He moved to go away. The solid hand of the old Mayor of Alsheim fastened round the wrist he held. His voice rose and became harsh.
"Presently. But do not at least refuse the civility I am accustomed to show to all who come here. It is the custom of the country and of the house. Drink with me, Jean Oberlé, or I shall repudiate you, and we shall not even recognise each other."
Jean remembered that no house in the country round Barr or Obernai, not even the oldest and richest, possessed better recipes for making beam-tree-berry brandy or cherry brandy, or elderberry wine, or wine made with dried grapes, or spring drinks. He saw that the old Mayor of Alsheim would be deeply hurt by a refusal, and that the offer was a means of showing his cordiality without disavowing in words, or in thought, the mother, queen, and mistress of the big house, who continued to ignore the guest, because the guest was the son of Joseph Oberlé.
"So be it," he said.
Then M. Bastian called, "Odile!"
The hands that held the linen, near the stove, rested on the folds of her black dress, and for half a minute there were three human beings, each with very different thoughts, who awaited her who was going to enter at the end of the room, on the right, near the great walnut cupboard. She came out of the shadow of a neighbouring room and advanced into the light, while Jean controlled his feelings and was saying to himself, "I did well to remember her!"
"Give me the oldest brandy that we have," said the father.
Odile Bastian had at first smiled at her father, whom she saw near the door, then she had, with a movement of her brown eyebrows, shown her astonishment, without displeasure, when she recognised Jean Oberlé near him; then the smile had disappeared when she saw her mother, bending over her work-table, dumb and holding herself aloof from what was going on around her. Then her bosom heaved, the words she was going to say were arrested before reaching her lips; and Odile Bastian, too intelligent not to guess the affront, too much a woman to emphasise the secret trouble, had simply and silently obeyed. She had sought a key in the drawer of a chest, had gone to the big cupboard, and raising herself on the tips of her toes, one hand leaning on one of the doors at the top of the piece of furniture, her head thrown back, she ransacked the depths of the hiding-place.
She was just the same girl, but more developed, who had lived in Jean's memory for years, and who had followed him over the world. Her features were not regular. But in spite of that she was beautiful, with a strong, glowing beauty. She seemed like the statues of Alsace, which one sees on monuments and in French souvenir pictures, like those daughters of rich and warlike blood, wrathful and daring, while near them a more feminine Lorraine weeps sadly. She was tall; there were no hollows in her full cheeks, curving to a chin as firm and pink. It is true she did not wear the wide bows of black ribbon which make two wings on the head, but that only accentuated the unusual, the exceptional beauty of her hair, which was of the colour of ripe corn, of a perfectly dull, even tint, bound in bands round her temples and there twisted and raised on her head. Her eyebrows were of the same colour, long and finely marked, and the lashes, and even the eyes, slightly apart, where dwelt a soul at rest, were deep and passionate. In a moment M. Bastian had on a stand two glasses of cut crystal and a big-bellied black bottle. He took the bottle in one hand and with the other he drew out, without shaking it, a cork which swelled out as it left the neck, being damp as sapwood in spring time. At the same time a smell of ripe fruit was diffused under the beams of the room.
"It is fifty years old," said he, pouring a little of the liqueur into each of the glasses.
He added seriously, "I drink to your health, Jean Oberlé, and to your return to Alsheim!"
But Jean, without answering directly, and with every one silent, and looking at Odile, who had withdrawn to the cupboard, and who, standing erect against it, was also looking at and studying her old playfellow returned to his native country, said:
"I drink to the land of Alsace!"
By the tone of the words, by the gesture of the hand raising the little sparkling glass, by the look fixed on the end of the room, some one understood that the land of Alsace was here personified and present. The tall, beautiful daughter of the Bastians remained motionless, leaning against the cupboard, which framed her in its yellowish shadow. But her eyes had the brightness that wheat has when it waves at a breath of wind in the sunshine, and without turning her head, without ceasing to look straight in front of her, her eyelids slowly lowered and shut, saying thank you!
And that was all.
Madame Bastian had not even looked up. Odile had said not a word—Jean bowed and went out.
The old Mayor of Alsheim rejoined him outside.
"I will go with you to the other end of my garden," he said, "for it is better for us—for you—and for your father, that you should not be seen coming down the avenue. You will seem to be coming from the fields."
"What a strange country this has become!" said the young man in an angry tone. "Because you do not hold the same opinions as my father you cannot receive me, and when I leave you I must do so secretly, and after having had to submit to the insult of a silence which was hard to bear. I can tell you that!"
He spoke loudly enough to be heard from the house, from which he was only a few steps away. The usual paleness of his complexion was more noticeable, and emotion contracted the muscles of his neck and jaws, and all his face had a tragic expression.
M. Bastian led him on.
"I have another reason for taking you that way," he said, "it will be longer, and I have things to explain to you."
They took a path that was not gravelled, which went by the plane-trees, passed a kitchen garden and then crossed a little wood.
"You do not understand, dear boy," said M. Bastian, in a voice which was firm without being harsh, "because you have not yet really lived among us. It has not changed; what you see dates back for thirty years."
Through an opening in the trees they saw a little bit of the plain, with the belfry of Barr in the distance, and the blue Vosges mountains above and beyond.
"Formerly," continued M. Bastian, pointing vaguely to the country, "our Alsace was just one family. Big and little knew each other and lived happily together. You know that even now I make no difference between rich and poor, between a citizen of Strasburg and a wood-cutter from the mountain. But what is done is done—we have been torn away, against our will, from France, and treated brutally because we did not say 'Yes.' We cannot revolt—we cannot drive away our masters, who know nothing about our hearts or our lives. But we do not admit them to our friendship, neither them nor those amongst us who have taken the side of the stronger."
He stopped speaking for a moment, not wishing to say all that he thought on this subject, and went on, taking Jean's hand.
"You are very angry with my wife because of her reception of you; but you are not the cause of it, neither is she. Until the doubt which rests on you is lifted, you are he who was educated in Germany, and the woman you have just seen is this country. Reflect—you must not bear a grudge against her. We have not all been faithful to Alsace, we men; and the best of us have compromised and have more or less recognised the new master. Not so the women—Ah! Jean Oberlé, I have not the courage to disclaim them even when you whom I love so well are the subject. Our Alsatian women are not insulting you in any ordinary way when they do not receive you; they are defending their country, they are carrying on the war." The old man had tears in his red and wrinkled eyes.
"You will know me later," said Jean.
They were at the end of the little park before a wooden door as mouldy as the other. M. Bastian opened it, shook the young man's hand and stayed a long time at the end of the wood watching Jean go away and get smaller on the plain, his head bent against the wind, which was still blowing, and more violently.
