General Eisemberg, an old German campaigner of the school of Luckner, who had waged a war of partisans with a certain success, had been charged by Pichegru with the defence of the advance-post of Bischwiller. Either through carelessness, or a desire to oppose Saint-Just, instead of taking the precautions directed by the representatives of the people, he had allowed his troops and himself to be surprised, and he and his staff had barely saved themselves by flight. At the foot of the walls, finding himself supported, he had turned, but too late; the alarm had been given in the city, and every one knew that the unfortunate officer might just as well die or let himself be taken prisoner, as to seek safety in a city where Saint-Just commanded. And in fact he had scarcely entered the gates before he, and all his staff, were arrested by order of the Representative of the People. When they returned to the Hôtel de la Lanterne, the two young friends found poor Madame Teutch in a state of the greatest anxiety. Eugene was beginning to be known in the town where he had spent a month, and some one had told her that the young fellow had been seen near the Haguenau gate with a rifle in his hand. At first she had not believed it, but when she saw him return with the rifle, she was seized with a retrospective terror that doubled the interest of Charles' story. The boy was as enthusiastic as a conscript who has just seen his first battle. But all this enthusiasm did not make Charles forget that he was to dine with citizen Euloge Schneider at two o'clock. At five minutes of two, having ascended the steps more slowly than he had descended them in the morning, he knocked at the little door to which they led. CHAPTER V MADEMOISELLE DE BRUMPT At the first sound of the cannon the Society of the Propaganda had assembled and declared its session to be permanent as long as Strasbourg was in danger. Although Euloge Schneider was a fanatical Jacobin, being in relation to Marat what Marat was to Robespierre, he was excelled in patriotism by the Society of the Propaganda As a result the public prosecutor, powerful as he was, had to reckon with two powers, between which he was obliged to steer his course. That is to say, with Saint-Just, who, strange as it must seem to our readers of the present day, represented the moderate Republican party, and with the Propagande, which represented the ultra-Jacobins. Saint-Just held the material power, but citizen Tétrell possessed the moral power. Euloge Schneider therefore did not dare to absent himself from the assemblage of the Propagande, which met to discuss the best means of saving the country; while Saint-Just and Lebas, the first to gallop out of Strasbourg into the midst of the firing--where they were easily recognized as the people's representatives by their uniforms and their tri-color plumes--had ordered the gates to be shut behind them, and had taken their places in the first ranks of the Republicans.