easy to master and soon became as proficient in it as a native born Englishman. A small trace of a foreign accent may have persisted but I don’t really think so. During the school holidays I was sent up north to Yorkshire to spend some time with maternal relatives in Leeds. On a warm summer’s day I would walk from Leeds to Selby, and then, for a shilling, catch a small steamer up the Rivers Ouse and Humber as far as Hull. I enjoyed these vacations and became an Anglophile forever after as a result. My next move was to the Douai School in France. This was to learn French so that I could prepare for the Baccalaureate. I took to French like English, as a duck to water. I really loved that language and learned to speak it perfectly, without a trace of a foreign accent. My French became so good that, later on, when I spoke English again, I did so initially with a French accent. I now prided myself on being a master linguist. I was fluent in French, English and Hebrew and very good with German and Latin and also Yiddish, which just fell into place because of the other languages.
After matriculating in 1868 I enrolled at the Sorbonne University to study medicine. In Paris I took myself a room on the Rue de l’Ecole de Medicine. It was the ideal location for a medical student. Well, what can I say about Paris? It just overwhelmed me. There is no other city quite like it on earth. I went everywhere! I saw everything! I lived and breathed it! In no time I had acquired all the vices of a Quartier Latin Bohemian.
My main problem was money. My mother’s lawyer would send me a stipend each month from Berlin. Instead of budgeting, so that it lasted, I would have a ball instead. While in funds, I would dine at Duval’s, go to plays at the Theatre Francais, and afterwards take supper at the Cafe de la Jeune France until the early hours of the morning. Study was out of the question while a gold coin remained in my pocket. But by mid-month my money started to run out. I was no longer able to pay my way in cafes and restaurants. This was a cue to hibernate for a fortnight and to study madly instead. At the end of the month I sometimes couldn’t even afford the price of a meal but finally solved this problem by paying the owner of a nearby cafe for a month of breakfasts in advance. The precipitating event for this sagacity was a hypoglycaemic faint that I suffered, while attending a lecture on the origin of Semitic languages by Professor Adolphe Franck. The faint proved to be a gratuity, for not only did the kind professor revive me, but he also bought me lunch and offered me a job. Franck was writing his famous treatise on the Kabbalah and needed some rare Hebrew manuscripts copied. He augmented my income, to the tune of five francs a week, by allowing me to do this for him.
The manuscripts were housed at the Imperial Library on Rue Richelieu. Whilst working there I met and befriended Dr. Hertz, a retired German physician of independent means, long resident in Paris, with an interest in mysticism and the occult. Hertz invited me home and introduced me to his daughter, Emma. Here was a girl possessed of great personal beauty and charm. She had a perfectly proportioned head, luxuriant blond hair, a clear white complexion rose-tinted in the cheeks, and best of all, two large keen intelligent black eyes that shone brightly like beacons, and immediately alerted me, without even hearing her speak, to her fine mind. I was totally besotted by her and couldn’t keep away from the house. My love for her ripened daily and I knew elation when I felt her reciprocate it. Her father, the kind doctor, treated me not as a stranger but as a son. I now saw Emma every day, having weaned myself from my company. I simply lost interest in them. I wished that time might stand still, that nothing might ever change. And then, suddenly, on July 17th 1870, my blissful idyll came to an abrupt end. War was declared between Bismarck and the Second Empire of Napoleon III.
The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War impacted on the inhabitants of Paris. The excitement was electrifying. The streets burst alive with the chatter of people. Newspaper vendors rushed around shouting, “Telegraphic News- the very latest news of the war”. A heterogeneous assemblage - shopkeepers, tradesmen, business people, workers, professionals, stockbrokers - poured forth from dark and narrow side streets and crowded the magnificent boulevards. Cafes and wine shops resounded with martial songs and patriotic fervour. The Marseillaise could be heard continuously from all directions simultaneously, an overpowering, stereophonic medley of sound. And then most frightening of all, at dusk, a rabid mob appeared out of nowhere, more than one hundred thousand stark-raving-mad-people, singing, shouting, howling, pushing, and jostling. They poured forth, like volcanic lava, from the Place de la Bastille to the Emperor’s palace in the Tuilleries. In the Rue de Rivoli this wild rabble broke into the kiosks where street sweepers put away their brooms. They torched these brooms with petroleum. Others did likewise with stolen doormats attached to shovels and poles. “Down with Prussia,” “Long Live France,” “Long live the Emperor,” they shouted. This torchlight procession, and the abominable stench it produced, was permitted, unhindered by the guards, to pass through the gateways of the Tuilleries into the Palace courtyard where they demanded to see the Emperor. Napoleon, being no friend of the mob, kept to his room. The mob remained there for an hour until a palace spokesman appeared on a balcony and lied that the Emperor was at St. Cloud. Then they dispersed but not before a scuffle broke out with a procession of bourgeoisie pleading for peace.
Later that evening I witnessed other frightening scenes. Six Germans driving across the Place de la Bastille were stupid enough to shout, “Vive la Prusse”. The crowd stampeded them, killing four outright, and severely mutilating the remaining two. Buildings bearing signs with German surnames or place names were severely vandalised. Walls were damaged, shutters fractured, and windowpanes shattered.
I went home to sleep. It seemed the safest thing to do. But by morning I had developed a high fever, severe pains affecting my muscles and joints, and a belly so distended that it seemed about to burst. This illness was protracted and confined me to bed for a week. Indeed I owe my very life to a kind, young seamstress, “une pauvre grisette,” who rented the adjacent room and went out of her way to nurse me. She was ‘magnifique!’ She kept me hydrated and nourished by feeding me soup, and dispensed a home-made remedy to lower my temperature. No qualified medical practitioner could have restored me to health in shorter time.
By the seventh day my appetite and strength had recovered sufficiently to make my way downstairs to La Cremerie, the cafe at which my breakfasts were prepaid. As I dressed a thought crossed my mind. I must give my young seamstress a very nice present. But being short of money I couldn’t just yet. I would put it off until I received more funds from home. The word home suddenly linked up a chain of thoughts in my memory. My home, strictly speaking, was Germany. The terrible scenes of the night of the seventeenth now came back to haunt me. The hostilities between France and Germany would cause my letters to be detained at the border. I would be stranded here with no funds. A dream now re-entered my consciousness. It wasn’t really a dream; I had only thought it was! The concierge had knocked on my door and had spoken to me. He said that all Germans had to leave France today. I suddenly appreciated the reality of my situation. I was born in East Prussia, and in receipt of monthly letters from Berlin that identified me as a German to the concierge of my building. All Germans were deemed spies until proved otherwise, and in great danger of being arrested and shot. The better educated a person was, the higher was the index of suspicion against him. The French Government had issued a decree on the declaration of war that all German nationals had to depart France by the end of the week. My week was now up.
I actually felt more French than German. I spoke French with a good Parisian accent and my thought processes were those of a Frenchman. I hadn’t lived in Germany since childhood and felt no specific loyalty to it. It was politics, a subject in which I had no interest, which now classified me ‘a German.’
Since falling ill I had lost contact with the Hertzs. They were my closest friends in Paris. I saw them daily. But despite this, I had deliberately omitted to give them my exact address. They knew my room was in the Latin Quarter but I had no desire that Emma visit it and share its squalor.
I locked my door, and left my key with the concierge. He looked me knowingly in the eye, but said nothing. At the German Embassy I learned that the Ambassador had left for Berlin the night before. A rough mob had congregated in front of the building and was creating a disturbance, hurling both insults and missiles. I noticed several broken windows. This behaviour was still new to me and made me feel awkward. I quickly departed.
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