Then a young couple passed, the wife dressed in black, her square-cut bodice showing a white chemise, and wearing a lace cap like a helmet on her head; the man wore a flowered velvet waistcoat, a jacket with a row of copper buttons, and a fur cap.
Weissenburg peasants thought Jean.
Then he saw florid women from Alsheim and Heiligenstein pass, chattering, but not showing any trace of Alsatian dress.
Among them was a woman from the Münster valley, recognisable by her cap of dark stuff, bound round her head like the handkerchief of the southerners, and decorated in front with a red rosette. Two minutes slipped by. A step was heard through the fog, and a priest appeared—an old, heavy man, who wiped his face as he walked. Two children, very alert, doubtless the belated children of one of the women who had already gone by, overtook him, greeting him in Alsatian with the words, "Praised be Jesus Christ, M. le curé!"
"For ever and ever!" answered the priest.
He did not know them; he only spoke to them to answer the old and beautiful form of greeting. Jean, seated near a pine-tree and half hidden, heard an old man overtake the priest at the bend of the road and say, "Praised be Jesus Christ!"
How many times must that greeting have echoed through the vaults of the forest!
Jean looked before him as one in a dream, who sees only vague figures without attaching any meaning to them.
He stayed like that a short time. Then a murmur, almost imperceptible, so faint as to pass almost unheard, weaker than the twitter of a bird, was borne up on the fog: "Hail, Mary, full of grace; blessed art thou among women!" Another murmur followed, and finished with "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us!" and an involuntary agitation, a mysterious certainty, preceded the appearance of two women.
They were both tall. The elder was an old spinster of Alsheim, whose face was the colour of the fog, and who lived in the shadow of the church, which she decorated on feast-days. She looked weary, but she smiled as she recited the rosary. The younger walked on the right, at the edge of the path, even with the slope, her proud head raised. Her fair hair was like a beautiful piece of pine bark, her body, robust and perfectly proportioned, stood out completely from the pale screen of cloudy mist which filled the bend of the road.
Jean did not move, nevertheless the younger woman saw him, and turned her head towards him. Odile smiled, and without interrupting her prayer, her eyes, turned towards the summit of the mountain, said:
"I will wait for you up there."
The two women did not slacken their steps. With even steps, upright, moving slightly the rosaries which they held in their hands by the swaying of their bodies, they mounted upwards, and were hidden in the shadow of the old wood. Jean let some moments pass by and followed the same road. At the turning, where the road becomes straight and crosses the crest of the mountain to reach the convent, he saw the two women again. They were walking more quickly, glad to have arrived, their sunshades open, for the mist, which had not dispersed, was now warm, and there were splashes of shadow at the foot of the trees. The sun was going down towards the peaks of the Vosges and towards the plains of France beyond.
The pilgrims who had arrived had already made their pilgrimage to the shrine of Sainte Odile, and were hastening to visit the places consecrated by pious or profane tradition: Sainte Odile's well, St. John's well, or by the pagan wall along the goat-path to the Rock of Männelstein, from where there is generally such a lovely view, to the tops of the Bloss and the Elsberg, to the ruined castles which lift their ancient towers among the pines—Andlau, Spesburg, Landsberg, and others. Jean saw the two women cross the courtyard and go towards the chapel. He retraced his steps to the beginning of the wind-swept avenue, along the old building, which reminds one of the advance works of old forts, and passes through a vaulted porch used as an entrance.
Ten minutes later Odile came out of the chapel alone, and guessing that Jean Oberlé was waiting for her elsewhere rather than in this courtyard too full of onlookers, took the road leading to the forest.
She was dressed in the clothes she had worn on Maundy Thursday, the same dark dress, but her hat was very simple, very youthful, and suited her to perfection: a straw, with a wide brim turned up on one side, and trimmed with a twist of tulle. She carried a summer jacket on her arm, and a sunshade. Odile walked quickly, with her head slightly bent, as those walk who are not interested in the road, or who are either praying or dreaming. When she came near Jean, who was on the right of the portico, she looked up, and said without stopping:
"The woman who came with me is resting. Here I am!"
"It is good of you to have trusted me!" said Jean. "Come, Odile!"
He followed, close to her, the avenue planted with sorry trees distorted by the winter winds. He was so much affected by the realisation of his dream that he could only think and speak of one thing: his gratitude to Odile, who was absolutely silent, only listening to what he did not say—and as full of emotion as he was.
They left the road at the place where it begins to slope downwards, and took a path through the forest of lofty pines in serried ranks which leads round the convent. There was no one there, and Jean saw that Odile's eyes of the colour of ripe corn, eyes deep and serious, were turned towards him. There was no sound in the wood save that from the drops of moisture falling from the leaves. They were quite close to each other.
"I asked you to come," said Jean, "so that you should decide what my life is to be. You were the love of my early youth. I want you to be my love always!"
Odile's look was far away, lost in the distance. She trembled slightly, and said:
"Have you thought?"
"Of everything!"
"Even of that which may separate us?"
"What do you mean by that? What are you afraid of? Of entering a disunited family?"
"No!"
"You would bring them together, I am sure of it. You would be its joy and peace. What do you fear—my father's or your father's opposition because they are now enemies?"
"That could be got over," said the young girl.
"Then it is because your mother detests me," said Jean hastily. "She does hate me, does she not? The other day she was so stiff to me, so offensive."
The fair head made a sign of denial.
"She will be slower in believing in you than my father was, slower than I was myself. But when she sees that your education has not changed your mind towards Alsace she will overcome her prejudices."
After a moment's silence Odile said:
"I do not think I am making any mistake. To-day's difficulties can be brushed on one side by you or by me, or by both of us. I am only afraid of what I do not know, the least thing which to-morrow might aggravate such a disturbed state——"
"I understand," said Jean, "you are afraid of my father's ambition?"
"Perhaps!"
"We have already suffered much from that. But he is my father. He is set on keeping me here; he says it every day. When he knows that I have chosen you, Odile, if he has personal projects which would prevent our marriage, he will at least put them off. Do not have any fear; we shall win!"
"We shall win!" she repeated.
"I am sure of it, Odile. You will make my life, Odile, which will be difficult, perhaps impossible, if you were not there. It was for you that I came back to the country. If I tell you that I have travelled much, and found no woman who had the charm for me that you have, or who made the same impression on me—how shall I tell you? The impression of a mountain stream so fresh and deep! Every time I think of my future marriage your image comes before my eyes. I love you, Odile!"
He took Odile's hand, and she answered, lifting her eyes to the light coming from above the trees.
