The alarm cried softly in the cellar found stupid ears and men but half-awakened from a drunken sleep. Some of the Prussians sat up with hush words upon their lips; others simply lay and listened--a regiment was marching past certainly, but what of that? They had but to lie close and to douse the lights (which they were quick to do) and their safety was assured. This they believed when sudden music, loud and distinct, sent them leaping to their feet and crying for their swords. Someone played the "Wacht am Rhein" at their very elbows--a voice roared "Shoot the fiddler down"--another voice cried out for a light. It was the supreme moment in the life of Sadi the fiddler. Never had he played so wildly or with such delight of his notes. And the darkness, he said, might yet save him. Dodging here, ducking there, he plunged into the passage and went on headlong toward the light. But he never ceased to play the "Wacht am Rhein" when he could stand a moment to breathe, and the bullets singing by him, the sword-thrusts aimed at him, did but make him play the louder.
[Illustration: "HE NEVER CEASED TO PLAY THE 'WACHT AM RHEIN.'"]
Sadi gained the ruins above with a great gash upon his cheek and his precious fiddle cleaved in half by a cut from a Prussian sword. Up in the open his eyes beheld a glad sight. A regiment of infantry stood at the halt not twenty paces from him. Its officers were moving about as though in quest of some mystery, and when they perceived him they advanced a little curiously and bade the fiddler halt. He answered them in words which were almost incoherent. "The ruins are full of Prussians," he said, and pointed downwards to the cellars he had left. No other word was spoken or needed. Savagely, silently, as beasts of prey that have found quarry, the soldiers fixed their bayonets and began to go down. And Sadi stood entranced, listening to the cries of men in their death agony, to their prayers for mercy; and he said, "This wrong at least is avenged."
And so he turned from the scene, with his poor broken fiddle, and the long day of loneliness before him.
"I shall not play in Munich; I shall never see little Lucy again," he said. But he knew that he had done his duty, and his step was firmer when he set out again for the terrible streets of a city about to open its gates to the enemy.