The great empty space by the flight of steps had not seen for a long time such a united group walk on the well-rolled gravel.
In the drawing-room, keeping herself a little back, trying to make her mind easy and not succeeding, Madame Oberlé had left off working. The embroidery was on the floor.
Jean was thinking.
"I shall thus assist at the interview, and I shall take mamma there, who will suspect nothing. What a part to play to avoid greater evils! Happily, she will forgive me one day when she knows everything."
Late that night, kissing her son, Madame Oberlé said:
"Your father insists upon my accepting the Brausigs' invitation. Are you going, my darling?"
"Yes, mamma."
"Then I shall also go."
CHAPTER X
THE DINNER AT THE BRAUSIGS'
At seven o'clock the guests of the Geheimrath Brausig were gathered together in the blue drawing-room—with its plush and gilded wood—which that official had taken with him to the different towns he had lived in. The Geheimrath was a Saxon of excellent education, and of amiable though somewhat fawning manners. He seemed always to bend in any direction in which he was touched. But the frame-work was solid; and, on the contrary, he was a man whose ideas were unchangeable. He was tall, ruddy, nearly blind, and wore his hair long, and his red beard streaked with white, he wore short. He did not wear spectacles, because his eyes, of a pale agate colour, were neither shortsighted nor longsighted, but were worn out and almost dead. He was a great talker. His speciality was to reconcile the most opposite opinions. In his offices, in his relations with his inferiors one saw the real basis of his character. Herr Brausig had an Imperial spirit. He never allowed private people to be in the right. The words "Public interest" seemed to him to answer all arguments. In the official world they talked about raising him to the nobility. He repeated this. His wife was fifty years old, had the remains of beauty and an imposing figure; she had received the officials of eight German towns before coming to live in Strasburg. At her entertainments she gave all her attention to supervising the servants, and her impatience at the countless annoyances connected with their service, which she tried to hide, did not allow her to reply to her neighbours except in sentences absolutely devoid of interest.
The guests formed a mixture of races and professions which one would not so easily come across in any other German town. There are so many imported elements in the Strasburg of to-day! They were fourteen in number, the dining-room could seat sixteen with a little over two feet of table for each person, such space being an essential in the eyes of the Geheimrath. He had in his house, around him—and he dominated them with his sad, insipid head—some protégés, people recommended to him, or friends gathered together from various parts of the empire: two Prussian students from the University of Strasburg, then two young Alsatian artists, two painters who had been working for a year at the decoration of a church; these were the unimportant guests, to which we must add the two Oberlés, brother and sister, and even the mother, who was looked upon in the official world as a person of limited intellect. The guests of note were Professor Knäpple, from Mecklenburg, cultured and studious, whose erudition consisted chiefly of minutiæ, and the author of an excellent work on the socialism of Plato. He was the husband of a pretty wife, round and pink, who seemed fairer and pinker by the side of her dark husband, with his black beard curling like an Assyrian's. The Professor of Æsthetics, Baron von Fincken from Baden—who shaved his cheeks and chin, so that the scars gained in the duels of his student days might be better seen, was of a slender, nervous build; his head was of the energetic type, his nose was turned up and showing the cartilage very plainly; ardent, passionate, and very anti-French, and yet he looked more like a Frenchman than any one present, except Jean Oberlé. There was no Madame von Fincken. But there was beautiful Madame Rosenblatt, the woman who was more envied, sought after, looked up to, than any other woman in the German society of Strasburg, even in the military world, because of her beauty and intelligence. She came from Rhenish Prussia, as did also her husband, the great iron-master, Karl Rosenblatt, multi-millionaire, a man of sanguine temperament, and at the same time methodical and silent, and one said that he was bold and cold and calculating in business.
This party was like all the parties that the Geheimrath gave; there was no homogeneity. The official himself called that conciliating the different elements of the country. He also spoke of the "neutral ground" of his house and of the "open tribunal," for each and every opinion. But many Alsatians did not trust this eclecticism and this liberty. Some maintained that Herr Brausig was simply playing a part, and that whatever was said in his house was always known in higher spheres.
Madame Oberlé and her children were the last to arrive at the Geheimrath. The German guests welcomed Lucienne, who was intimate with them already. They were polite to the mother, because they knew she only went into Government society under constraint. Wilhelm von Farnow, introduced by Madame Brausig, who alone knew about the officer's plans, bowed ceremoniously to the mother and the young girl, drew himself up erect, stood stiffly, then returned at once to the group of men standing near the mirror.
A servant announced that dinner was served. There was a movement among the black coats, and the guests entered the large room, decorated as at the Oberlés' house with evident predilection. But the taste was not the same. The vaulted bays with two mullions, decorated with rose windows in the pointed arch, and filled with stained-glass, of which at this time only the lead-work was to be seen; the sideboards with torso pillars with sculptured panels; the wainscoting rising to the ceiling and ending in little spires; the ceiling itself divided into numerous sunk panels, and in the carving of which electric lamps shone like fire blossoms: the whole decoration recalled to mind Gothic art.
Jean, who came in one of the last in the procession of diners, gave his arm to pretty Madame Knäpple, who had eyes only for the wonderfully made and equally wonderfully worn dress of Madame Rosenblatt. Professor Knäpple's little wife thought she saw that Jean Oberlé was noticing the same thing. So she said:
"The low neck is indecent. Don't you think so?"
"I find it irreproachable. I think that Madame Rosenblatt must go to Paris for her dresses."
"Yes; you have guessed rightly," answered the homely little woman. "When one has such a fortune one has often odd fancies, and but little patriotism."
The beginning of the meal was rather silent. Little by little the noise of different conversations rose. They began to drink. M. Rosenblatt had large bumpers of Rhine wine poured out for him. The two students in spectacles came back to Wolxheim wine, with as serious a mien as if it were some difficult passage in the classics. The voices grew louder. The servants' footsteps could no longer be heard on the parquet floor. General conversation began as the froth of intellects had been moved by the light and the wine. Professor Knäpple, who had a quiet voice, but a manner of pronouncing very clearly and distinctly, was heard above the hum of conversation, when he answered his neighbour, Madame Brausig:
"No; I do not understand that one should join the strong because one is strong. I have always been a liberal."
"You are alluding to the Transvaal perhaps," said the Geheimrath opposite, with a loud laugh, pleased at having guessed.
"Precisely, Herr Geheimrath. It is not political greatness to crush small nations."
"You find that extraordinary?"
"No; very ordinary. But I do say there is nothing to boast about in that."
"Have other nations acted differently?" asked Baron von Fincken.