"God is my witness that I love you, too!"
She thrilled with joy, and Jean felt her hand tremble.
"Yes," said Jean; and he tried to look into her eyes, which were still fixed on the distance.
"We shall overcome everything. We shall overcome the numerous obstacles arising from this terrible subject: that is all that is between us."
"Yes; it is the one and only question in this part of the world."
"It poisons everything!"
She stopped, and turned her radiant face full of love to him—of that beautiful and proud love which he had longed to know and to inspire.
"Say rather that it makes everything greater. Our quarrels here are not village quarrels—we are either for or against a country. We are obliged to have courage every day, to make enemies every day, every day to break with old friends who would willingly have remained faithful to us, but who are not faithful to Alsace. No action of our lives is indifferent; there is no action that is not an affirmation. I assure you, Jean, there is nobleness in that."
"That is true, Odile, my beloved."
They stopped to enjoy that delicious word to the full. Their souls were in their eyes, and they looked at each other tremblingly. In low tones, although there were no onlookers other than the pines swayed by the wind, they spoke of the future as of a battle already begun.
"Lucienne will be on my side," said Jean. "I shall entrust my secret to her when occasion occurs. She will help me, and I count on her."
"I count on my father," said Odile; "for he is already well disposed towards you. But take care not to do anything that would annoy him. Do not try to see me at Alsheim. Do not try to hurry on the time."
"That glorious time when you will be mine!"
They smiled at each other for the first time.
"I love you so dearly," continued Jean, "that I shall not ask you for the kiss that you would no doubt give me—I have no right to it. We do not entirely depend on ourselves, Odile. And then it pleases me to show you how sacred you are to me. Tell me at least that I shall take away with me a little of your soul?"
The lips so near his murmured "Yes!" And almost immediately:
"Do you hear down there? Is that the first Easter bell?"
They turned together towards the side where the wood sloped downwards.
"No; it must be the wind in the trees."
"Come," said she: "the bells are going to ring. And if I were not seen up there when they rang, old Rose would speak of it...."
Hardly saying a word, she led him to the base of the rock. There they separated to go back to the Abbey by two different paths.
"I shall find you again on the terrace," said Odile.
The daylight was growing blue in the hollows. That was the hour when waiting for the night does not seem long, and the morrow already dawns in the dreaming mind.
In a few minutes Jean had crossed the yard, followed the corridors of the convent, and opened a door leading to the garden in a sharp angle at the east of the buildings. There it was that all the pilgrims to Sainte Odile met to see Alsace when the weather was clear. A wall, high enough to lean on, runs along the top of an enormous block of rock, advancing like a spur above the forest. It overlooks the pines which cover the slopes everywhere. From the extreme point shut in, like the lantern of a lighthouse, one can see to the right quite a group of mountains, and in front and to the left the plain of Alsace. At this moment the fog was divided into two parts, for the sun was shining on the peaks of the Vosges. All the cloudy mist which did not reach that waving line of peaks, was grey and wan; but just above, almost horizontal rays pierced the mist and coloured it, giving to the second half of the landscape a look of brightness like luminous foam. And this separation showed with what quickness the mist came up from the valley towards the departing sun. The fleecy clouds intermingling, were wafted into the illumined space, were irradiated, showing thus their incessantly changing shapes, and the strength of the motion impelling them, as if the light had summoned their columns to greater heights.
There was at the entrance of this narrow place, arranged for pilgrims and visitors, an old man wearing the costume of the old Alsatians to the north of Strasburg; near him the priest with grey curly hair whom the children had greeted in the morning on the slope of Sainte Odile; a step or two farther on were the young Weissenburg peasants, and at the narrowest spot, squeezed close together on the wall, were the two students who might have been taken for brothers on account of their protruding lips and their beards divided in the middle, one fair, the other chestnut coloured. Both were Alsatians. They exchanged everyday remarks, as is usual among people who do not know each other. When they saw Jean Oberlé they turned round, and they felt themselves suddenly united by a common bond of race which becomes stronger in the face of a common danger.
"Is he a German—that one there?" asked a voice.
The old man who was near the priest cast a glance in the direction of the garden and answered:
"No; he wears his moustache in the French fashion and he looks like one of us."
"I saw him walking with Mademoiselle Odile Bastian, of Alsheim," said the young woman.
The group was reassured, and more so when Jean greeted the priest in Alsatian and asked:
"Are the bells of Alsace late?"
They all smiled, not because of what he had said, but because they felt at home among themselves without an inconvenient witness.
Odile came in her turn and leaned against a wall on the right of the first group. Jean took up a similar position on the other side of the group. They were suffering from loving so much, from having said it, and from only being sure of themselves.
The bells were not late. Their voices were encircled and enclosed by the rising mists. Suddenly they escaped from the cloudy masses, and it seemed as if each separate morsel of fog burst like a bubble on touching the wall and poured out on the summit of the sacred mountain all the harmony of the pealing bells. "Easter! Easter! The Lord is risen! He has changed the world and delivered men! The heavens are opened!" So sang the bells of Alsace. They were ringing from the foot of the mountain, and from the distance, and from far, far away, voices of the little bells, and voices of the great bells of cathedrals; voices which never ceased and from peal to peal were prolonged in re-echoing reverberations; voices that passed away lightly, intermittently, delicately, like a shuttle in a loom; a prodigious choir, whose singers were never visible to each other; cries of joy from a whole population of churches, songs of the spring eternal, which rose up from the depths of the misty plain and mounted to the summit of Sainte Odile to blend into one harmonious whole.
The grandeur of this concert of pealing bells silenced the few folk gathered together up there. The very air prayed. Souls thought of the risen Christ. Several thought of Alsace.
"There is some blue sky," said a voice.
"Some blue up there," repeated a woman's voice, as if in a dream.
They scarcely heard it, in the roar of sounds which rose from the valley. Yet all eyes were raised at once. They saw in the sky, amidst the masses of fog fleeing before the assailing sun, blue depths opening and opening with bewildering rapidity. And when they again looked downwards they perceived that the cloud of mist also was tearing itself to pieces on the slopes. It was the clearing up. Parts of the forest slipped, as it were, into the divisions made in the moving fog; then others; then black crevasses, the thickets, and rocks; then of a sudden the last rags of mist, drawn, thin, contorted, lamentable, went up in whirling masses, brushed against the terrace, and disappeared above. And the plain of Alsace appeared all blue and gold.
One of those who saw it cried out:
"How beautiful!"