Jean was troubled to the depth of his soul.
Between him and each family in this old country he felt he was going to find his father. He was suffering from having been born in the house towards which he was going. He saw the image of Odile as the only sweet thing of this first day, and her eyes were slowly, slowly closing.
CHAPTER V
COMPANIONS OF THE ROAD
The winter did not allow M. Oberlé's ideas about the professional education of Jean to be carried out exactly. The snow which remained on the summits of the Vosges, without being thick, made travelling very difficult. So Jean paid only two or three visits to the wood-cutting centres situated near Alsheim and in the Vosges valleys. The excursions to more distant places were put off for a warmer season. But he learned to cube a pine or a beech without making a mistake, to value it according to the place it occupied in the forest, according to the height of the trunk below the branches, the appearance of the bark, which indicated the health of the tree, and by other calculations into which a kind of divining quality enters, which cannot be taught anywhere, and which makes the expert. His father initiated him into the working of the factory and the management of the machines, the reading of agreements, and the traditions of fifty years kept up by the Oberlés regarding sale and carriage contracts. He put him into relationship with two officials of the administration of the forests of Strasburg, who showed themselves very ready to be of service, and proposed to Jean to explain to him personally the new forest legislation, of which he still knew but little. "Come," said the younger, "come to see me at my office, and I will tell you more things you will find it useful to know than you will learn in books. For the law is the law, but the administration is another thing."
Jean promised to profit when occasions offered themselves. But several weeks went by without his having the time to go to the town. Then March came in mildly and melted the snows. In a week, and much earlier than usual, the brooks swelled to overflowing, and the high peaks of the Vosges and Sainte Odile which one could see from Alsheim, which had had their slopes and paths white with snow, appeared in their summer robes of dark and pale green.
The walks round Alsheim were going to be exquisite and such as the young man had pictured to himself in his youthful memories. The home, without being a model of family unity, had witnessed no repetition of the painful scene which occurred the day after Jean's return. In each camp words were noted and deeds observed, which would one day become arguments and subjects of reproach and discussion, but just now there was a sort of truce brought about by different causes.
In M. Joseph Oberlé it was the desire not to be wrong in his son's eyes; for his son was going to be useful, and he did not wish to be accused of provocation. In Lucienne it was the diversion which the presence of her brother had brought into her life, and the interest, not yet exhausted, that she took in his tales of travel and student life. In Madame Oberlé it was fear of making her son suffer, and of alienating him by letting him see the family feuds. Nothing had really changed. There was only a superficial gaiety, an appearance of peace, a truce. But although Jean felt that the agreement of the hearts and minds around him was not real, he enjoyed it because he had spent long years in moral solitude.
The worries and clashing of interests came from elsewhere, and were not wanting. Nearly every day Jean had occasion to go through the village of Alsheim, which was built on each side of three roads forming a fork, the handle of which was the mountain side, and the two prongs towards the plain. At the bifurcation was the tavern, the Swan, which took up a corner of the church square. A little farther on, on the left road leading to Bernhardsweiler, dwelt the German workmen engaged by M. Joseph Oberlé, and lodged in little houses all alike, each with a little garden in front. So that in whatever part of Alsheim he showed himself, the young man could not help reading, in the faces and gestures of those he met, different opinions, and all equally distressing. The Germans and their wives—the workmen, better disciplined and more tame-spirited than the Alsatians, fearing all authority without respecting it, quartered in a corner of Alsheim by the hatred of the population on which they hoped to take vengeance some day, when they should be the more numerous, having with the other inhabitants no ties of origin, family, customs, or religion—could only have indifference or hostility for the master, which were badly disguised by the salutations of the men, and the furtive smiles of the women.
But many of the Alsatians were less under restraint. It was enough that Jean had entered the business and that he was seen constantly with his father, for their disapproval to extend to him. He saw himself covered with a prudent contempt, the kind that little people can always express towards powerful neighbours. The forest workmen, the labourers, the women, and even the children pretended not to see him when he passed, others withdrew into their houses; others, the old ones especially, watched the rich man come and go as if he had been from another country. Those who showed the most signs of respect were the tradesmen or the employés, or the relations of the employés of the house. And Jean found it difficult to bear the reopening of this wound each time he left the park.
On Sunday, at church, in the whitewashed nave, he waited for the coming of Odile. To reach the seat reserved for her family for years, which was the first on the Epistle side, she had to pass near Jean. She passed, with her father and her mother, without any of them appearing to know that Jean was there, and M. Oberlé, and Lucienne. She only smiled at the end of Mass, when she came down the aisle, but she smiled at whole rows of friendly faces, at women, old men, at big boys who would have died for her, and at the children of the choir, the chanters of the "Concordia," who scampered off by the sacristy door, to be able to salute, surround, and welcome at the door the daughter of M. Bastian, the Alsatian girl, the friend, the beloved of all this poor village; she did not give away more money than Madame Oberlé, but they knew that there was no division in her house, no treachery, and that the only difference between it and the other houses in the valleys and mountains of Alsace was its wealth. What did she think of Jean? She, whose eyes never spoke in vain, did not look at him. She who used to speak to him in the roads now said nothing.
The first month of Jean's new life passed away like this in Alsheim. Then spring was born. M. Joseph Oberlé waited two days and then, seeing the buds of his birch-trees burst in the sunshine, he said to his son on the third day:
"You are a good enough apprentice now to go alone and inspect our timber-yard in the Vosges. You will get ready to start. This year I have made exceptional purchases. I have cuttings as far as the Schlucht, and to visit them you will have to visit nearly all the Vosges. I give you no instructions, only observe, and bring me a report, in which you will note down your observations of each of our cuttings."
"When shall I start?"
"To-morrow, if you like—the winter is over." M. Oberlé said that with the assurance of a man who has had need to know the weather like a peasant, and who knows it. He had, before speaking, ordered a list to be prepared of the cuttings of wood bought by the house either from the German State or from the Communes, or from private people, with the detailed directions on the position they occupied in the mountains, and he gave this list to Jean.
There were a dozen cuttings distributed over the whole length of the Vosges, from the valley of the Bruche on the north to the mouth of the Schlucht.
The next day Jean put a little linen and a change of shoes in a bag, and without telling any one of his intention hurried to the mountain, and up to the lodge of Heidenbruch.
The square house, with green shutters, and the meadow, and the forest all round the clearing, were smoking as if a fire had devoured the heath and grass, and left the beech and pines intact. Long wreaths of mist seemed to emanate from the soil, and to grow tenuous, and uniting, lose themselves in the low clouds, which glided along, rising from the valleys and going up the slopes towards the invisible monastery of Sainte Odile. The humidity penetrated to the very depths of the forests. It was everywhere. Drops of water shone on the pine needles, streamed in threads down the bare trunks of the beeches, polished the pebbles, swelled the many mosses, and travelling over the land, and flowing on dead leaves, went to swell the brooks, whose cadenced song could be heard on all sides—the grasshopper of winter whose song never ceases.