He turned up his insolent nose. No one carried on the discussion, as if the argument were unanswerable. And the wave of general talk rolled on, intermingling and drowning the private conversations of which it consisted.
Madame Rosenblatt's musical voice broke the hum of talk. She was saying to little Madame Knäpple, placed on the other side of the table:
"Yes, madame, I assure you that the question has been discussed. Everything is possible, madame; however, I should not have thought that the Municipality of a German town could even discuss such an idea."
"Not so devoid of sense; don't you think so, Professor, you who lecture on æsthetics?"
Professor von Fincken, seated at the right hand of the beautiful Madame Rosenblatt, turned towards her, looked into the depths of her eyes, which remained like an unrippled lake, and said:
"What is it about, madame?"
"I told Madame Knäpple that in the Municipal Council the question had been raised of sending the Gobelin Tapestries which the town possesses, to Paris to be mended."
"That is right, madame, the noes have it."
"Why not to Berlin?" asked Madame Knäpple's pretty red mouth. "Do they happen to work so badly in Berlin?"
The Geheimrath found it time to "conciliate." "To make Gobelin tapestry, without doubt, Madame Rosenblatt, is right, and Paris is necessary; but to mend them! I think—it seems to me—that can be done in Germany."
"Send our tapestry to Paris!" expostulated Madame Knäpple. "How do they know if they would ever come back?"
"Oh!" one of the young painters at the end of the table answered gravely. "Oh, madame!"
"How! Oh! You are an Alsatian, sir," said the homely little woman, pricked by the interjection as if it had been the point of a needle. "But we—we have the right to be mistrustful."
She had gone too far. No one stood up for her verdict—general conversation stopped, and was replaced by flattering appreciations made by each guest on some quails in aspic which had just been served. Madame Knäpple herself came back to subjects with which she was more familiar, for she but rarely took any part in discussions when men were present. She turned towards her neighbour, von Farnow, which prevented her from seeing the elegant Madame Rosenblatt, and Madame Rosenblatt's beautiful dress, and the periwinkle-blue eyes of Madame Rosenblatt, and she undertook to explain to the young man how to do quails in aspic, and how to make "Cup" according to her recipe. However, for the second time their thoughts had been turned to the vanquished nation—and this thought continued to disturb their minds in a vague way, while champagne, German-labelled, was sparkling in the glasses.
Madame Brausig had only exchanged very unmeaning words with M. Rosenblatt, her neighbour on the right, and with Professor Knäpple, her neighbour on the left, who preferred talking to Madame Rosenblatt, and Baron von Fincken, her vis-à-vis, and sometimes with Jean Oberlé. It was she, however, who started a fresh discussion, without wishing to. And the conversation rose at once to a height it had not yet reached. The councillor's wife was speaking to M. Rosenblatt—looking all the time angrily at a servant who had just knocked against the chair of her most important guest, Madame Rosenblatt; she was speaking of a marriage between an Alsatian and a German from Hanover, the commandant of the regiment of Foot Artillery No. 10. The iron-master answered quite loudly, without knowing that he was sitting beside the mother of a young girl sought after by an officer:
"The children will be good Germans. Such marriages are very rare, and I regret it, because they add immensely to the Germanisation of this obstinate country."
Baron von Fincken emptied his champagne glass at a draught and, placing it on the table, said:
"All means are good, because the end is good."
"Certainly," said M. Rosenblatt.
Jean Oberlé was the best known of the three Alsatians present, and the best qualified to make a reply, and yet the most disqualified, it seemed to him, to give his opinion, because of the discussions which this question had caused in his own house. He saw that Baron von Fincken had looked at him as he spoke, that Herr Rosenblatt was staring at him, that Professor Knäpple cast a glance at his left-hand neighbour, that Rosenblatt smiled with the air of one who would say "Is this little fellow capable of defending his nation? Will he answer to the spur? Let us see!"
The young man answered, choosing his adversary, and, turning towards the Baron, "On the contrary, I think that the Germanisation of Alsace is a bad and clumsy action."
At the same time his face grew harder and the green in his eyes vibrated, like the green of the forests when the wind blows the leaves of the trees the wrong way.
The Professor of Æsthetics looked like a man of the sword.
"Why bad, if you please? Do you look upon the conquest as unpleasant? This is the sequel of that? Do you think so, really? But say so, then!"
In the silence of all present the answer of Jean Oberlé fell clear and distinct.
"Yes."
"You dare, sir!"
"Allow me," said the Geheimrath Brausig, stretching out his hand as if to bless them. "Here we are all good Germans, my dear baron! You have no right to suspect the patriotism of our young friend, who is only speaking from a historical point of view!"
Madame Oberlé and Lucienne signed to Jean.
"Be quiet! be quiet!"
But Baron von Fincken saw nothing and heard nothing. The bitter passion of which his face was the symbol was let loose. He half rose, and leaning forward, with his head over the table, he said:
"France is pretty! united! powerful and moral!"
Little Madame Knäpple went on:
"Above all, moral!"
Voices high, low, ironical, and irritated rang out confusedly.
"Deceivers, the French! Look at their novels and plays! France is decadent! A worn-out nation! What will she do against fifty-five millions of Germans?"
Jean let the avalanche pass; he looked now at Fincken, who was gesticulating, now at von Farnow, who was silent, with head held high and frowning brows.
"I believe France is very much calumniated," he said at last. "She may be governed badly. She may be weakened by dissensions; but since you attack her, I am delighted to tell you that I look upon her as a very great nation. Even you yourselves have no other opinion."
Veritable clamours arose. Ah! Oh! Indeed.
"Your very fury against her proves this. You have conquered her, but you have not left off envying her!"
"Do you read the commercial statistics, young man?" asked the resolute voice of Herr Rosenblatt.
"Her merchant navy is in the sixth rank!" whispered one of the students.
Professor Knäpple fixed his spectacles on his nose and very clearly articulated the following proposition:
"What you say, my dear Oberlé, is true as regards the past. Even to-day I think I can add, that if we had France to ourselves she would rapidly become a great country. We should know how to improve her."
"I beg you," added von Fincken insolently, "not to discuss an opinion which is not tenable."
"I beg you, in my turn," said Jean, "not to use in discussion arguments which are not conclusive, and do not really touch the question. One cannot judge a country simply and solely by its commerce, its navy, or its army."
"On what would you form your judgment then, sir?"