All leaned forward to see in the opening of the mountain the plain growing lighter and lighter as far as eye could see.
All these Alsatian souls were touched. Three hundred villages of their own country lay below them scattered about amidst the young green of the cornfields. They were sleeping to the sound of the bells. Each was only a rose-red spot. The river, near the horizon, showed like a bar of dusky silver. And beyond rose stretches of country, whose shape was vanishing rapidly in the fogs which still hung above the Rhine. Quite near by, following the slope of the fir plantations, one saw, on the contrary, the smallest details of the forest of Sainte Odile. Several points of dark green jutted out into the valley and mixed with the pale green of the meadows. All was lit up by reflection from a sky full of rays of light. No bright spot attracted the eye. As the bells had united their voices, so the varying shades of the earth had melted into a harmonious unity. The old Alsatian, who kept his place at the side of the priest, stretched his arms, and said:
"I hear the cathedral bells."
He pointed, away in the distance over the flat country, to the celebrated spire of Strasburg, which looked like an amethyst the size of a thumbnail. Now that they could see the rose-red of villages, they imagined they could recognise the sound of the bells.
A voice said: "I recognise the sound of the bells of the Abbey of Marmoutier. How well they chime!"
"I," said another, "I hear the bells of Obernai!"
"And I the bells of Heiligenstein."
The peasant, who came from the neighbourhood of Weissenburg, also said:
"We are too far off to hear what the bells of Saint George of Haguenau are ringing. However, listen, listen; there—now."
The old Alsatian repeated seriously:
"I hear the cathedral!" and he added: "Look up there again!"
They could all see that the clouds had ascended to the regions of the sunbeams. The cloud, shapeless at the base of the mountain, had spread across the sky, and was like sheaves of gladioli thrown above the Vosges and the plain: some red, like blood, some quite pale, and some like molten gold. And all those witnesses looking up from between the two abysses, their gaze having followed the long light line, remarked that it lit up the earth with its reflection, and that the distant houses of the capital and the spire of the cathedral stood out in a tawny light from the thickening shadow.
"That is like what I saw on the night of August the 23rd, 1870," said the old Alsatian. "I was just here——"
They, even the very young ones, had heard this date frequently spoken of. Their looks were fixed more steadily on the little spire, whence came still a little shining light and the sound of the resurrection bells.
"I was here with the women and girls from yonder villages, who had come up here because the noise of the cannons had redoubled. We heard the cannons as we now hear the bells. The bombs burst like rockets. Our women were weeping here where you stand. That was the night when the library caught fire, that the new church caught fire, and the picture gallery, and ten houses in Broglie. Then a yellow-and-red smoke rose, and the clouds looked like these we now see. Strasburg was burning. They had fired one hundred and ninety-three shells against the city.
One of the students, the younger one, shook his fist.
"Down with them!" muttered the other.
The peasant took his cap off and kept it under his arm, without saying a word.
The bells were still ringing, but not so many of them. They could no longer hear the bells of Obernai, nor of Saint Nabor, nor some of the others they thought they had heard. They were like lights going out. Night was coming.
Jean saw that the two women were almost weeping, and that every one was silent.
"Please say one prayer for Alsace," he said to the priest, "while the bells are still ringing for the resurrection."
"Right! that's right, my boy!" said the old peasant standing by the priest; "you belong to the country!"
The heavy, weary face of the priest brightened at the same time. His voice, which was slightly broken, was not steady. An old and enduring sorrow, yet always new, spoke through his lips, and while they were all looking, as he was himself, towards Strasburg, the city which night was hiding, he prayed:
"My God, here, now we can see from your Sainte Odile nearly all the beloved land, our towns, our villages, and our fields. But some of our land lies also on the other side of the mountains, and yet that is also our country. You permitted us to be separated. My heart breaks to think of it. For on the other side of the mountains is the nation we love, and which you still love. It is the oldest of the Christian nations; it is the nearest to Godlike things. It has more angels in its skies because it has more churches and chapels on earth, more holy tombs to defend, more sacred dust mixed with its fields, with its grass, with the waters which permeate the land and nourish it. Oh God, we have suffered in our bodies, in our goods; we still suffer in our memories. Nevertheless, make our memories last. Grant that France also will not forget. Make her more worthy to lead nations. Give her back her lost sister, who may also return. Amen!"
"As the Easter bells return."
"Amen!" said the voices of two men.
"Amen! Amen!"
The others wept in silence. There was only the hollow sound of one single bell in the cold air that came up from the depths. The ringers had left the towers, already lost in the shadow that covered the plain.
Above the high platform in the garden the darkened clouds, flying to the west, left a border of purple on the crest of the mountains. Stars came out, in the black depths of the night, as the first primroses were coming out, at the same time under the pines. Only three persons were left on the terrace. The others had gone when the secret of their Alsatian souls had been revealed.
The old priest, seeing before him two young people close to each other, and Odile's head near Jean's shoulder, asked:
"Betrothed?"
"Alas!" answered Jean. "Wish that it may become true."
"I do wish it. What you just said is right. I wish that you, who are young, may see Alsace once more French."
He went away.
"Good-bye," said Odile quickly, "Good-bye, Jean!"
She held out her hand, and went away without turning to look back. Jean remained near the terrace wall.
The night birds—owls, sea-eagles, eagle-owls, and horned owls—mingling their cries, flew from wood to wood. For a quarter of an hour, the time of their passage, which they made in sweeping flights, their calls resounded over the mountain sides. Then complete silence settled down. Peace arose with the perfumes of the sleeping forests.
CHAPTER VIII
AT CAROLIS
At the beginning of the rue de Zurich, facing the Quay des Bateliers, one of the relics of old Strasburg, there is a narrow house, much lower than its neighbours, with a roof of two stories like a Chinese pagoda. The front, formerly adorned with the pattern of its painted beams, is now covered with whitewash, on which is this inscription:
"JEAN, CALLED CAROLIS, WEINSTUBE."
This wine-shop, whose exterior has nothing about it to arouse the curiosity of the passer-by, is not a nondescript place, nor is it an ordinary public-house. The place is historical. The inhabitants of Zurich came here in 1576, or, at least, the best shots among them, to take part in the grand shooting competition to which Strasburg had summoned the Empire and the confederated States. They had brought with them a pot of boiled millet, and scarcely were they out of the boat than they made the Strasburg people understand that the pudding was still warm.