Jean went up to the middle of the wooden palisade painted green, which surrounded Heidenbruch, passed through the gate, and in the front of the lodge called out gaily to the windows closed because of the fog, "Uncle Ulrich."
A cap appeared behind the window panes, the cap of an Alsatian woman who takes care of her big black ribbons—and under the cap there was the smile of an old friend.
"Lise, tell uncle!"
This time the last window to the left opened, and the refined face, the eyes of a watcher, the pointed beard of M. Ulrich Biehler were framed between two shutters thrown back against the white wall.
"Uncle, I have at least a dozen wood-cutting places to visit. I begin this morning, and I come to take you for a companion, to-day, to-morrow, and every day...."
"Twelve journeys in the forest," answered his uncle, who leaned, his arms crossed, on the window sill, "this is a fine ending to Lent! My compliments on your mission!" He looked at his nephew in walking-clothes, his strong, masculine face raised in the fog; he was thinking that one could have sworn that he was a French officer, and then, carried away by his imagination, he forgot to say whether or not he would accompany his morning visitor.
"Come, uncle," continued Jean. "Come! Don't refuse me! We will sleep in the inns; you will show me Alsace."
"I walked seven leagues yesterday, my friend!"
"We will only do six to-day."
"You really want me to come?"
"An absence of three years, Uncle Ulrich, think of that, and a whole education to go through!"
"Well! I won't refuse you, Jean; I am too delighted that you should have thought of me. I have even a second reason for agreeing to the journey and to thank you for it. I will tell you presently."
He shut the window. In the silence of the woods Jean heard him call the old valet, who was second in command in Heidenbruch.
"Pierre! Pierre! Ah! there you are! We are going for twelve days into the mountains. I take you with me. You will pack my bag; put it on your back with my nephew's bag. Take your shoes with the nails, your stick, and you will go in front to the halting-place, while Jean and I go to visit the cuttings. Do not forget my waterproof, nor my pocket medicine chest."
Going into the house, the young man saw Uncle Ulrich, full of business and radiant, pass him, open the drawing-room door, go to the wall, take down a long object in copper on two nails, and go quickly upstairs again.
"What are you taking away, uncle?"
"My telescope."
"Such an old one."
"I cling to it, my friend; it belonged to my great uncle, General Biehler. It saw the back of the Prussians at Jena!"
Half an hour later, in the meadow on the slope in front of the house was M. Ulrich, gaitered like Jean, with a soft hat, the telescope slung over his shoulder, his dog gambolling round him; old Pierre very dignified and solemn, carrying on his mountaineer's shoulders a great pack wrapped in linen and fastened by straps; then Jean Oberlé, bending over a staff-officer's map, which the others knew by heart, discussing the two ways to go—the way of the baggage and the way of the walkers. The discussion was short. The servant went on in front, bearing to the left to reach the village where they would sleep, while the uncle and nephew took a path to the middle of the mountain—in a north-easterly direction.
"So much the better that it is a long way," said M. Ulrich, when they gained the shade of the wood. "So much the better. I wish it were for a lifetime. Two people who understand one another and go through the forest—what a dream!"
He half shut his eyes, as painters do, and breathed in the mist with pleasure.
"Do you know," he added, in the way he would have confided to him something delightful, "Do you know that we have had spring here for three days? There it is—that's my second reason!"
The forester said with enthusiasm what the manufacturer had said without admiration. By the same signs he recognised that a new season had begun. With his stick he pointed out to Jean the pine buds, red like arbutus berries; the bursting bark on the beech trunks, the shoots of wild strawberries running along the stones. In the uncovered pathways the north wind still blew, but in the hollows, the combes, the sheltered spots, one felt, in spite of the fog, the first warmth of the sun, which goes to the heart and makes men tremble, that warmth which touches the germ of the plants.
That day, and during those which followed, uncle and nephew lived under wood. They understood one another perfectly, whether they spoke fully on any subject or were silent. M. Ulrich knew the forest and the mountains by heart. He enjoyed this opportunity which had been given him to explain the Vosges and to discover his nephew. Jean's ardent youthfulness often amused him and recalled bygone times. The instincts of the forester and hunter, slumbering in the young man's heart, were ripening and strengthening. But he had also his rage, his revolts, his juvenile threatening words, against which the uncle protested but feebly, because he really approved of them.
The plaint of Alsace rose to his ear for the first time, the complaining cry the stranger does not hear and the conqueror only half listens to, but can never understand. For Jean did not only observe the forest; he also observed the people of the forest, from the merchants and the officials, feudal lords on whom depend a multitude almost past numbering, down to woodcutters, jobbers, fellers, carters, charcoal burners, down even to wanderers, shepherds, and swineherds, pedlars of dead wood, freebooters, poachers, myrtle gatherers, who also gather mushrooms and wild strawberries and raspberries.
Introduced by Uncle Ulrich, or passing by in his shadow, he aroused no suspicions.
He talked freely with the people—in their words, their silence, and in the atmosphere in which he lived day and night, he absorbed unto himself the very soul of his race. Many did not know France, among the young ones, and could not have said if they loved her, but even those had France in their veins. They did not get on with the German. A gesture, a look, an allusion, showed the secret disdain of the Alsatian peasant for his conqueror. The idea of a yoke was everywhere, and everywhere there was antipathy against the master who only knew how to govern by fear. Other young men of the families with traditions, instructed by their parents in the history of the past, faithful without any precise hope, complained that the poor of the mountain and plain were denied justice and subjected to annoyances if they were suspected of the crime of regretting France. They spoke of the tricks played by way of revenge on the custom officers, on the police, on the forest guard—proud of their green uniform and of their Tyrolese hat—the stories of smuggling and desertion, of the Marseillaise sung in the taverns with closed doors, of fêtes on French land, of perquisitions, domiciliary visits and pursuits, of the comic or tragic duel, useless and exasperating, between the strength of a great country and the mind of a small one. When the latter suffered, its thoughts, inherited from ancestors, through habit and from affection, went over the mountains.
There were also the old folk, and it was M. Ulrich's delight to make them talk. When on the roads, and in the villages, he saw a man of fifty years or more, and he knew him to be an Alsatian, it was seldom that he himself was not recognised and that a mysterious smile did not prepare the question for the Master of Heidenbruch:
"Come, is this not another friend—a child of our family?"