"On the soul of the country, sir. France has hers; that I know from history and from I know not what filial instinct I feel within me; and I firmly believe that there are many superior virtues, eminent qualities, generosity, disinterestedness, love of justice, taste, delicacy, and a certain flower of heroism, which are to be found more often than elsewhere in the past and in the present of this nation. I could give many proofs of it. Even if she were as weak as you assert, she holds treasures which are the honour of the world, which must be torn from her before she merits death, and by the side of these things the remainder seems very small. Your Germanisation, sir, is only destruction or diminution of those virtues or French qualities in the Alsatian soul. And that is why I maintain that it is bad!"
"Come now," said Fincken, "Alsace belongs naturally to Germany; she has made her come back. We make our repossession sure. Who would not do as much?"
"France!" answered Oberlé; "and that is why we love her. She might have taken the territory, but she would not have done violence to the soul. We belong to her by right of love."
The baron shrugged his shoulders.
"Go back then to her!"
Jean almost shouted, "Yes." The servants stopped to listen, in passing round the sweets. He went on:
"I find your attempt bad in itself, because it is a repression of consciences; but I also find that it is clumsy, even from a German point of view."
"Charming," said the little falsetto of Madame Knäpple. "You should have the interest to keep what originality and independence remains to us. It would be a useful example to Germany."
"Thanks," said a voice.
"And more and more useful," insisted the young man. "I was educated in Germany and I am sure of my contention. What struck me most, and shocked me, is the want of personality in Germans, their increasing forgetfulness of liberty, their effacement before the power of——"
"Take care, young man!" interrupted the Geheimrath quickly.
"I shall say before the power of Prussia, Geheimrath, which devours consciences, and which allows only three types of men to live, and these she has moulded from childhood—taxpayers, officials, and soldiers."
From the end of the table one of the students rose from his chair:
"The Roman Empire did the same, and it was the Roman Empire!"
A vibrating voice near him cried:
"Bravo!"
All the guests looked up. It was Wilhelm von Farnow, who had said only this one word since the beginning of the discussion. The violence of the debate had irritated him like a personal provocation. It had excited others. Herr Rosenblatt clenched his fists. Professor Knäpple muttered stormy sentences as he wiped his spectacles. His wife laughed nervously.
Then the beautiful Madame Rosenblatt, letting her pearl necklace run through her fingers, smiled, and looking pleasantly at the Alsatian, said:
"M. Oberlé has at least the courage of his opinions. No one could be more openly against us."
Jean felt far too irritated to answer pleasantly. He looked intently at the faces of Fincken, Rosenblatt, and Knäpple, at the student who was moving restlessly near Lucienne, and then leaning slightly towards Madame Rosenblatt, said:
"It is only through the women that the German nation can acquire the refinement which is wanting, madame. Germany has some accomplished women."
"Thank you for us!" answered three men's voices.
Madame Knäpple, furious at the compliment paid to Madame Rosenblatt, said:
"What is your scheme then, sir, for shaking off the yoke of Germany?"
"I have none."
"Then what do you ask for?"
"Nothing, madame; I suffer."
It was one of the Alsatian artists, the painter with the yellow beard, who looked like one of Giotto's pupils, who continued the conversation, and all the table turned towards him.
"I am not like M. Oberlé, who asks for nothing. He has only just come into the country after a long absence. If he had lived here some time, he would come to a different conclusion. We Alsatians of the new generation through our contact with three hundred thousand Germans have had the difference of our French culture from that of Germany conclusively demonstrated. We prefer our own; that is permitted? In exchange for the loyalty that we have shown to Germany, the taxes we pay, the military service we perform—we desire to remain Alsatians. And you determinedly refuse to understand. Our demand is that we should not be compelled to submit to exceptional laws, to this sort of state of siege which we have endured for thirty years. We demand that we should not be treated and governed as a country of the Empire—after the fashion of the Cameroons, Togoland, and New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, or the Isles of Providence, but like a European province of the German Empire. We shall not be satisfied until that day comes when we can feel we are in our own home here—Alsatians in Alsace, as the Bavarians are Bavarians in Bavaria. Whilst as things are, we are the conquered ones waiting on the good pleasure of a master. That is my demand!"
He spoke clearly, with apparent coldness, and his golden beard looked like the point of an arrow. His measured words succeeded in exciting their minds—and one could foresee the angry answer when Geheimrathin Brausig rose.
Her guests followed suit, and went into the blue drawing-room.
"You were absurd! What were you thinking about?" Lucienne asked in an undertone as she passed Jean.
"Perhaps what you said was imprudent," added Madame Oberlé, a moment after; "but you defended Alsace well—and I approve of you."
The Geheimrath was already turning to all sides, making use of the usual formula, which he murmured into the ears of Fincken, von Farnow, of Rosenblatt and Professor Knäpple, the two students, Jean, and the two Alsatian artists:
"Do me the pleasure of following me to the smoking-room!"
The smoking-room was a second drawing-room, separated from the first by plate-glass.
M. Brausig's guests were soon reunited there. Cigars and beer were brought. Smoke spirals went up, mingled together, and rose to the ceiling. M. Rosenblatt became a centre of conversation. The Professor Knäpple became another. The loud voices seemed to be wrangling, but were only explaining simple ideas with difficulty.
Alone, two men were talking of a serious subject and making but little noise. They were Jean Oberlé and von Farnow. Scarcely had the former lit his cigar when von Farnow touched Jean's arm and said:
"I want to have a little conversation with you apart."
To be more free, the young men seated themselves near the monumental mantelpiece, facing the bay which opened into the drawing-room, while the other smokers grouped round M. Rosenblatt and Baron von Fincken occupied the embrasure of the windows.
"You were violent to-night, my dear fellow," said von Farnow, with the haughty politeness which he often adopted; "I was tempted twenty times to answer you, but I preferred waiting. Were you not aiming at me a little?"
"Much of what I said was meant for you. I wanted to tell you very clearly what I was and to teach it to you before witnesses, so that it should be clearly understood that if you persevere in your projects, I have made no concessions to you, no advances; that I have nothing whatever to do with the marriage you are contemplating. I am not going to oppose my father's wishes, but I will not have my ideas confused with his."
"That is how I understood it. You have evidently learned that I have met your sister in society and that I love her?"
"Yes."
"Is that all you have to answer?"
A rush of blood suffused the German's cheeks.
"Explain yourself quickly!" he went on. "My family is of the nobility; do you recognise that?"
"Yes."
"Do you recognise that it is an honour for a woman to be sought by a German officer?"
"For any except an Alsatian woman. But although you do not understand that feeling, we are not like other people—we are the people of Alsace. I esteem you very much, Farnow, but your marriage with my sister will cruelly affect three persons among us—myself first of all."
"How? I ask you!"