"We could easily come to your aid, neighbours," they said; "by the Rhine and the Ill, the distance between our cities is very short." The word given in 1576 was kept in 1870, as is testified to by an engraved inscription just near by on the Zurich Fountain. At the moment when besieged Strasburg was in the most distressed condition the people of Zurich intervened, and obtained from General Werder permission to allow the old men and children to leave the city. This house was noted for something else—thanks to the Southerner who in 1860 established a shop there for wines of the South.
Jean, called Carolis, bore a remarkable resemblance to Gambetta. He knew him, and copied his gestures and his clothes, the cut of his beard, and the sound of his voice. His trade was fairly flourishing before the war, but he became prosperous in the years that followed. And a certain number of German officers got into the habit of coming there to drink the black wines of Narbonne, Cette, and Montpellier.
One morning towards the end of April, Jean Oberlé, who was going to see the Chief of the Administration of Forests, whom he had long promised to visit, was passing along the quay, when a woman of about forty, clothed in black, evidently an Alsatian, came out of the café, crossed the road, and, apologising, said:
"Pardon me, monsieur, but will you kindly come in? One of your friends is asking for you."
"Who is it?" asked Jean, astonished.
"The youngest officer there."
She pointed with her finger to the confused mass of shadow moving under the lowered linen blind, and which he saw to be the inside of the room with its groups of customers.
Jean, after hesitating for a moment, followed her, and was surprised—for not belonging to Strasburg, he was ignorant of the reputation and also of the customers of this wine-shop—at finding there six officers, three of whom were Hussars, seated at tables covered with red and blue check cloths, talking loudly, smoking, and drinking Carolis wine.
The first glance he gave, on coming from the light into the semi-darkness, showed him that the room was small—there were only four tables—and decorated with allegorical pictures in the German style; he saw a monkey, a cat, a pack of cards, a packet of cigarettes, but above all there was a semi-circular mirror filling a recess in the left wall and round which hung framed photographs of the present or past habitués of the house. Jean looked again to see who could have sent for him, when a very young cavalryman got up. This simple movement displayed the beauty of his slender form in its sky-blue tunic with gold lace. He rose from the back of the room to the left. Near him, and round the same table, a captain and a commandant remained seated.
The three officers must have returned from a long march; they were covered with dust, their foreheads were wet with perspiration, their features were drawn, and the veins stood out on their temples. The youngest had even brought back from this country ride a branch of hawthorn, which he had slipped under his flat epaulet, on the side near the heart.
The Alsatian recognised Lieutenant Wilhelm von Farnow, a Prussian, three years older than himself, whom he had met before during his first year's law course in Munich, where Farnow was then sub-lieutenant in a regiment of Bavarian Uhlans. Since then he had not seen him. He only knew that in consequence of an altercation between Bavarian and Prussian officers in the regimental casino, some of the officers implicated had been removed, and that his old comrade was among their number.
No; doubt was not possible. It was Farnow, with the same elegant, haughty way of offering his hand, the same fair, beardless face, too thick-set and too flat, with thick lips, an impertinent little nose, slightly turned up, and fine eyes of steel-blue—a hard blue where dwelt the pride of youth, of command, of a bold and disputatious temper. His body gave promise of developing into that of a solid and massive cuirassier later on. But at present he was still thin, and so well-proportioned, so agile, so evidently inured to warlike exercises, so vigorous, there was such disciplined precision in all his movements, that de Farnow, although he had not a handsome face, had gained a reputation for good looks, so much so that in Munich one would call him sometimes "Beauty" Farnow, and sometimes "Death's Head" Farnow. With reddish moustaches, bushy brows, and a helmet accentuating the shadow over his eyes, he would have been terrifying. But, though scarcely twenty-seven, he gave the impression of a warlike being, violent, conqueror of himself, disciplined even to his acquired and perfectly polished manners.
Jean Oberlé remarked that when he rose Farnow spoke to the commandant, his immediate neighbour, a robust soldier with slow, sure eyes. He was explaining something, and the other approved, with an inclination of his head, at the moment when the lieutenant made the introduction.
"Will the commandant permit me to present to him my comrade, Jean Oberlé, son of the factory owner of Alsheim?"
"Certainly, sir. An intelligent Alsatian—very well known."
Jean's introduction to the captain, a man still young, with straight features, evidently cultured, and no less evidently of a haughty temper, led to the same flattering expressions regarding the factory owner at Alsheim: "Yes, truly Monsieur Oberlé is well known—an enlightened mind. I have had the pleasure of seeing him—kindly remember me to him."
Jean felt humiliated by the marked attentions of these two officers. He had the impression that he was the object of exceptional attention, he, a civilian, a citizen; he, an Alsatian; he, who from every point of view should have been looked upon by these lofty personages as their inferior. "What my father has done then is of great importance," he thought, "that they should requite him in this fashion. Neither his fortune, nor his style of living, nor his conversation, can justify this. He does not live at Strasburg, nor has he filled any office."
A sign from the commandant almost at once put an end to the awkward situation, and gave the young men liberty to go and sit at the table farthest away from the window at the back of the room.
"It is quite by chance that you meet me here," said Farnow, in a slightly sarcastic tone, which revealed the pride of the Prussian lieutenant.
"My regiment is hardly ever here—it is mostly infantry officers who come here.... I generally go to the 'Germania'—but we have just been reconnoitring, as you see, and my commandant was very hot.... You will pardon me, my dear Oberlé, for having sent for you."
"On the contrary, it was very friendly. You could hardly leave your chiefs."
"And I wanted to renew my acquaintance with you. I have not seen you for so long, not since Munich days. You had just gone past the corner of the house over there, when I said to the servant, 'That is one of my friends! Run and fetch M. Oberlé here!'"
"And truly, you see me very happy, Farnow."
The two young men looked at each other with the curiosity of two beings who try to fill in the unknown years. "What sort of a life has he led? What does he think of me? How far can I trust him?"
"I fancy," said Farnow, "that you have arrived quite recently?"
"Just so; I came at the end of February."
"They told me that you were going to commence your military service in October in the Hussars."
"Do you know, Oberlé, that I had the honour of meeting your father in society last winter? I asked to be introduced."
"Excuse me, I am still such a new-comer...."
Conversation languished at this moment at Carolis, and Jean noticed that the two blue tunics had turned towards him, and that the commandant and the captain were both examining the face of the future volunteer.
They finished drinking the wine like Bordeaux they had ordered in a sealed bottle.
"I should much like to see more of you," said Farnow, lowering his voice. "I hope we shall be able to meet."
"Do you know Alsheim?"
"Yes; I've been through it several times during manœuvres."