If M. Ulrich, by the expression of the face, by the movement of the eyes, by a little fear sometimes, felt that his conclusion was justified, he added in a low voice:
"You—you have the face of a French soldier!"
Then there were smiles or tears, sudden shocks to the heart, which changed the expression of the face pallors, flushings, pipes taken from the corner of the lips, and often, very often, a hand raised, turned palm outwards, touching the brim of the felt hat, thus making the military salute, as long as the two travellers were in sight.
"Do you see him?" said Uncle Ulrich, quite softly; "if he had a bugle he would play 'La Casquette.'"
Jean Oberlé never ceased talking of France. He asked when he came to the top of a mountain ridge: "Are we far from the frontier?" He made the uncle tell him what Alsace was like under the "gentle rule"—what liberty was enjoyed by each and all, how the towns were administered? What difference was there between the French gendarmes—whom M. Ulrich mentioned with a friendly smile as good fellows, not too hard on the poor—and these German gendarmes, common informers, brutal, always officious and full of zeal, whom the whole of the Alsace of to-day hated? What was the name of that prefect of the First Empire who placed by the roadsides of Lower Alsace benches of stone of two tiers so that the women going to market could sit down, and place at the same time their load above them? "The marquis de Lezay Marnésia, my boy."
"Tell me the story of our artists, of our deputies in the old days, of our bishops. Tell me what Strasburg was like in your youth, and what a sight it was when the military band played at Contades?"
M. Ulrich, with the joy of living over again which mingles with all our memories, remembered and related. While climbing and descending the intersections of the Vosges he went through the history of French Alsace. He had only to let his ardent heart speak, and it made him weep. It also made him sing, with the gaiety of a child, the songs of Nadaud, of Béranger, La Marseillaise, or the old Noels, which he sang to the pointed arches of the forest.
Jean took such a passionate interest in these evocations of old Alsace, and he so naturally entered into the hatreds and revolts of the present that his uncle, who was at first pleased at it as a sign of good family, ended by growing uneasy. One evening, when they had given alms to an old teacher, deprived of the right of teaching French, and reduced to misery because she was too old to get a German diploma, Jean's anger had carried him away.
"My dear Jean," said the uncle, "you must be careful not to go too far. You have to live with Germans."
Since then M. Ulrich had avoided returning so often to the question of the annexation. But alas! it was the whole of Alsace, it was the landscape, the descending road, the sign of some shop, the women's dress, the type of men, the sight of soldiers, the fortifications at the top of a hill, a finger-post, the different items in a newspaper bought in the Alsatian inn where they had dined in the evening—it was every hour of the day which called their minds back to the condition of Alsace, a nation conquered but not assimilated. In vain did M. Ulrich answer more carelessly and quickly—he could not hinder Jean's thought from travelling the road to the unknown. And when they climbed together a neck of the Vosges, the elder man saw with pleasure and apprehension Jean's eyes travel to seek the horizon on the west, and gaze there as at some loved face. Jean did not look so long at the east or the south.
A fortnight was employed in visiting the forest of the Vosges, and during this time M. Ulrich came back to Heidenbruch only twice for some hours. The separation took place only on Palm Sunday, in a village of the Valley of Münster.
It was evening—the hour when the valleys of the German side of the mountains were quite blue, and there was only a strip of light on the last pines which surrounded the shade. M. Ulrich Biehler had already said good-bye to this nephew, his dearest friend.
The servant had taken the train that same morning for Obernai, M. Ulrich, the collar of his cloak turned up because the cold was piercing, had just whistled to Fidèle and was leaving the inn, when Jean, in his blue hunting-costume, without a hat, came down the flight of steps.
"Again good-bye," he said.
And as the uncle, very upset, and not wishing to show it, made a sign with his hand to avoid words which might be tremulous—
"I will go with you to the last house of the village," continued Jean.
"Why, my boy, it is useless to prolong——"
His head turned towards his uncle, and his uncle, looking down the road, Jean began to walk. He commenced in his cajoling young voice:
"I am inexpressibly sorry to leave you, Uncle Ulrich, and I must tell you why. You understand before one says twenty words. You do not contradict aggressively: when you are not of my opinion, I know it by your mouth, which makes the point of your white beard rise—that is all. You are kind. You do not get angry, and I feel you are very decided. Other people's ideas all seem familiar to you—you are able to answer them so easily; you are respected by the weak. I was not accustomed to that on the other side of the Rhine."
"Bah! bah!"
"I even appreciate your fears about me."
"My fears?"
"Yes. Do you think that I did not see that there is another question which interests me intensely, and of which you have not spoken to me for six days?"
This time Jean did not see his uncle's profile; he saw his full face, and its expression was a little anxious.
"My boy, I did that purposely," said M. Ulrich. "When you questioned me, I told you what we were and what we are. And then I saw that I must not insist too much, because you would be full of grief. You see, grief is good for me; but for you, youth, it is better that you should start off like the horses which have not yet run a race, and only carry a very slight weight."
The last house was passed. They were in the country, between a stream strewn with many boulders, and a steep slope which joined the forest up above.
"Too late," said Jean Oberlé, holding out his hand and stopping, "too late; you have said too much, Uncle Ulrich. I feel I belong to the older times, as you do. And so much the worse, as to-morrow I go up to the Schlucht. I shall see her—I shall say good day to our country of France!"
He laughed as he uttered these words. M. Ulrich shook his head once or twice to scold him, but without answering, and he went away into the mist.
CHAPTER VI
THE FRONTIER
The next day Jean started in the morning on foot to go to the cutting bought by the House of Oberlé, which was situated on the crest of the mountains, enclosing the valley, to the left of the neck of the Schlucht, in the forest of Stosswihr. The way was long—the soil made slippery by a recent shower; besides, Jean lost several hours in going round a great rock he ought to have climbed. The afternoon was well advanced when he came to a wood cabin at the place where the road ended: just the time to talk to the German foreman who directed, under the supervision of the forest administration, the felling and transport of the firs; and the young man, continuing his climb, passed the workmen from the timber-yard coming down before the end of the day, to regain the valley. The sun, still splendid, was about to disappear on the other side of the Vosges. Jean was thinking with a beating heart of the frontier now quite near; however, he would not ask the way of the men who saluted him in passing, for he prided himself on hiding his emotions, and his words might have betrayed him before this gang of woodcutters released from work, and curious at the meeting. He entered the cutting they had just left. Around him the pine-trees, branchless and despoiled of their bark, were lying on the slopes, which they seemed to light up by the whiteness of their trunks. They had rolled—and stopped—one could not see why. At other times they had made a barrier and placed themselves pell-mell like spilikins on a game board. In the high forest there only remained one workman, an old man dressed in dark clothes who, kneeling, tied up in his handkerchief, a store of mushrooms he had gathered. When he had finished tying the ends of the red stuff with his clumsy fingers he got up, pushed his woollen cap well on to his head, and began to descend, with long strides over the moss, his mouth open to the odour of the forests.
"Ah," said Jean, "one minute, my man."
The man between two immense pine trunks, himself the colour of the bark, turned his head.
"Which is my nearest way to get to the neck of the Schlucht?"
"Go down by the waterfall, the way I go, and then turn up again. But do not go up there another two hundred yards, for then you go down into France; you will find paths which will lead you to the Schlucht. Good evening!"
"Good evening!"
The words rang out, soon lost in the vast silence. But one of them went on speaking to Jean Oberlé's heart: "You will go down into France." He was in a hurry to see her, this mysterious France, which held such a large place in his dreams, in his life—she, who had destroyed the unity of his family because the older members, some of them at least, remained faithful to her charms. France, for whom so many Alsatians had died and for whom so many others were waiting and whom they were loving with that silent love which makes hearts sad. So near him—she from whom he had been so jealously kept—she for whom Uncle Ulrich, M. Bastian, his mother, his grandfather Philippe, and thousands and thousands of others said a prayer every night!
In a few minutes he had reached the top and begun his descent on the other side. But the trees formed a thick curtain round him. And he began to run to find a road and a free space to see France. He took pleasure in sliding down and letting himself almost fall, head foremost, seeking the desired opening. On this side of the mountain the sun was touching the earth; here and there the air was still warm; but the pines always made a wall.
"Halt!" cried a man, showing himself suddenly, and coming out from behind the trunk of a tree. Jean went on running some steps—carried away by the impetus. Then he came back to the customs official who had called to him. Then the man, who was a brigadier, young and squat, with defective eyes, a little wild, two locks of yellow hair framing the thick-set face—the real type of a man of the Vosges, looked at the young man and said:
"Why the devil did you run? I thought you were a smuggler."
"I was trying to find a place to see a landscape in France...."
"Does that interest you? You are from the other side?"
"Yes."
"Not a Prussian all the same?"
"No; an Alsatian."
The man smiled slightly and said, "That is better!"
But Jean continued without taking up the conversation, and as if he had forgotten his question, to look at this poor officer of France, his face, his uniform, and to photograph them on his mind. The officer seemed amused at his curiosity and said, laughing:
"If it is a view you are after, you have only to follow me. I have one which the Government offers me to complete my treatment."
They both began to laugh, looking straight into each other's eyes quickly—less for what the customs officer had said than because of a certain sympathy which they felt for each other.
"We have no time to lose," said the brigadier, "the sun is dying down."
They went on under the vault of pines, turning round a cliff of bare rocks on which were planted at some distance two posts marking the spot where Germany ended and where France began, and at the end point, which was like a spur in the green, on a straight platform, which had its bed down in the forest, they found a watch-house of heavy planks of pines nailed on to the beams. From there one could see an immense landscape, which went on and on, sloping down—as far as human eye could see. In this moment and in the setting sun a pale golden light bathed the terraced lands, forests, villages, and rivers, the lakes of Retournemer and Longemer, softening the reliefs, and casting a colour like that of corn on uncultivated lands covered with heath. Jean remained standing, drinking in the picture to intoxication, and kept silence, while his emotion increased. He felt that the whole depth of his soul was full of joy.
"How beautiful it is!" he said.
The brigadier of customs, who was observing him from the corner of his eye, was flattered by the other's unstinted praise of his native district and answered:
"It is tiring, but in summer it is good to walk—for those who have the time. People come from Gérardmer, and from Saint Dié and Remiremont and from farther still. Many people come from over there——"
Over his shoulder, with his thumb reversed and turned backwards, he pointed to the country beyond the frontier.
Jean was shown in which direction lay the three towns of which the Custom House official had spoken. But he only followed his own thought with attention. What delighted him was the clearness of the air, and the idea of the illimitable, of the sweetness of life and of fertility which came to his mind at the sight of the French land. It was all he knew of France, what he had read, and what he had heard his mother, grandfather, and uncle Ulrich talk about, what he had pictured to himself, memories buried deep in his mind, which rose again suddenly like millions of grains of corn to the call of the sun.
The brigadier was seated on a bench, along the side of the hut; he had taken his short pipe from his pocket and was smoking.
When he saw the visitor turn towards him, his eyes full of tears, and seat himself on the bench, he guessed Jean's feelings; for Jean's admiration of the picturesque had escaped him, but the tears of regret at once made the brigadier grave. Those were from the heart, and a sublime equality united the two men. However, as he did not dare to question he stiffened his neck, until the muscles were visible, and began to study the horizon silently.
"What part of France do you come from?" asked Jean.
"About five leagues from here, in the mountain."
"Have you served your time in the army?"
The brigadier took his pipe from his mouth and his hand quickly touched the medal hanging on his breast.
"Six years," said he—"two furloughs. When I left I was a sergeant, with this medal, which I brought back from Tonquin. A fine time when it is finished." He spoke like travellers who prefer the remembrance of a journey but all the same have not disliked it. And he continued:
"With you, they say it is harder."
"Yes."
"I have always heard it said Germany is a great country, but the officer and the soldier are not relatives as in France."
The sun was going down; the great golden landscape became tawny in places and purple in shadow. This purple spread with the rapidity of racing clouds on shadowed slopes and veiled plains—how Jean Oberlé would have loved to see you again in strong light! He asked:
"Do you ever see any deserters?"
Those who pass the frontier before their service begins are naturally not known, only the soldiers serving in the Alsace-Lorraine regiments and who desert in uniform. "Yes; I have seen several poor fellows who had been too severely punished or whose tempers were too proud. You will say that some desert from our side too, and it is true; but then they are not so many——"
Shaking his head and looking tenderly at the sleeping forests:
"When one belongs to this side, you see, one can speak ill of it, but one is not satisfied elsewhere. You do not know the country, sir, and yet to look at you one would swear you belonged to it."
Jean felt himself getting red; his throat was dry; he could not answer. And the man, thinking that he had taken a liberty, said:
"Excuse me, sir; one never knows whom one meets; and it is better not to talk about these things. I must continue my rounds and go down again."
He was going to salute in military fashion; Jean took his hand and pressed it.
"You are not mistaken, my friend," he said.
Then, feeling in his pocket, he held out his cigar-case to him.
"Come, take a cigar!"
And then, with a kind of childish joy, he emptied his case into the hand which the Custom House official held out.
"Take them all; you will give me pleasure. Do not refuse me!"
It seemed as if he wanted to give something to France.