They were obliged to speak in an undertone and to avoid any gestures, because of the presence of the Geheimrath's guests at the farther end of the room, who were observing the young men, and were trying to interpret their attitudes. All their emotion and their irritation was in their eyes and in the whispering of words which must only be heard by one person.
Through the sheet of plate-glass, Lucienne could see von Farnow, and getting up and crossing the drawing-room, or pretending to admire the basket of flowers which stood out from the frame-work, she looked inquiringly at the faces of the officer and of her brother.
"You are a man of heart, von Farnow. Think what our home in Alsheim will be when this fresh cause of dissension is added to the others?"
"I shall go away," said the officer; "I can exchange and leave Strasburg."
"The memory will remain with us. But that is not all. And from now on there is my mother, who will never consent...."
With a movement of his hand von Farnow showed that he brushed aside that objection.
"There is my grandfather, whom Alsace once elected to protest, and who cannot to-day give the lie to all his past life."
"I owe nothing to M. Philippe Oberlé," interrupted Farnow.
His voice became more imperious.
"I warn you that I never give up a resolution once taken. When M. von Kassewitz, the prefect of Strasburg, and the only near relation remaining to me, returns from the holiday he is going to take in a few days' time, he will go to Alsheim, to your house; he will ask for the hand of Mlle. Lucienne Oberlé for his nephew, and his request will be granted, because Mlle. Lucienne Oberlé wishes to accept me, because her father has already consented, and because I will have it so—I, Wilhelm von Farnow!"
"It remains to be seen whether you have done well...."
"According to my will: that is sufficient for me."
"How much pride there is in your love, Farnow!"
"It is in everything I do, Oberlé!"
"Do you think I am mistaken? My sister pleases you because she is pretty?"
"Yes."
"Intelligent?"
"Yes."
"But also because she is an Alsatian girl! Your pride has seen in her a victory to be gained. You are not ignorant of the fact that the women of Alsace are in the habit of refusing Germans. They are queens not easily accessible to your amorous ambitions, from the country girls, who at their gatherings refuse to dance with the emigrants, up to our sisters, who are not often seen in your drawing-rooms or on your arms. In the various regiments you will belong to you will boast that you have won Lucienne Oberlé. It will even be a good mark for you in high quarters? Will it not?"
"Perhaps," said Farnow with a sneer.
"Go on then, break, or finish breaking, three of us!"
They were getting more and more irritated, each trying to control himself.
The officer rose, threw away his cigar, and said haughtily:
"We are civilised barbarians—that is understood, less burdened than you with prejudices and pretensions to justice. That is why we shall conquer the world. But in the meantime, Oberlé, I am going to join your mother and talk to her, as amiably as an enemy possibly can. Will you accompany me?"
Jean Oberlé shook his head in the negative.
Farnow crossed the smoking-room, leaving Oberlé there.
Lucienne was anxiously awaiting him in the drawing-room. She saw him direct his steps towards Madame Oberlé, and, forcing himself to smile, place a chair near the arm-chair in which the fragile Alsatian lady in black was sitting. At the same time the Geheimrath called out, "Oberlé! You have smoked a cigar without even drinking one glass of beer. But that is a crime! Come. Professor Knäpple is explaining the measures the Government is taking to prevent the Russianising of the eastern provinces of Germany."
Late that night, a landau bore away to Alsheim three travellers; it had fetched them from the station at Molsheim.
The way there was a long one, and Lucienne soon went to sleep in the carriage. Her mother, who had hardly said anything up to then, bent towards her son, and, pointing to the beautiful creature sound asleep, asked him:
"You knew?"
"Yes."
"I guessed it. There was no need to tell me much. I have seen her look at him. Oh, Jean, this trial that I hoped to escape!—the fear of which has made me accept so many, many things! I have only you left, my Jean! But you remain to me!"
She kissed him fervently.
CHAPTER XI
IN SUSPENSE
As things do not usually happen as we foresee, the visit of Herr von Kassewitz to Alsheim did not take place on the date Farnow said it would. Towards the end of June—at the moment when the prefect, returned from taking the waters, was getting ready to go to ask for Lucienne's hand, a telegram had asked him to put off the visit. The condition of M. Philippe Oberlé had suddenly become worse.
The old man, whom it was necessary to inform of what was going on in the house, had just learned the truth. His son had gone up one morning to the sick man's room. "With circumlocution and in ways that he took out of respect and consideration for him, he let it be seen that Lucienne was not indifferent to the advances of a cavalry officer belonging to a high German family; he had said that the liking was spontaneous; that he, Joseph Oberlé, in spite of certain regrets, did not believe that he had the right to thwart the freedom of his children, and that he hoped that his father, in the interests of peace, would be resigned.
"My father," he said, "you are not ignorant of the fact that your opposition would be useless and purely vexatious. You have a chance to give Lucienne a great proof of your affection, as we ourselves have given; do not repulse her."
The old man had asked in signs:
"And Monica; has she consented?"
M. Joseph Oberlé had been able to answer yes, without telling a lie, for the poor woman, threatened with a separation, had yielded once more. Then the sick man put an end to his son's long monologue by writing two words, which were his answer:
"Not I!"
The same evening, fever declared itself. It continued the following day, and soon became so persistent and weakening that the condition of the sick man troubled the Oberlés.
From this day on, the health of M. Philippe Oberlé became the topic of anxious inquiries, evening and morning. They questioned Madame Monica or Jean, whom he received whilst excluding the others.
"How is he? Is his strength returning? Has he still all his wits about him—the full use of his mental faculties?"
Each one was wondering what was happening up above in the room where the old fighter, who had half disappeared from the world of the living, still governed his divided family, holding them all dependent on him. They spoke of their uneasiness, and under this name, which they rightly used, what projects were hid, what different thoughts!
Jean himself awaited the issue of this crisis with an impatience in which his affection for his grandfather was not the only interest involved. Since the explanation he had had with Lucienne, especially since the party at the Geheimrath's, all intimacy between brother and sister had ceased. Lucienne was as amiable and just as officiously kind as she could be, but Jean no longer responded to her advances. When work kept him no longer at the factories he fled from the house: sometimes to the country, where the first hay harvest attracted all the life from the Alsatian farms. Sometimes he would go and talk to his neighbours the Ramspachers, already his friends, when at nightfall they came back from the plain; and there he was led on by the hope that he should see the daughter of M. Bastian walking along the path. But more often still he went up to Heidenbruch. M. Ulrich had received his nephew's confidences and a mission at the same time. Jean had said to him:
"I have now no hope of winning Odile. My sister's marriage will prevent mine. But in spite of that I am bound to ask for the hand of her to whom I have confessed my love. I wish to be certain of what is already breaking my heart, although I am only afraid of it. When M. Bastian has heard that Lucienne is betrothed to Lieutenant von Farnow or that she is going to be—and that will not be delayed if grandfather gets better—you will go to M. Bastian. You will speak to him on my behalf. He will answer you, knowing fully all the facts; you will tell me if he refuses, once for all, his daughter to the brother-in-law of von Farnow; or if he insists on some time of probation—I will accept it, no matter how long it may be; or if he has the courage—in which I do not believe—to pay no attention to the scandal which my sister's marriage will cause."