The lieutenant was visibly trying to find out how far he could go.
He was in an annexed country; many incidents of daily life had taught him that. He did not care about renewing the experience. He was feeling his way. Should he promise a call? He did not know yet. And this uncertainty, so contrary to his energetic nature; this caution, so wounding to his pride—made him hold up his head as if he were going to pick up a challenge.
Jean, on his side, was disturbed. This simple thing, the receiving a former comrade, seemed to him now a delicate problem to solve. Personally he should have inclined towards the affirmative. But neither Madame Oberlé nor the grandfather would admit any exception to the rule so strictly kept up to now—that no Germans, except quick and commonplace business men, should be admitted to the house of the old protesting deputy. They would never consent. But it was hard for Jean to show himself less tolerant in Strasburg than he had been in Munich, and at the the first meeting on Alsatian ground to offend the young officer who had come to him with hand outstretched. He tried at least to put a note of cordiality into his answer:
"I will come and see you, dear Farnow, with pleasure."
The German understood, frowned, and was silent. Evidently others had refused even to visit him. He did not meet in Oberlé that systematic and complete hostility. His anger did not last, or he did not show it. He reached out his slender hand, the wrist of which looked like a bundle of steel threads covered with skin, and with the tips of his fingers he touched the hilt of his sword, which had not left his side.
"I shall be charmed," he said at last.
He ordered a bottle of Burgundy, and having filled Jean's glass and his own, drank.
"To your return to Alsheim!" he said.
Then, drinking it in a draught, he placed the glass upon the table.
"I am really very pleased to see you again. I live pretty well alone, and you know my tastes outside my profession, which I adore, above which I place nothing whatever, nothing if it be not God, who is the great judge of it. I love hunting best—I think man is made to move in large spaces, to strengthen his power and his dominion over the beasts, when he has not the occasion to do it over his kind. For me there is no pleasure to equal it. Apropos of this, it seems that M. Oberlé has been ousted from his hunting rights?"
"Yes," said Jean; "he has given them up almost entirely——"
"Would you like to have a turn at my place? I have rented some shooting near Haguenau, half wood and half plain; I have roebuck which come from the forest—the ancient Sacred Forest; I have hares and pheasants, and snipe at the time of passage; and if you like glowworms, I have some who fly under the pine-trees and shine like the lances of my Hussars."
The conversation ran on for a while on this subject. Then Farnow finished the bottle of Carolis wine with Jean, and lifting the hawthorn which beflowered his epaulet and letting it drop to the ground, said:
"If you will allow me, Oberlé, I will go some way with you. What direction do you take?"
"Towards the University!"
"That is my way."
The two young men got up together. They were nearly of the same height and figure; both were of an energetic type, although different in expression—Oberlé, careful to relax all that was too serious in his face when at rest; Farnow exaggerating the harshness of his whole personality. The young lieutenant drew down his tunic to take out the creases, took from a chair his flat cap decorated in front with a cockade of the Prussian colours, and walking first with a studied stiffness, half turned towards the table where the commandant and the captain were sitting, saluted them with an almost invisible and several times repeated inclination of the body. The respectful good-fellowship of a short time ago was not now in place. The two chiefs from habit inspected this lieutenant leaving Carolis. Gentlemen themselves, very jealous of the honour of their corps, having learned by heart all the articles of the code of the perfect officer, they interested themselves in all that had to do with the conduct, the attitude, the dress, and the speech of a subordinate, who is the object of public criticism. The examination must have been favourable to Farnow. With a friendly and protective movement of his hand, the commandant dismissed him.
As soon as they were in the street Farnow asked:
"Well, they were perfect, were they not?"
"Yes."
"How you say that? Did you not find them kindly? You ought to see them in the service."
"On the contrary," interrupted Jean, "they were too amiable. I see every day more and more that my father must have humiliated himself very much to be so honoured in high places. And that wounds me, Farnow."
The other looked serious, and said:
"Franzosenkopf! What a strange character this nation has—who cannot accept their position as the conquered, and think themselves dishonoured if Germans make advances to them!"
"It is because they do nothing gratuitously," said Oberlé.
Farnow was not displeased at the word. It seemed to him a kind of homage to the hard, utilitarian temperamant of his race. Besides, the young lieutenant would not enter into a discussion where he knew that friendships ran the risk of being spoilt. He greeted a young woman, who came towards him, and followed her with his eyes.
"That is the wife of Captain von Holtzberg. Pretty, isn't she?"
Then pointing to the left, beyond the bridge to the quarters of the old city, illumined by the vaporous light of this spring morning, he added, as if the two thoughts were united naturally in his mind:
"I like this old-world Strasburg. How feudal it is!"
Above the river, whose waters were soiled by works and sewers, rose the long sloping roofs, with their high dormer windows, the tiles of all shades of red—the mediæval purple of Strasburg, mended, patched, and spotted, and washed, violet in places, nearly yellow in others adjoining, rose-colour on certain slopes, orange-coloured in some lights, royally beautiful everywhere and stretched out like a marvellous Eastern carpet of soft faded silks round the cathedral. The cathedral itself, built in red stone, viewed from this point, seemed to have been, and still to be, the pattern which had decided the colour of all the rest; it was the ornament, the glory, and the centre of all. A stork, with open wings, cleaving the air with wide strokes, as an oarsman cleaves water, his feet horizontally prolonging his body and acting as rudder, his bill a little raised like a prow, an heraldic bird, was flying through the blue, faithful to Strasburg, like all its ancient race, protected, sacred like the place, and always returning to the same nests above the same chimney stacks.
Jean and Farnow saw it inclining towards the cathedral spire, and seen from behind, foreshortened, it looked like some bird beating the air with its bow of feathers, and then it disappeared.
"These are the inhabitants," said Farnow, "whom neither the smoke of our factories, nor the tramways, nor the railways, nor the new palaces, nor the new order of things can astonish."
"They have always been German," said Jean with a smile. "The storks have always worn your colours—white belly, red bill, black wings."
"So they have," said the officer, laughing.
He went on his way along the quays, and almost immediately stopped laughing. Before him, coming from the direction of the new part of the town, an artillery soldier was leading two horses, or rather he was being led by them. He was drunk. Walking between the two brown horses, holding the reins in his raised hands, he went on stumbling, knocking against the shoulder of one or the other of the beasts, and to save himself from falling, dragged from time to time at one of them, which resisted and moved away.
"What is this?" growled Farnow—"a drunken soldier at this time of day!"
"A little too much malt spirit," said Oberlé. "He is not merry in drink."
