of the songs of Anacreon?’ ‘He _was_ all this,’ replied my grim friend; ‘he is now a Member of the Committee of Public Safety, and would think no more of ordering your head off than of drinking this tumbler of beer.’ He swallowed, himself, the frothy liquid, and then proceeded to give me the history of the man to whom my uncle had sent me for instruction. Schneider was born in 1756: was a student at Würzburg, and afterwards entered a convent, where he remained nine years. He here became distinguished for his learning and his talents as a preacher, and became chaplain to Duke Charles of Würtemberg. The doctrines of the Illuminati began about this time to spread in Germany, and Schneider speedily joined the sect. He had been a professor of Greek at Cologne; and being compelled, on account of his irregularity, to give up his chair, he came to Strasburg at the commencement of the French Revolution, and acted for some time a principal part as a revolutionary agent at Strasburg. [‘Heaven knows what would have happened to me had I continued long under his tuition!’ said the Captain.’ I owe the preservation of my morals entirely to my entering the army. A man, sir, who is a soldier, has very little time to be wicked; except in the case of a siege and the sack of a town, when a little licence can offend nobody.’]