M. Ulrich had promised.
Towards the middle of August the fever which was wearing out M. Philippe Oberlé disappeared. Contrary to the expectation of the doctor, his strength returned very quickly. It was soon certain that the robust constitution of the invalid had got the better of the crisis. And the truce accorded by M. Joseph Oberlé to his father had come to an end. The old man, having recovered to that sad condition of a sick man whom death does not desire, was going to be treated like the others, and would not be spared. There was no fresh scene between the sick man and his son. All went on quietly. On the 22nd of August, after dinner in the drawing-room, where Victor had just brought the coffee, the factory owner said to Madame Oberlé:
"My father is now convalescent. There is no longer any reason to put off the visit of Herr von Kassewitz. I give you notice, Monica, that it will take place during the next few days. You would do well to tell my father, since you alone go to him. And it is necessary that everything should be done in order, without anything like surprise or deception. Is that your opinion?"
"You do not wish to put off this visit any longer?"
"No."
"Then I will tell him!"
Jean wrote the same evening to Heidenbruch, where he was not able to go.
"My uncle, the visit is settled. My father makes no mystery about it; not even before the servants. He evidently wishes that the report of the marriage should be spread abroad. As soon as you hear some one from Alsheim get indignant or sad about us, go and see, I implore you, if the dream that I dreamed can still live on. You will tell M. Bastian that it is the grandson of M. Philippe Oberlé who loves Odile."
CHAPTER XII
THE HOP-PICKING
At the foot of Sainte Odile, a little below the vineyards in the deep earth formed by gravel and leaves fallen from the mountain, M. Bastian and other land-owners or farmers of Alsheim had planted hop-fields. Now the time was come when the flower produces its maximum of odorous pollen—a quickly passing hour difficult to seize.
The hop-planters appeared frequently in the hopfields. The brokers went through the villages. One heard buyers and sellers discussing the various merits of Wurtemburg hops and the Grand Duchy of Baden hops, and of Bohemian and Alsatian hops. The newspapers began to publish the first prices of the most famous home-grown: Hallertan, Spalt, and Wolnzach.
A Munich Jew had come to see M. Bastian on Sunday August 26, and had said to him:
"Wurtemburg is promising: Baden will have fine harvests: our own country of Spalt, in Bavaria, has hops which are paying us one hundred and sixty francs the fifty kilos, because they are rich hops—they are as full of the yellow aromatic powder as a grape of juice. Here you have been injured by the drought. But I can offer you one hundred and twenty francs on condition that you pick them at once. They are ripe."
M. Bastian had given in, and had called together his daily hop-pickers for August 28. That was also the day when the Count von Kassewitz was to pay his visit to M. Joseph Oberlé.
From dawn of a day already warmed by wafts of hot air, women had set themselves to walk up what is called "the heights of Alsheim," the region where the cultivated land, hollowed like a bow, will bear hops. Some hundreds of yards from the border of the forest high poles in battle array bore up the green tendrils. They looked like very pointed tents of foliage, or belfries—for the millions of little cones, formed of green scales sprinkled with pollen, swung themselves from the extreme top to the ground like bells whose ringer is the wind. All the inhabitants know the event of the day—one picks hops for M. Bastian. The master, up before dawn, was already in the hop-field, examining each foot, calculating the value of his crop, pressing and crushing in his fingers one of the little muslin-like pine cones whose perfume attracts the bees. At the back on the stubble furrows are two narrow wagons, harnessed to a horse, waiting for the harvest, and near them was Ramspacher the farmer, his two sons Augustin and François, and a farm servant. The women, on the direct road leading up there, came up in irregular bands, three in file, then five abreast, then one following the others, the only one who was old. Each one had put on a working dress of some thin stuff, discoloured and the worse for wear, except, however, the grocer's daughter, Ida, who wore a nearly new dress, blue with white spots, and another elegant girl from Alsheim, Juliette, a brunette, the daughter of the sacristan, and she had a fashionable bodice and a checked apron, pink and white. The greater number were without hats, and had only the shade of their hair, of every tint of fairness, to preserve their complexions. They walked along quietly and heavily. They were young and fresh. They laughed. The farm boy mounted on a farm horse, going to the fields, the reapers, encamped in a corner, and the motionless man with the scythe in the soft lucerne turned their heads, and their eyes followed these women workers, whom one did not generally see in the country: needlewomen, dressmakers, apprentices, all going as if to a fête towards the hop-field of M. Bastian. The vibration of words they could not hear flew to them on the wind that dried the dew. The weather was fair. Some old people, the pickers of fallen fruit beneath the scattered apple- and walnut-trees, rose from their stooping posture, and blinked their eyes to see the happy band of girls coming up the forest road. These girls without baskets such as the bilberry and whortleberry pickers, and raspberry gatherers had to carry.
They went into the hop-field, which contained eight rows of hops and disappeared as if in a gigantic vineyard. M. Bastian directed the work, and pointed out that they must begin with the part touching the road. Then the old farmer, his two sons and farm servant, seized each of them one of the poles, heavy with the weight of harvest, the tendrils, the little scaly bells, the leaves all trembled; and after the women had knelt down and had cut the stalks even with the ground, the loosened poles came out of the earth and were lowered and despoiled of the climbing plants they had carried.
Stalks, leaves, and flowers were thrown down and placed in heaps—to be carried away by the wagons. The workers did not wait to pick the hops which they would gather at Alsheim in the farmyard in the afternoon. But, already covered with yellow powder and pieces of leaves, the men and women were hurrying to strip the lowered poles. The hops exhaled their bitter, healthy odour, and the humming of the band of workers, like the noise of early vintage, spread out over the immense stretch of country, striped with meadows, stubble, and lucerne, and the open and fertile Alsatian land which the sun was beginning to warm.
This light, the repose of the night still neighbouring the day, the full liberty which they did not enjoy every day of the week, the instinctive coquetry evoked by the presence of the men, even the desire of being pleasant to M. Bastian, whom they knew to be of a gay disposition, made these girls and children who picked the hops joyful with a boisterous joy. And one of the farm servants having called out while his horses stopped to take breath: "Is no one singing then?" the daughter of the sacristan, Juliette, with the regular features and the beautiful deep eyes under her well combed and nicely dressed hair, answered:
"I know a lovely song."