Farnow did not answer. Frowning, he watched the man who was approaching, and who was only about ten yards away.
At this distance, according to regimental rules, the man ought to have walked in step and turned his head in the direction of his superior officer. Not only had he forgotten all his instruction and continued to roll painfully between the horses; but at the moment when he had to pass Farnow he murmured something, no doubt an insult.
That was too much. The lieutenant's shoulders shook with anger for a moment, and then he marched straight to the soldier, whose frightened horses backed. The officer felt humiliated for Germany.
"Halt!" he cried. "Stand straight!"
The soldier looked at him, stupefied, made an effort, and succeeded in standing still and nearly erect.
"Your name?"
The soldier told his name.
"You will have your punishment at the barracks, you brute! But in expectation of better things, take this on account, for dishonouring the uniform as you have!"
Saying this, he stretched his right arm out at full length, and with his gloved hand, hard as steel, he hit the man on the face. The blood ran out at the corner of his mouth; he squared his shoulders; he drew up his arms as if about to box. The soldier must have been terribly tempted to retaliate. Jean saw the wandering eyes of the drunkard when he was thus thrust backwards, turn right round in their sockets with pain and rage. Then they looked down on the pavement, overcome by a confused and terrifying remembrance of the power of the officer.
"Now march!" cried Farnow. "And do not stumble!"
He was in the middle of the quay—erect, booted, a head higher than his victim, as it were surrounded by sunlight, with flashing eyes, the lower lids and the corners of his lips wrinkled by anger; and those who called him "Death's Head" must have caught a glimpse of him like that.
The loafers who had hurried up to witness the scene and formed a circle, stood aside at the order of the lieutenant, and let the soldier pass through, who was trying not to pull the reins too hard. Then, as a certain number of them remained gathered together, either silent or merely muttering their opinion, Farnow, turning on his heels and crossing his arms, looked at them one after the other. The little bank clerk went by first, adjusting his eyeglasses; then the milk-woman with her copper pot on her hip passed on by herself, shrugged her shoulders, ogling Farnow; then the butcher who had come from the neighbouring shop; then two boatmen who tried to look as if they did not care, although both had flushed faces; then the urchins who at first wanted to cry, and who now nudged each other and went off laughing. The officer drew near to his companion, who had remained on the left near the canal.
"I think you went a little too far," said Oberlé. "What you have just done is forbidden by the Emperor's express orders. You risk a reprimand."
"That is the only way to treat those brutes!" said Farnow, his eyes still blazing. "Besides, believe me, he has already passed on my blow to his horses, and to-morrow he will have forgotten all about it."
The two young men walked side by side to the University gardens, without speaking to each other, thinking over what had just happened. Farnow put on a new pair of gloves to replace the others, probably soiled by the soldier's cheek. He bent towards Jean, saying gravely and with evident conviction:
"You were very young when I met you, my dear fellow. We shall have to tell each other a few things before we shall know exactly our respective opinions on many points.
"But I am astonished that you have not yet perceived, you who have stayed so long in all the German provinces, that we were born to conquer the world, and that conquerors are never gentle men, nor ever perfectly just."
He added, after a few steps:
"I should be vexed if I have hurt your feelings, Oberlé; but I cannot hide from you that I do not regret what I did. Only understand that behind my anger there is discipline, the inviolable prestige and dignity of the army of which I am a unit. Do not report the incident to your people, dear fellow, without also adding the excuse for it. That would mean to betray a friend. Well, good-bye."
He held out his hand. His blue eyes lost for the moment something of their haughty indifference.
"Good-bye, Oberlé! Here is the door of your Clerk of the Forests."
CHAPTER IX
THE MEETING
Jean came back in fairly good time to the Strasburg station and took the train to Obernai, where he had left his bicycle. While going from Obernai to Alsheim he saw in the meadows through which the Dachs ran, near Bernhardsweiler, a second stork—motionless on one leg.
This was the first thing he told Lucienne, whom he met under the trees in the park. She was reading, and wore a grey linen dress with lace on the bodice. When she heard the noise of the bicycle on the gravel she lifted her intelligent eyes, smiling.
"My dear, how I have missed you. What in the world makes you go away so constantly?"
"I make discoveries, dear sister. First, I have seen two storks, arriving on the sacred day—April 23—punctual as lawyers."
A slight pout of her red lips showed that the news did not interest her much.
"Then?"
"I spent three hours in the offices of the Forest Conservators, where I learned that——"
"You can tell all that to father," she interrupted. "I see so much wood here, living and dead, that I have no wish to occupy my mind with it unnecessarily. Tell me some Strasburg news, or about some costumes, or some conversation you had with some one in society."
"That is true," said the young man, laughing. "I did meet some one."
"Interesting?"
"Yes; an old acquaintance of Munich, a lieutenant in the Hussars."
"Lieutenant von Farnow?"
"Yes, the very man—Lieutenant Wilhelm von Farnow, lieutenant in the 9th Rhenish Hussars. What is the matter?"
They were halfway down the avenue, hidden by a clump of shrubs. Lucienne, bold and provoking as ever, crossed her arms and said, in a quieter tone of voice:
"Only this—he loves me."
"He?"
"And I love him!"
Jean stepped away from his sister in order to see her better.
"It is not possible!"
"And why not?"
"Why, Lucienne, because he is a German, an officer—a Prussian!"
There was silence; the blow had struck home. Jean, quite pale, went on:
"You must also know that he is a Protestant."
She flung her book on the seat and, holding up her head, quivering all over at the protest:
"Do you imagine I have not thought it all over? I know all you can possibly say. I know that the people in the midst of whom we live in Alsace here, intolerant and narrow-minded as they are, will not hesitate to say what they think on the subject. Yes; they will make a fuss, they will blame me and pity me and try to make me give way. And you; are you not beginning the game? But I warn you that arguments are quite useless—all your arguments. I love him. It is not to be done, it is done. I have only one wish, and that is to know if you are on my side or against me. For I shall not alter my mind."
"Oh, my God! my God!" cried Jean, hiding his face in his hands.
"I never thought it could hurt you so much. I do not understand. Do you share their stupid hatred? Tell me. I am putting a strong control on my feelings that I may talk to you. Tell me then. Speak. You are paler than I am—I, whom this alone concerns."
She caught hold of his hands and uncovered his face. And Jean gazed at her strangely for a moment as do those whose look does not as yet correspond with their thoughts.
Then he said:
"You are mistaken; we are both concerned, Lucienne!"
"Why?"
