_The Orsini Cafe._--Around a corner, and not a block away from our home, stood a dingy, old building, known as the Cafe Orsini. Every afternoon at five, a certain number of exiles, and their friends, among them men of culture and European fame, met and drank beer at an old oak table in a dark corner of the east room. It was the room to the right of the entrance hall. Many people frequented the Orsini, for it was celebrated for its best Munich beer, and they could catch there glimpses sometimes of certain famous men. Johannes Scherr, the essayist and historian, called the “Carlyle of Germany,” came there, and Brentano, the patriot. So did Gottfried Keller, possibly the greatest novelist writing the German language, though a Swiss. There was Gottfried Kinkel, the beloved German poet, whom our own Carl Schurz had rescued from death in a German prison, now a great art lecturer at the University. Beust, the head of the best school without text-books in the world; Fick, the great lawyer and lecturer, and sometimes Conrad Meyer, the first poet of Switzerland. Earlier, Richard Wagner was also among these exiles at the Orsini, for he, too, had been driven from his country. That was in the days when the celebrated Lubke, the art writer, was lecturing at the Zurich University, together with Semper, the architect. Often the guests around the little table were noted exiles, who, even if pardoned, seldom put a foot in the German fatherland. The lamp above the table was always lighted at just five in the evening, and the landlord’s daughter, in a pretty costume, served the beer. It was my good fortune, through Mr. Brentano, to join this little German Round Table often, to listen to conversations, that, could they be reported now, would make a volume worth the reading. [Illustration: Gottfried Kinkel.--_Page 25._] [Illustration: Richard Wagner.--_Page 25._] Almost nightly, in the winter, at least, the little circle came together, shook hands, and sat around that table. Each paid for his own beer. To offer to “treat” would have been an offense. “How many glasses, gentlemen?” the pretty waitress would ask. Each told what he had drunk and how much cheese or how many hard-boiled eggs he had added; the pretzels were free. “Gute Nacht, meine Herren, und baldiges Wiedersehen,” called out the little waitress, as they would again shake hands and go out into the fog and darkness. For years that little waiting-girl lighted the lamp over the table, served us the beer, and found a half-franc piece under one of the empty glasses. She knew what it was for. Had she been a shorthand reporter, she could have stopped passing beer long ago, and the Orsini Café might have been her own. CHAPTER III 1870 IN THE ORSINI CAFE--GREAT NEWS FROM FRANCE--WHAT THE EXILES THINK--LETTER FROM GENERAL SHERMAN--I GET PERMISSION TO GO AND LOOK AT THE WAR--IN THE SNOW OF THE JURAS--ARRESTED-- THE SURRENDER OF THE 80,000--ZURICH IN THE HANDS OF A MOB--A FRIENDLY HINT.