As she answered she looked at the owner of the property, who was smoking, seated on the first row of stubble above the hop-field, and who was contemplating with tenderness now his hops and now his Alsace, where his mind always dwelt.
"If it is pretty; sing it," said the master. "Is it a song that the police may hear?"
"Part of it."
"Then turn round to the forest side: the police do not often go that way because they find nothing to drink there."
The workers who were stooping and those who were standing upright laughed silently because of the detestation in which they held the gendarmes. And the beautiful Juliette began to sing—of course in Alsatian—one of those songs which poets compose who do not care to sign their works, and who rhyme in contraband.
"I have cut the hops of Alsace—they have grown on the soil we tilled—the green hops are certainly ours—the red earth is also ours."
"Bravo!" said gravely M. Bastian's farmer. He took his pipe from his mouth in order to hear better.
"They have grown in the valley—in the valley where every one has passed along, many sorts of people, and the wind, and also anguish—we have chosen our own friends.
"We will drink beer to the health of those who please us. We will have no words on our lips—but we will have words in our hearts—where no one can efface them."
The heavy, solid heads, young and old, remained motionless for a moment when Juliette had finished. They waited for the remainder. The young girls smiled because of the voice and because of life. The eyes of M. Bastian and the Ramspachers shone because of bygone days. The two sons had grown grave. Juliette did not begin to sing again: there was no more to follow.
"I think I know the miller who composed that song," said M. Bastian. "Come, my friends, hurry yourselves; there is the first cart starting for Alsheim. All must be gathered and put in the drying-house before night."
Everybody except that big young François, who had to do his military service in November, and who was driving the wagon, bent again over the hop roots. But at the same moment, from the copse on the border of the great forest, from among the shrubs and the clematis, which made a silky fringe to the mountain forests, a man's voice answered.
What was happening? Who had heard them? They thought they knew the voice, which was strong and unequal, worn, but with touches of a youthful quality; and whisperings arose.
"It is he. He is not afraid!"
The voice answered, in the same rugged tongue:
"The black bow of the daughters of Alsace—has bound my heart with sorrow—has bound my heart with joy. It is a knot of love.
"The black bow of the daughters of Alsace—is a bird with great wings. It can fly across the mountains—and look over them.
"The black bow of the daughters of Alsace is a cross of mourning which we carry in memory of all those—whose soul was like our own soul."
The voice had been recognised. When it had finished singing, the hop-pickers, men and women, began to talk to M. Ulrich, who, barely tolerated in Alsace, had nevertheless more freedom of language than the Alsatians who were German subjects. The noise of laughter and words exchanged grew louder and louder in the hop-field, so the master withdrew.
M. Bastian, with his heavy, sure step, mounted to the edge of the forest whence came the voice, and plunged under the beeches. Some one had seen him coming and waited for him. M. Ulrich Biehler, seated on a rock starred with moss—bare headed, weary with having walked in the sun—had hoped, by singing, to make his old friend Xavier Bastian climb up to him. He was not mistaken.
"I have a place for you here, hop-picker!" he cried from afar, pointing to a large block of stone which had rolled to the foot of the mountain, between two trees, and on which he was seated.
Although they were friends, M. Ulrich and the Mayor of Alsheim saw each other but seldom. There was between them less intimacy than a community of opinions and of aspirations and of memories. They were chosen friends, and old Alsace counted them among her faithful ones. That was enough to make them feel the meeting was a happy one, and to make the signal understood. M. Ulrich had said to himself that M. Bastian having set the workers to work would not be sorry to have a diversion. He had sung in answer to Juliette's song, and M. Bastian had come. Now the pale, fine face of the hermit of Heidenbruch reflected a mixture of pleasure in welcoming his friend and an anxiety difficult to conceal.
"You still sing?" said M. Bastian, pressing M. Ulrich's hand. "You hunt, you run about the hills!"
He sat down breathless on a stone, his feet in the ferns, and looking towards the descending slopes wooded with oaks and beeches and bushes.
"That only in appearance. I am a walker, a forester, a wanderer. You, on the contrary, are the least travelled of men. I visit—you cultivate: these are at bottom two kinds of fidelities. Tell me, Xavier, may I speak to you of something which I have very much at heart?"
The heavy face trembled, the thick lips moved, and one could see by the great change which took place in M. Bastian's face how sensitive he was. As he was of just as reticent a nature, he did not make any reply. He waited.
"I am going to tell you about something which touches me as nearly as if it were a personal matter. He who begged me to see you is my dearest relative. I take the direct method with you, Xavier. Have you guessed that my nephew loves your daughter Odile?"
"Yes."
"Well?"
Suddenly these two, who had been gazing into the distance for a while, looked at each other eye to eye, and they were afraid, one because of the refusal he read there—and the other because of the pain he was going to give.
"No!" said the voice, grown harsh in order to dominate its emotion, which would have made it tremble. "I will not!"
"I expected that; but if I tell you that they love each other?"
"That may be. I cannot!"
"You have some very serious reason then?"
"Yes."
"What is it?"
M. Bastian pointed through the trees to the house of the Oberlés.
"To-day, in that house, they are expecting the visit of the Prefect of Strasburg."
"I could not tell you, and I had to wait before speaking about it till every one knew it."
"It is public property now. All the town of Alsheim has been told by the servants. They even say that M. von Kassewitz is coming to ask for the hand of Lucienne for his nephew, Lieutenant von Farnow."
"I know it!"
"And you would have it so?"
"Yes!"
"That I should give my daughter to Jean Oberlé so that she should have a father-in-law who will be a governmental candidate in the coming elections and a brother-in-law who is a Prussian officer?"
M. Ulrich kept calm under the indignant gaze of M. Bastian and answered:
"Yes; these are terrible things for him, but it is not Jean's fault. Where will you find a man more worthy of you and of your daughter?"
"What is he doing to oppose this marriage? He is here—his silence gives consent. He is weak."
M. Ulrich stopped him with a movement.
"No; he is strong!"
"Not like you—you who knew how to close your house."
"My house belongs to me."
"And I have the right to say 'Not like me!' All these young people accept things too easily, my friend. I do not mix myself up with politics. I keep silent. I plough my land. I am looked on with suspicion by the peasants, who no doubt like me, but who begin to find me 'compromising.' I am hated by Germans of every kind and colour. But, as God hears me, that only makes me drive my roots deeper in, and I do not change. I will die with all my old hatreds intact—do you understand—intact?"