"We are one against the other, because I, too, must tell you that I love—I love Odile Bastian!"
She was terrified at what she foresaw in connection with this name; she was touched at the same time because the argument had reference to love, and was a confidence. Her irritation passed at once. She put her head on her brother's shoulder. The curls of her fair hair intermixed with auburn lay ruffled and disordered against Jean's neck.
"Poor, dear Jean," she murmured. "Fate pursues us. Odile Bastian and the other. Two love affairs which exclude each other! Oh! my poor dear, it is the drama of our family perpetuating itself through us!" She straightened herself, thinking she heard a step, and taking her brother's arm went on nervously: "We cannot talk here, but we must talk about other than merely surface things. If father suddenly came across us, or mamma, who is working in the drawing-room at heaven knows what everlasting piece of embroidery. Ah, my dear, when I think that only a few steps away from her we are exchanging such secrets as these, which she little suspects! But first we must think of ourselves, must we not? Ourselves...!" For a moment she thought of returning to the house, and of going up to her room with Jean. Then she decided on a better place of refuge. "Come into the fields, there no one will disturb us."
Arm-in-arm, hastening their steps, speaking to each other in low tones and short sentences, they went through the gate, passed the end of the enclosure, and to the right of the road, which was higher than the surrounding land; they went down a sloping path, which could be seen like a grey ribbon winding its seemingly endless way through the young corn. Already each of them, after the first moment of surprise, of dejection, and of real pain caused by the thought of what the other would suffer, had come back to thoughts of self.
"Perhaps we are wrong to worry ourselves," said Lucienne, entering the path. "Is it certain that our plans are irreconcilable?"
"Yes. Odile Bastian's mother will never agree to her daughter becoming the sister-in-law of a German officer."
"And how do you know that this officer would not perhaps prefer marrying into a family a little less behind the times than ours?" said Lucienne, hurt. "Your plan may also injure mine."
"Pardon me; I know Farnow—nothing will stop him."
"To tell the truth, I think so too!" said the young girl, looking up, and blushing with pride.
"He is one of those who are never in the wrong."
"Exactly so."
"You share his ambitions."
"I flatter myself that I do."
"You can rest assured then: he will have no hesitation. The scruples will come from the Bastian side, who are the souls of honour...."
"Ah! if he heard you," said Lucienne, letting go her brother's arm, "he would fight you."
"What would that prove?"
"That he felt your insult as I felt it myself, Jean. For Lieutenant von Farnow is a man of honour!"
"Yes, in his way—which is not our way."
"Very good! Very noble!"
"Rather feudal, this nobility of theirs. They have not had the time to have that of a later date. But after all it does not matter. I am not in a mood for discussion. I suffer too much. All I wish to say is that when I ask for Odile's hand I shall be refused. I foresee it, I am sure of it; and that von Farnow will not understand why, and if he did understand he would not withdraw, he would never think of sacrificing himself. In speaking like this, I am not slandering him. I simply understand him."
They walked on, enveloped in an atmosphere of light and warmth, which they did not enjoy, between long strips of young corn, smiling unnoticed around them. In the plain, some labourers seeing them pass side by side, walking together, envied them. Lucienne could not deny that her brother's forebodings were reasonable. Yes, it must be so, judging from what she herself knew of Lieutenant von Farnow and the Bastians. In any other circumstance she would have pitied her brother, but personal interest spoke louder than pity. She felt a kind of disturbed joy when she heard Jean acknowledge his fears. She felt encouraged not to be generous, because she felt he was anxious. Not being able to pity him, she at any rate drew near to him, and talked to him about herself.
"If we had lived together longer, Jean," she said, "you would have known my ideas on marriage, and I should astonish you less to-day. I had made up my mind to marry only a very rich man. I dislike the fear of what to-morrow may bring; I want certainty and to lead...."
"The conditions are fulfilled," said Jean, with bitterness. "Farnow has a vast property in Silesia. But at the same time he is also lieutenant in the 9th regiment of Rhenish Hussars!"
"Well!"
"Officer in an army against which your father has fought, your uncle has fought, and all your relations, every one old enough to carry arms."
"Quite right. And I would not have asked anything better than to marry an Alsatian. Perhaps I even wished to do so without saying anything about it. But I did not find what I wished. Nearly all who had name, fortune, or influence have chosen France; that is to say, they all left Alsace after the war. They called it patriotism. Truly, words can serve every use. Who remain? You can easily count the young people of Alsatian origin belonging to wealthy families, and who could have aspired to the hand of Lucienne Oberlé."
She went on more excitedly:
"But they did not ask for me; and they will not ask for me, my dear! That is what you have never understood. They kept away, they and their parents, because father....
"They have put us and our family under an interdict. I am, in consequence, one of those they do not marry. Owing to their intolerance, the narrowness of their conception of life, I am condemned by them. They call me the 'beautiful Lucienne Oberlé,' but none of those who like to look at me, and greet me with affected respect would dare to defy his people and make me his wife. I have not had to choose; you cannot reproach me on that score. The situation is such that, willing or not, I shall not be asked in marriage by an Alsatian. It is not my fault. I knew what I was doing when I accepted Lieutenant von Farnow!"
"Accepted?"
"In the sense that I am bound—certainly. During last autumn, but especially for the last four months, Lieutenant von Farnow has paid me a great deal of attention."
"Then it was he on horseback, there on the road, the night I returned?"
"Yes."
"Was it he who recently came to visit the saw-mills with another officer?"
"Yes; but I have met him mostly in society at Strasburg, when father took me to balls and dinners.—You know that mamma, because of her poor health—but above all because of her hatred of everything German—generally avoids accompanying me. I met Lieutenant von Farnow constantly. He had every chance of talking to me.
"At last, when he came here, just lately, he asked father if I would allow him to pay me definite attentions. And this very morning, after lunch, I answered 'Yes.'"
"Then father consents?"
"Yes."
"The others?"
"Know nothing about it. And it will be terrible. Think of it. My mother, my grandfather, Uncle Ulrich! I hoped for your support, Jean, to help me overcome all these difficulties, and to help me also to heal all the wounds I am going to inflict. First of all, von Farnow must be introduced to mamma, who does not know him. Alsheim is quite impossible. We have been thinking of a meeting at some mutual friend's house in Strasburg. But if I have to consider you as one more enemy, what good is there in my telling you my plans?"
They stood still, Jean reflecting for a moment, as he faced the plain, which unrolled its strips of barley, and young corn, intermingling at the edges like the flow and counterflow of running water. Then, gathering his thoughts together and looking at Lucienne, who was waiting for his words, with raised face, suppliant, restless, and ardent.