The brigadier hesitated for a moment, and closed his hand over them, saying:
"I will smoke them on Sunday. Thank you, sir! Good-bye!"
He saluted quickly, and was lost to sight almost immediately in the firs that clothe the mountains. Jean heard his footsteps growing fainter in the distance. Above all, he heard echoing in his soul, and with indescribable emotion, the words of this unknown man.
"You belong to us." "Yes, I belong here; I feel it, I see it; and that explains to me so many things in my life."
The shadow descended.
Jean saw the land darkening. He thought of those of his family who had fought there, round the villages submerged by the night, so that Alsace should remain united to that great country stretched out before him. "Sweet country—my country—every one has tender words for her; and I, why did I come? Why am I as moved as if she were living before me?"
In a little while, on the fringe of the sky just where the blue began, rose the evening star. Alone, faint but dominating as an idea.
Jean rose; the night was becoming quite dark, and he took the path which follows the crest of the hills; but he could not take his eyes from the star. Walking all alone in the deep silence, on the summit of the divided Vosges, he said to the star and to the shadow beneath:
"I belong to you; I am happy to have seen you. It frightens me to love you as I do!"
Soon he reached the frontier, and by the magnificent road crossing the Schlucht, went back again into the German-land.
The following day, the Tuesday of Holy Week, he was again at Alsheim, and handed to his father the report he had drawn up. Every one welcomed his return with such evident pleasure that he was very much touched by it. The evening after the "conference" between the old grandfather and the manufacturer, and at which Jean was present, since he had just returned from visiting the cuttings, Lucienne called her brother to the fire before which she was warming herself in the large yellow drawing-room. Madame Oberlé was reading near the window; her husband had gone out, the coachman having informed him that one of the horses had gone lame.
"Well!" asked Lucienne. "What is the most beautiful thing you saw?"
"You."
"No, do not joke; tell me, the most beautiful thing during your journey?"
"France!"
"Where?"
"At the Schlucht. You cannot imagine the emotion it made me feel. It was a shock—like a revelation. You do not seem to understand me."
She answered in an indifferent manner:
"Yes; I am delighted that you were pleased. It ought to be a very fine excursion at this time of the year. The first spring flowers, are there not? And the breeze in the woods? Ah, my dear boy, there is so much convention in all that!"
Jean did not go on. She it was who continued, and in a confidential voice, which she modulated, and made marvellously musical:
"Here we've had grand visits—oh, visits which nearly cost a scene. Imagine, two German officers came last Wednesday in a motor car to the lodge, and asked permission to see the saw-mills. Happily they were in mufti. The Alsheim people only saw two gentlemen like any others. Very fashionable; an old one—a commandant, and a young one with a grand air, and accustomed to society. If you had seen him bow to papa! I was in the park. They bowed to me too, and visited the whole of the works, personally conducted by our father. While this was going on that idiot Victor informed grandfather, who showed he was annoyed when we came in. I ought to have run away, it appears. As the gentlemen did not enter the house—'my house,' as grandfather says—his irritation did not last long. However, there was a sequel——"
Lucienne laughed a little stifled laugh.
"My dear, Madame Bastian did not approve of me."
"You were then present during their visit to the works, when these gentlemen——"
"Yes."
"All the time?"
"My father kept me. In any case, I do not see how that should affect the Mayor's wife. But I had such a cold bow from her, my dear, last Sunday at the church door. Do you care about the Bastians' bows?"
"Yes; in the same way that I care for the greetings of all good people."
"Good people—yes; but they do not know what life is! To be blamed by them is just the same to me as if I were to be blamed by an Egyptian mummy come to life for the purpose. I should answer: 'You do not understand anything about it; go and wrap yourself up again.' Is it not strange that you do not think as I do—you, my brother?"
Jean stroked the hand which was raised in front of him to make a screen.
"Even mummies can judge of certain things of our time, my darling—the things which are of all times."
"Oh! how serious you are. Come now, where was I wrong? Was it in going for a walk? In not looking away? In answering a greeting? In obeying my father, who told me to come and stay?"
"No; assuredly not!"
"What harm have I done?"
"None. I have danced with many German girls. You can acknowledge an officer's greeting."
"Then I did right?"
"As a fact, yes. But there are so many sorrows around us—real sorrows, and so noble. You must remember that they all come to life again at a word, or a gesture."
"I shall never consider that. Since what I do is not wrong, no one shall ever stop me. Do you hear?"
"That is where we differ, Lucienne. It is not so much in our ideas; it is in a whole range of feelings which your education prevents you from possessing."
He kissed her, and the conversation wandered to different topics.
CHAPTER VII
THE EASTER VIGIL
The weather had settled fine. Jean found the plain of Alsace in full spring glory.
However, he only felt a faint and mixed pleasure in the sight he had longed for. He came back from this excursion more upset than he cared to own to himself. It had revealed to him the opposition of the two nations—that is to say, of two minds, the persistent memory of many of the poor, and the difficulty they found to make a livelihood which their prudent and even hidden opinions created for them. He understood better now how difficult a part his would be to play in the family, at the works, in the village, in Alsace.
The pleasure he felt the morning after his return at his father's congratulations on the report of the forest cultivation by the House of Oberlé made only a short diversion in the midst of this worry. He tried in vain to appear quite happy, and he duly deceived those whose interest it was to be deceived.
"My Jean," said his mother, kissing him as he was going to sit down to breakfast, "I think you look splendid. The strong Alsheim air agrees with you, and also being near your poor mamma!"
"Fancy that!" said Lucienne, "and I thought him very gloomy!"
"Business," explained M. Joseph Oberlé, turning towards the window where his son was sitting, "cares of business. He has handed me a report, on which I must congratulate him publicly; it is very well drawn up, very clear, and the result of which will be that I shall economise, in four places at least, in the transport of my trees. You understand, father?"
The grandfather made a sign with his head. But he finished writing something on the slate, and showed it to his daughter-in-law.
"Has he already seen the country weep?"
Madame Monica rubbed the sentences out quickly with her fingers. The others looked at her, and all were uneasy, as if there had been some painful explanation between them.
Jean again experienced that intimate sorrow for which there is no remedy. All the afternoon he worked in the office at the saw-mills, but he was distracted and dreamy. He reflected that Lucienne would go away one day, and that nothing would be altered; that the grandfather might disappear also, and that the division would still go on. All the plans that he had had when far away, the hope of being himself a diversion, of bringing peace, of uniting them or of giving them an appearance of union: all that appeared childish to him now. He saw that Lucienne had spoken truly when she made fun of his illusions.
No, the evil was not in his family, it was in the whole of Alsace. Even if no one of his name lived at Alsheim, Jean Oberlé would meet at his door, in the village, among his workmen, his clients, and his friends the same annoyance at certain moments, always the same question. Neither his will nor any will like his could deliver his race, either now or later.
In this melancholy mood the idea of seeing Odile again, and making her love him, came back to him and took possession of his mind. Who else besides Odile could make life at Alsheim acceptable to him, and bring back his scattered and suspicious friends, and re-establish the name of Oberlé in the esteem of "Old Alsace"? He saw now that she was more than a pretty woman towards whom his youthful heart went out in song; he saw in her peace and dignity, and the only strength possible in the difficult future which awaited him.
She was the brave and faithful creature whom he needed here.
How to tell her? How to find an opportunity to speak freely to her, without the risk of being surprised, and troubling this orderly and jealous family? Evidently not at Alsheim. Then where should he arrange to meet her? And how could he forewarn her?
Jean thought of this all the evening.
The next day, Maundy Thursday, was the day on which in Catholic churches the Tomb would be decorated with flowers, branches of trees, materials, and torches placed in ledges, where the faithful hasten to adore the Host. It was beautiful weather, clear, even too clear for the time of year, when clearness calls up mist or rain.
After he had talked with his mother and Lucienne in M. Philippe Oberlé's room—it was the first time that he had felt that his home held a family—Jean went towards the orchards, which are behind the houses of Alsheim, and followed the road which he had taken a few weeks ago to call on the Bastians. But a little beyond the Ramspachers' farm he took the path which up to there ran at right angles to the avenue, and was now parallel with it, and with it joined the village road. He came out on to a piece of waste land, used for carts by many farmers on the plain. The neighbouring fields were deserted. The road was partially screened by a bank of earth planted with hazel-trees. Jean walked along the quick-set hedge which ran round the Bastians' property, approached the village, and came back again. He waited. He hoped that Odile would soon come into the path on the other side of the hedge to go to the Alsheim church to pray at the Tomb.
The remembrance of former meetings, at the same place and on the same day, had come into his mind, and had decided him. As he began the walk for the third time he saw what he had not seen at first.
"How wonderful," he said to himself. "The road was made for her!"
At the end of the avenue, for more than two hundred yards in front, the fence, the clumps of trees, a small portion of the long roof appeared in a marvellous frame.
The old cherry-trees had flowered all together in the same week with the almond-trees and the pear-trees. The pear-trees blossom in clusters, the almond-trees in stars; as for the wild cherry-trees, from the forest transplanted to the plain—they blossom into white distaffs of bloom.
Round the substantial branches, swollen and coloured red with sap, thousands of white corollas like a drift of snowflakes, trembled on their fragile stalks, and so thick were they that in many places one could not see the branch itself. Every tree cast its flowery spindles in all directions. So many of the cherry-trees were old that from one side of the avenue to the other the points of the flowering branches touched and intermingled. A swarm of bees covered them with hovering wings. A subtle odour of honey floated in waves down the avenue, and was wafted on the wind far away to the plain, to the fields, to the scarcely covered ground surprised by this feeling of spring. There were no trees in the large open valley which could vie with these for splendour—only to the right—and quite close, the four walnut-trees of the Ramspachers had begun to show their leaves, and seemed with their heavy branches to be enamels encrusting the farm walls.
The minutes passed by—the petals of the cherry-blossoms fell in showers. And lo, here is a woman stooping to unlatch the gate—it is she! She stands erect, and walks onwards in the middle of the path, between its two borders of grass—quite slowly, for she is gazing upwards. She is looking at the white blossoms which are open. The idea of a bride's wedding wreath, an idea so familiar to young girls, passes through her mind. Odile does not smile, only her face beams with an uplifted look, and an involuntary stretching out of her hands gives the greeting and thanks of her youth to the joyous earth.
She goes down towards Alsheim. On her fur cap, on her rounded cheeks, on her blue cloth dress, the wild cherry-trees shed their blossoms. She is serious. In her left hand she carries a prayer book, half hidden in the folds of her skirt. She thinks she is alone.
The splendour of the day speaks to her. But there is nothing languid about her. She is a valiant creature; she is made to face life bravely. Her eyes, which seek the tree-tops, are alive and masters of her thoughts, and do not give themselves up to a tempting dream. She was drawing near, never suspecting that Jean was waiting for her. The meal-time ended, the usual noises were going on in the village of Alsheim, rumbling cart-wheels, barking dogs, voices of men, of children calling to each other, but all softened by the distance, scattered in the vast aerial space, drowned in the tide of the wind, as is the noise of a clod of earth which has become loose and falls into the sea.
As she came near, Jean took off his hat and stood up a little on the other side of the hedge. And she who walked between two walls of blossoms, although she was gazing upwards, turned her head, her glance still full of the spring which had excited her.
"Oh, is that you?" she said.
And she came at once across the strip of grass where the cherry-trees were planted, up to the place in the hedge where Jean was.
"I cannot come to you freely as I used to," he said, "so I came to wait for you. I have a favour to ask of you...."
"A favour? And you say that so seriously!" She tried to smile, but her lips refused. They had both become pale.
"I am going," said Jean, as if he was making a grave declaration; "I am going up to Sainte Odile the day after to-morrow—I shall go to hear the bells ring in Easter. If you also asked for permission to come——"
"You have made a vow?"
He answered:
"Something like it. I must speak to you—to you alone."
Odile withdrew slightly. With something of fear in her look she was trying to find out if Jean was speaking the truth—if she had guessed aright. He was watching her in an agony of anxiety. They were motionless, trembling, and so near and yet so far from each other that one would have said that they were threatening each other. And in fact both felt that the peace of their lives was at stake. They were not children, but a man and a woman of a strong and passionate race. All the powers of their being asserted themselves and broke through the hackneyed commonplaces of custom, because in these simple words, "I must speak to you," Odile had heard the breath of a soul which was giving itself, and which demanded a return.
In the deserted avenue the old cherry-trees lifted their white distaffs of blossom, and in the cup of each flower the spring sun was resting.
"The day after to-morrow?" she said, "at Sainte Odile—to hear the bells ring?"
She repeated what he had said. But that was to gain time, and to gaze deeper into those eyes fixed upon her, eyes which looked like the green depths of the forest.
There was a great calm in the plain and in the next village. The wind ceased for a moment—Odile turned away.
"I will go," she said.
Neither of them explained themselves further. A covered cart rolled along the road, not far off. A man shut the gate through which carts pass to the Bastians' farm. But the great thing was Jean had said what he had to say.