His eyes had a gleam in them such as a sharpshooter has when, with gun in hand, and sure that his hand will not tremble, he covers his enemy.
"You stand for something in this generation, Xavier; but you must not be unjust. This man you refuse, because he is not like us, is not the less valiant for that."
"That has to be seen."
"Has he not declared that he will not enter the Government employ?"
"Because the country pleases him better—and my daughter pleases him also!"
"No; firstly because he is Alsatian."
"Not like us, I will answer for that!"
"In a new way. They are obliged to live in the midst of Germans. Their education is carried out in German schools, and their way of loving France leaves room for more honour and more strength of mind than was necessary in our time. Think, it is thirty years ago!"
"Alas!"
"They saw nothing of those times, they have only a traditional love, or a love which is of the imagination, or of family, and examples of forgetfulness are frequent around them!"
"Jean has had, in truth, examples of that sort."
"That is why you ought to be more just to him. Think that your daughter in marrying him will found here an Alsatian family—very powerful, very wealthy. The officer will not live in Alsheim, nor even long in Alsace. He will soon be only a name."
M. Bastian placed his heavy hand on M. Ulrich's shoulder, and spoke in a tone which did not allow the discussion to be continued.
"Listen, my friend, I have only one word. It cannot be, because I will not have that marriage: because all those of my generation, dead and living, would reproach me. And then, even if I yielded, Ulrich, there is a will near me stronger than mine, who will never say yes, do you understand, never!"
M. Bastian slipped down among the ferns, and shrugging his shoulders, and shaking his head—like some one who will hear no more—went downwards to his day workers. When he had passed between the rows of the cut hops and reprimanded each of the workers, there was no more laughing, and the girls of Alsheim, and the farmer's sons, and the farmer himself, stooping under the burning sun, went on in silence with their work, which had been so joyously begun.
Already M. Ulrich was going up to his hermitage on Sainte Odile, distressed, asking himself what serious effect the refusal of M. Bastian was going to have on Jean's destiny, and anxious to tell his nephew the news. Without hoping, without believing that there was any chance of it, he would try to make Odile's father give way, and plans hummed round him, like the gadflies in the pine woods, drunk with the sun, and following the traveller in his lonely climb. The streams were singing. There were flocks of thrushes, harbingers crossing the ravines, darting through the blue air to get to the vines and fruits of the plain. It was in vain—he was utterly downcast. He could think of nothing but of his nephew, so badly rewarded for his return to Alsheim. Between the trees and round the branches he gazed at the house of the Oberlés.
Any one going into that house just then would have found it extraordinarily quiet. Every one there was suffering. M. Philippe Oberlé, as usual had lunched in his room. Madame Oberlé, at the express wish of her husband, had consented to come out of her room when M. von Kassewitz should be announced.
"All the same, I repeat," she said, "that I shall not go out of my way to entertain him. I will be there because by your orders I am bound to receive this person. But I shall not go beyond what is strictly necessary."
"Right," said M. Oberlé, "Lucienne, Jean, and I will talk to him. That will suffice."
And after his meal he had gone at once to his workroom, at the end of the park. Jean, who had shown no enthusiasm, had gone out, for his part, promising to return before three o'clock. Lucienne was alone in the big yellow drawing-room. Very well dressed in a grey princess dress, which had for its only ornament a belt buckle of two shades of gold, like the decorations in the dining-room; she was placing roses in crystal glasses and slender vases of transparent porcelain, which contrasted well with the hard, definite colour of the velvet furniture. Lucienne had the collectedness of a gambler who sees a game coming to an end, and knows she has won. She had herself, in two recent soirées at Strasburg carried the business through, which now wanted only the signatures of the contracting parties; the official candidature promised to M. Joseph Oberlé in the first vacant district.
The visit of M. von Kassewitz was equivalent to the signing of the treaty. The opposing parties held their tongues, as Madame Oberlé held hers, or stood aside in silent sulkiness, like the grandfather. The young girl went from the mantelpiece to the gilt console, surmounted by a mirror, in which she saw herself reflected, and she thought the movement of her lips very pretty when she made them say "Monsieur the Prefect!" One thing irritated her, and checked the pride she felt in her victory: the absolute emptiness which was making itself felt around her.
Even the servants seemed to have made up their minds not to be there when they were wanted. They did not answer the bell. After lunch M. Joseph Oberlé had been obliged to go into the servants' hall to find his father's valet, that good-tempered big Alsatian who looked upon himself as being at the beck and call of every one.
"Victor, you will put on your livery to receive the gentleman who will come about three o'clock!"
Victor had grown red and answered with difficulty:
"Yes, sir!"
"You must be careful to watch for the carriage, and to be at the bottom of the steps——"
"Yes, sir."
Since this promise had been given, which no doubt went very much against Victor's feelings—he had hid himself, and only came at the third or fourth call, quite flustered and pretending that he had not heard.
The Prefect of Strasburg is coming. These words which Lucienne had spoken, Madame Oberlé thought over shut up in her room. They weighed, like a storm cloud, on the mind of the old protesting representative of Alsace—that old forester, Philippe Oberlé, who had given orders that he was to be left alone; they agitated the nervous fingers of M. Joseph Oberlé, who was writing in his room at the saw mills, and he left off writing in order to listen; they rang sadly, like the passing bell of something noble in Jean's heart taking refuge with the Bastians' farmer. They were the theme—the leitmotiv which recurred in twenty different ways, in the animated and sarcastic conversation of the hop-pickers.
For these women and girls of the farm, and the day labourers who had worked in the morning in the hop-field, had assembled, since the mid-day meal in the narrow, long yard of the Ramspachers' farm. Seated on chairs or stools, each one having on their right a hamper or a basket and on their left a heap of hops, they picked off the flowers and threw away the stripped stalks. They formed two lines—one along the stable walls and the other the length of the house. This made an avenue of fair heads and bodies in movement among the piles of leaves, which stretched from one woman to another and bound them together as it were with a garland. At the end, the cart door opened wide on to the square of the town of Alsheim, and allowed the gables of several houses situated opposite to be seen—with their wooden balconies and the flat tiles of their roofings. By this road every half hour fresh loads of hops arrived drawn by one of the farm horses. Old Ramspacher, the farmer, was at his post, in the enormous barn in front of the dwelling-house, and before which sat the first pickers, at work on the little hop cones.