"You cannot imagine how much I am suffering. You have destroyed all my joy!"
"My dear, I did not know about your love!"
"And I—I have not the courage to destroy yours...."
Lucienne threw her arms round his neck.
"How generous you are, Jean! How good you are!"
He put her away from him, and said sadly:
"Not so generous as you imagine, Lucienne, for that would be to show myself very weak. No; I do not approve of your decision. I have no confidence in your happiness...."
"But at least you will leave me free? You will not go against me? You will help me against mamma?"
"Yes, since you have gone so far, and since our father has given his consent, and since our mother's opposition might only cause still greater unhappiness...."
"You are right, Jean. Greater unhappiness, for father told me that——"
"Yes, I guess. He told you that he would crush all opposition, that he would leave our mother rather than give in. That is all very likely. He would do it. I shall not enter into any struggle with him. Only, I keep my liberty of action with regard to von Farnow."
"What do you mean by that?" she asked quickly.
"I wish," Jean replied, in a tone of authority, in which Lucienne felt her brother's invincible determination, "I wish to let him know exactly what I think. I shall find some means of having an explanation with him. If he persists, after that, in his desire to marry you, he will make no mistake, at least as to the difference of feeling and ideas which separate us."
"I do not mind that," answered Lucienne, reassured, and she smiled, being certain that von Farnow would stand the trial.
She turned towards Alsheim. A cry of victory was on her lips, but she restrained it. For some time she stood silent, breathing quickly, and seeking with her eyes and mind what she could say so that her happiness should not appear an insult to her brother.
Then she shook her head.
"Poor house," she said. "Now that I am going to leave it, it is becoming dear to me. I am persuaded that later on, when life in the garrison takes me away from Alsace, I shall have visions of Alsheim. I shall see it in imagination, just as it stands there."
In the midst of its girdle of orchards were massed together the red roofs of the village. And both village and trees formed an island among the corn and April clover. Little birds, gilded by the sunshine, were flying over Alsheim. The house of the Oberlés at this distance seemed only to be one of many. There was so much sweetness in all things that one might have imagined life itself sweet.
Lucienne gave herself up to this appreciation of beauty, which only came to her as a consequence of her thoughts of love. Again she heard her own words, "I shall have visions of Alsheim just as it stands there." Then the undulating line of the Bastians' wood, which rose like a little blue cloud beyond the farthest gardens, reminded her of Jean's trouble. She only then realised that he had not answered her. She was moved, not enough to ask herself if she should renounce her happiness to make Jean happy, but up to the point of regretting, with a sort of tender violence, this conflict between their loves. She would have liked to soothe the pain she had caused, to comfort it with words, to put it to rest, and not to feel it so close to her and so alive.
"Jean, my brother Jean," she said, "I will requite you for all you are doing for me by helping you, by doing my very best for you. Who knows but by working together we may not be able to solve the problem?"
"No; it is beyond your power and mine."
"Odile loves you? Yes, of course she loves you. Then you will be very strong."
Jean made a movement of weariness.
"Do not try, Lucienne. Let us go back."
"I beseech you. Tell me at least how you came to love her? I can understand that. We said we would tell each other more than the names. You have only me to whom you can speak your mind without danger."
She was making herself out to be humble. She was even humiliated by her secret happiness. She renewed her request, was affectionate, and found the right words to describe Odile's stately beauty, and Jean spoke.
He did it because his need to confide to some one the hope which had been his—a hope which was still struggling not to die. He told of the Easter vigil at Sainte Odile and how he had met the young girl on Maundy Thursday in the cherry avenue. From that, each helping the other to recall happenings, to fix dates, to find words, they went back into the past, up to long-ago times when their parents were not at variance, or at least when the children were ignorant of their dissensions or did not perceive them, when in the holidays Lucienne, Odile, and Jean might believe that the two families, united in intimate friendship, would continue to live as important land-owners, respected and beloved by the village of Alsheim.
Lucienne did not realise that in calling up these pictures of the happy past she was not calming her brother's mind. He may have found pleasure in them for a moment, hoping to get away from the present, but a comparison was immediately drawn, and his revolt was only the more profound, arousing all the powers of his being, against his father, against his sister, against that false pity behind which Lucienne's incapability of sacrifice was hidden. Soon the young man gave up answering his sister. Alsheim was getting nearer, and was now a long outline broken here and there. In the calm evening the Oberlés' house raised its protecting roof amid the tops of the trees, still bare. When the park gates, closed each day when the workmen left, were opened for the two pedestrians, Jean slipped behind Lucienne, and, making her go on, said, in very low, ironical tones:
"Come, Baroness von Farnow, enter the house of the old protesting deputy, Philippe Oberlé."
She was going to make a retort, but an energetic footstep scrunched the gravel, a man turned into the avenue round a gigantic clump of beeches, and a resonant, imperious voice, which was singing in order to appear the voice of a happy man without any regrets, cried:
"There you are, my children! What a nice walk you must have had! From the waterfall by the works I saw you in the corn leaning towards each other like lovers."
M. Joseph Oberlé questioned the faces of his children, and saw that Lucienne at least was smiling.
"Did we have things to tell each other?" he went on. "Great secrets, perhaps?"
Lucienne, embarrassed by the nearness of the lodge, and still more so by the exasperation of her brother, answered quickly:
"Yes; I have spoken to Jean. He has understood. He will not oppose my wishes."
The father seized his son's hand. "I expected nothing else from him. I thank you, Jean. I shall not forget that."
In his left hand he took Lucienne's, and, like a happy father between his two children, he crossed the park by the long, winding carriage drive.
A woman behind the drawing-room window saw them come, and her pleasure in looking at this scene was not undiluted. She asked herself if the father and children had united against her.
"You know, dear Jean," said the father, holding up his head and, as it were, questioning the front of the château. "You know that I wish to spare susceptibilities and to prepare solutions, and not to insist on them until I am forced to do so. We are invited to the Brausigs'——"
"Ah! is it already settled?"
"Yes, to a dinner, to a fairly large evening party—not too many people. I think that would be a very good opportunity to present Lieutenant von Farnow to your mother. I shall only speak of this to your mother later on. And in order not to bias any of her impressions—you know how timid she is—so that she does not meet my look when she talks to this young man, I shall refuse for myself—I shall confide Lucienne's future to you. All my dream is to make this dear one happy. Not a word to my father. He will be the last to learn what does not really concern him but secondarily."