In the profound depths of their souls the words echoed and re-echoed. They were no longer alone. Both had the sacred moment of their meeting enclosed, as it were, in themselves, and they fell back on their own thoughts as the earth in the furrows does when the sowing is done, and the germinating seed is beginning to expand.
Odile went away. Jean admired the healthy and beautiful woman disappearing along the road. She walked well, without swinging her body. Above the white neck, Jean placed in imagination the big black bows of the Alsatian women who live beyond Strasburg. She no longer raised her eyes towards the cherry-trees. She let her skirt trail, and it swept the grass, making a little dust fly, and the petals of cherry blossoms, which flew about a little in the wind before dying.
The day after to-morrow was slow in coming. Jean had said to his father:
"Some pilgrims are going up to Sainte Odile on Saturday to hear the Easter bells. I have never been there at this time. If you do not mind, it is an excursion I should much like to make."
He did not mind.
Jean opened his window when he woke that morning. There was a thick fog. The fields near the house were invisible.
"You will not go in this weather?" asked Lucienne, when she saw her brother come into the dining-room, where she was drinking her chocolate.
"Yes, I shall go."
"You will see nothing."
"I shall hear."
"Is it then so extraordinary?"
"Yes."
"Then will you take me?"
She did not wish to go to Sainte Odile. Dressed in a light morning-gown trimmed with lace, and drinking her chocolate in little sips, she had no intention whatever of doing anything but stop her brother on his way and kiss him.
"Seriously, are you making a kind of pilgrimage up there?"
"Yes—a kind of——"
Bending at this moment over her cup, she did not see the quick smile which accompanied the words. She answered a little bitterly:
"You know I'm not devout. I fulfil my obligations as a Catholic but poorly, and the practices of devotion do not tempt me. But you, you have more faith than I have. I am going to tell you what you ought to ask for—it will be worth a pilgrimage, I can tell you." She changed her tone, and her voice became suddenly passionate; she raised her eyebrows, her eyes were at once self-willed and affectionate, and she said:
"You must ask for that miracle of perfection among women who will live with you here. When I am married and go away life will be terrible for you here. You will have to bear all alone the misery of the family quarrels, and the suspicions of the peasants. You will have no one to pity you. That is the part to play. Ask for some one strong enough, gay enough, and with a conscience fine enough to do it, since you would live at Alsheim. You see, my thought is that of a friend."
"Of a great friend."
They kissed each other.
"Good-bye, Pilgrim, good-bye—good luck!"
"Good-bye."
Jean got away. He was soon in the park, turned after passing through the gate, went through the hop-fields and the vineyards, and so into the forest.
The forest was also full of mist. The serried masses of pines, which took the hill as it were by storm, appeared grey from one bank of the stream to the other, and were almost immediately lost in a thick mist without sun and without shadow.
Jean did not go up the beaten track. He went gaily climbing up the woods when not too steep, and stopping sometimes to take breath and to listen if he could not catch above as below, somewhere in the mysterious and impenetrable mists of the mountain, either the voice of Odile or the chant of the pilgrims. But no; he only heard the rushing of water, or perhaps the voice of some one calling to his dog, or the timid call of some poor peasant of Obernai picking up dead sticks with his child, in spite of the regulation which allows wood-picking only on Thursdays. The saucepan must boil on Easter Sunday! And was not this fog which hid everything a divine protection against the forest guard?
Jean experienced great pleasure from this solitary, stiff climb. As he went up he thought of Odile more and more, and he was more and more glad that he had chosen this holy place of Alsace in which to meet her—and this day—doubly affecting. Everywhere around him the beautiful scalefern which carpets the rocky slopes unfolded its velvet fronds. On all last year's shoots of honeysuckle there were little leaves; the first strawberries were in flower, and the first lilies of the valley. The geraniums, which are so fine in Sainte Odile, lifted their hairy stalks, and the multitude of whortle berries and bilberries and raspberries, that is the entire undergrowth, whole fields of it, began to pour out on the breeze the perfume of their moving sap. The fog retained these few scents and kept them in like a net work on the sides of the Vosges.
Jean came close to Heidenbruch, looked at the green shutters and went on his way. "Uncle Ulrich," he murmured, "you would be glad if you saw me, and if you knew where I am going, and with whom, perhaps, I shall be presently!" Fidèle barked, half asleep, but did not come. The mountain was again deserted. A buzzard called above the mist. Jean, who had not been this way since his childhood, enjoyed the wildness and peacefulness of the place. He reached the higher part, which is the property of the bishopric of Strasburg, and followed the "pagan wall" which surrounds the summit for ten miles, that he might recall his school-boy impressions of long ago.
At midday he had passed the Männelstein rock and entered the convent courtyard, built on the mountain top, a crown of old stone placed above the summit of the pine forests; and there, although there was no crowd, he found groups of pilgrims, carriages with horses unharnessed, fastened to the trunks of ancient lime-trees, grown no one knew how at this altitude, and covering with their branches nearly the whole enclosure. Jean remembered the way; he went towards the chapels on the right. He merely passed through the first, which is painted, but stopped in the second, with elliptical arches leading to the shrine, where lies the wax figure of the patroness of Alsace, the Abbess Sainte Odile—so gentle, with her pink face, her veil, and her golden crozier, her purple mantle lined with ermine. Jean knelt down: with all the strength of his faith he prayed for his home, so sadly divided against itself, from which he felt glad to be away, and that Odile Bastian should not fail to keep this love tryst, the hour for which was so near at hand. As his was a sincere soul, he added: "Let our way be made clear to us! May we follow it together! Let us see all obstacles removed from our path!"
The whole of Alsace had knelt at the same spot for centuries.
Then he went out to the refectory, where the nuns had begun to help the first visitors. Odile was not there. After the lunch, which was very long, being continually lengthened by the arrival of fresh pilgrims, Jean went hastily to the foot of the great rock on which the convent is built, and finding once more the road which comes from Saint Nabor and passes by Sainte Odile's well, he posted himself in a thick part of the wood which overlooked a bend in the road. At his feet was the narrow strip of downtrodden earth, bare of grass and covered with pine needles, and which seemed hanging in the air. Far beyond that point the slope of the mountain became so steep that he could see no farther. In clear weather you could see to right and left two sunken wooden buttresses, but now the curtain of white mist hid everything—the abyss, the slopes, and the trees. But the wind blew and moved the mist, whose thickness, one could feel, varied from minute to minute.
It was two o'clock. In an hour the Easter bells would ring. The people who wanted to hear them could not now be far from the summit, and in the great silence Jean heard, rising upwards from below, voices blending round the bend of the wood. Then a phrase whistled: "Formez vos bataillons!" warned him that Alsatian students were near. Two young men—he who had whistled overtaken by another—came little by little out of the fog and went towards the abbey.