In this building, whose vast roof was supported by a wall on one side, on the other by Vosges pines, the greater part of the work of the farm was done, and much wealth was stored here. Here they trod the grapes; in the autumn and winter months they threshed corn. They kept all the implements of labour in the corner—the covered carts, planks and building materials, empty barrels, and a little hay. There were also many great wooden cases piled up, tiers of screens, on which they put the hops to dry every year. The farmer never allowed others to do this delicate work. So he was at his place, in front of the drying-room, where the first shelves were already full, and standing on a ladder he spread equal layers of the gathered hops, which his sons brought him in hampers.
The heat of the afternoon, at the end of August, the odour of crushed leaves and flowers, which clung to their hands intoxicated the women slightly. The laughter rose louder than in the hop-fields in the morning, and questions were asked and remarks made which called forth twenty answers. Sometimes it was the work which furnished a pretext for this fusillade of words. Sometimes it was a neighbour passing across the square all white with dust and sunshine; but mostly the talk was about two things: the visit of the Prefect and the probable marriage of Lucienne.
The beautiful Juliette, the sacristan's daughter, had begun the conversation saying:
"I tell you Victor told it to the mason's son: the Prefect is to arrive in half an hour. Do you think I shall move when he comes?"
"He would see a very pretty girl," said Augustine Ramspacher, lifting up two hampers of hops. "It is only the ugly ones who will let themselves be seen."
Ida, who had lifted up her blue-and-white-spotted dress, and then Octavie the cow-woman, who wore her hair plaited and rolled like a golden halo round her head, and Reine the daughter of the poor tailor, and others answered together laughing:
"I shall not be seen then. Nor I, nor I!"
And an old woman's voice, the only old woman among them, muttered:
"I know I am as poor as Peter and Paul, but I would rather that he went to other folk's houses than to mine—the Prefect!"
"Certainly."
They were all speaking freely. Words re-echoed from the walls and were lost amid bursts of laughter and the rustling of the broken and crushed leaves. In the barn in the half light, seated on a pile of beams, his chin in his hands, there was a witness who heard, and that witness was Jean Oberlé. But the inhabitants of Alsheim began to know the young man, who had lived among them for five months. They knew he was a good Alsatian. On the present occasion they guessed that Jean had taken refuge there with the Bastians' tenant farmer because he disapproved the ambition to which his father was sacrificing so many things and so many persons. He had come in, under the pretext of resting and taking shelter from the sun; in reality because the triumphant presence of Lucienne was torture to him. And yet he knew nothing of the conversation which his uncle had had in the morning with M. Bastian. The thought of Odile returned to his unhappy mind and he drove it out that he might remain master of himself, for soon he would require all his powers of judgment and all his strength. At other moments he gazed vaguely at the hop-pickers and tried to interest himself in their work and their talk; often he thought he heard the sound of a carriage, and half rising, he remembered the promise he had made, to be at home when M. von Kassewitz arrived.
Juliette's voice rose in decidedly spirited tones.
"What does this Prefect of Strasburg want to come to Alsheim for? We get on so well without the Germans."
"They have sworn to make themselves hated," quickly added the farmer's elder son, who was giving out the hops to the women who had no more. "It seems that they are prohibiting the speaking of French as much as they possibly can."
"A proof—my cousin, François Joseph Steiger," said little Reine, the tailor's daughter. "A gendarme said he had heard him shout 'Vive la France!' in the inn. Those were, I believe, the only French words my cousin knew. That was enough—my cousin got two months in prison."
"Your cousin called out more! But at Alberschweiler they have forbidden a singing society to execute anything in the French tongue."
"And the French conjurer who came the other day to Strasburg? Do you know? It was in the newspaper. They let him pay the tax, hire the hall, print his advertisements, and then they said: 'You will do it in German, my good friend—or you will go!'"
"What happened to M. Haas, the house-painter, is much worse."
"What then?"
"He knew that he could not paint an inscription in French on a shop any more. M. Haas would never—I know it—have painted a stroke of a brush in contravention of the law. But he thought he could at least put a coat of varnish on the sign he was painting, where he had painted a long time ago the word 'Chemiserie.' They made him appear and threatened to take proceedings against him, because he was preserving the inscription with his varnish. Why, that was last October!"
"Oh, oh, would not M. Hamm be pleased if the rain, the wind, and the thunder threw down the sign of the inn here, which is called: 'Le Pigeon blanc' as happened to 'La Cigogne.'"
It was old Josephine the bilberry-picker who said to the farmer's wife, who at this moment appeared on the threshold of her house:
"Sad Alsace! How gay she was when we were young! Wasn't she, Madame Ramspacher?"
"Yes. Now—for nothing—evictions, lawsuits, and prison! The police everywhere."
"You had better keep silence!" said Ramspacher in a reproachful tone.
The younger son Francis took his mother's side.
"There are no traitors here. And then, how can one keep silence? They are too hard. That is why so many young men emigrate!"
From his corner in the shadow, Jean looked at these young girls who were listening—with flashing eyes, some motionless and erect, others continuing to bend and rise over their work of stripping the hop-plants.
"Work then—instead of so much chattering!" said the master's voice.
"One hundred and seventy unsubdued, and condemned by the tribunal at Saverne, in a single day, last January," said Juliette with a laugh that shook her hair. "One hundred and seventy!"
Francis, the great careless boy, who was close by Jean Oberlé at this moment, turned a basketful of hops on the shelf, and bending towards him said:
"It is at Grand Fontaine that one can easily get over the frontier," he said in low tones. "The best crossing, Monsieur Oberlé, is between Grande Fontaine and Les Minières. The frontier is opposite, like a spur. That is the nearest part, but one has to take care of the Forest Guard and the Custom officials. Often they stop people to ask where they are going."
Jean trembled. What did that mean? He began:
"Why do you speak to...?"
But the young peasant had turned away, and was going on with his work. Doubtless he had spoken for himself. He had trusted his plan to his melancholy and silent countryman, whom he would amuse, astonish, or sympathise with.
But Jean had been touched by this confidence.
A clear voice called out:
"There is the carriage coming into the town. It is going to pass M. Bastian's avenue!"
All the hop-pickers raised their heads. Little Franzele was standing up near the pillar which kept the door open—leaning the top of her body over the wall, her curly hair blown by the wind. She was looking to the right, whence came the sound of wheels. In the yard the women had stopped working. She murmured:
"The Prefect, there he is—he is going to pass."
The farmer, drawn from his work by the women's sudden silence as much as by the child's voice, turned towards the yard where the hop-pickers were listening motionless to the noise of the wheels and the horses coming nearer. He commanded:
"Shut the cart-door, Franzele!"
He added, muttering:
"I will not let him see how it is done here—in my place!"
The little girl pushed-to one of the sides of the door, then curious, having stuck her head out again: