THE HEART 
 
 OF 
 
 ALSACE 
 
 BENJAMIN 
 VALLOTTON 
 
"T 
 
 ^ 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 BY 
 
 BENJAMIN VALLOTTON 
 
 Author of "Potterat and the War" 
 
 "Wouldst thou change our Alsatian race? 
 Sooner might'st thou our hearts displace.' 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
 1918 
 
Copyright, 1918 
 By DODD, mead and company. Inc. 
 
^0 
 
 THE MEMORY OF 
 
 MY ALSATIAN PUPILS 
 
 WHO DIED FOR FRANCE 
 
 956S68 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The annexed provinces will have no reason to blush for 
 their half-century of slavery! Those who have failed to 
 keep the compact of silent fidelity are but a handful. 
 The hostages of defeat, Alsatians and Lorraines have 
 courageously accepted the part of the representatives of 
 human dignity protesting against brutal force. The 
 small nations owe them a deep debt of gratitude. Their 
 courageous resistance has had this result: that hence- 
 forth the strong will hesitate to treat the weak like a 
 flock of cattle to be driven at will. 
 
 Twelve years spent in Alsace have filled the writer of 
 these pages with a respect for that country which it is 
 hard to express in words. The conquerors have flattered, 
 threatened, abused, struck (witness the Saverne affair, in 
 which the odious and the ridiculous vied with each 
 other) ; the Alsatians have opposed the dyke of their 
 good sense to the turbid waters of Pan-Germanism, forti- 
 fied by their attachment to the traditions of liberty and 
 culture derived from their distant past, and by two cen- 
 turies of community with France. 
 
 Alsace (and if I say nothing of Lorraine it is because 
 I confine myself to things I have actually seen and to 
 some extent experienced) has known only the Germany 
 
 V 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 puffed up with pride, and infatuated with her science and 
 her victories, who came into the Reichsland to colonize, 
 to " civilize," to preach the whole gospel of Pan-German- 
 ism, the fruit of which, after a rapid and inevitable evo- 
 lution, has been the most savage of all wars. When we 
 pass in review the methods and practices suddenly re- 
 vealed to a horrified world, and remember that Alsace 
 was given over, bound hand and foot, to the men re- 
 sponsible for these methods and practices, we can form 
 some idea of the sufferings of the annexed provinces since 
 they were torn .from France. 
 
 I said one day to a pedagogue who was dealing out 
 harsh measure in Alsace: 
 
 " Can't you put yourself in the place of the Alsatians 
 for a moment? " 
 
 With an arrogant gesture, he replied : 
 
 " We don't wish to put ourselves in their places. We 
 are here to manifest our strength." 
 
 These words give a very exact indication of the spirit 
 which has informed attempts to Germanize the " long-lost 
 brothers." Many of the German officials show indisput- 
 able professional virtues; the administration is remark- 
 able for its habits of order, its organizing abilities, its 
 rectitude, qualities which all must admire; but it is no 
 less notable for a want of tact, a determination to break 
 and crush those in subjection to it, a supreme contempt 
 for the feelings of those who had been severed from 
 their fatherland by the sword. 
 
 Every noble soul has been impelled to resist. 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 The pages of this book, a record of daily experiences, 
 were dictated to the heart of a Swiss by his love of liberty. 
 They tell the humble commonplace truth concerning 
 simple lives, spent in the quietude of a narrow valley. 
 
 Do you remember, friend Bacher? . . . We went at 
 the top of Hartmannswillerkopf, in a trench where the 
 soldiers were watching, their fingers on the trigger of 
 their guns, a dozen yards from the foe. A few paces 
 from us, the Chief Adjutant Antoine had just been 
 killed by a bullet through his forehead. There was an 
 odour of death in the air; the entrails of the mountain 
 were laid bare. We looked alternately through a narrow 
 loop hole at the plain of Alsace, the smoke of Mulhouse, 
 and above all, at the ruins of Cernay and Vieux-Thann at 
 our feet. How many ruined villages we had passed 
 through on the preceding day! How many hundreds of 
 graves we had seen ! And you said suddenly, as if speak- 
 ing to yourself — you, who gave up all and risked all at 
 the call of honour: 
 
 "Poor Alsace! But there is happiness in her suffer- 
 ing! " 
 
 How I envied you! And how well I understood what 
 one of my Alsatian pupils, mortally wounded, had said 
 before his death at the age of twenty-three: 
 
 " I am very happy ! " 
 
 B. V. 
 
 OUCHY. 
 
 September 1, 1918. 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 I 
 
 WHEN Aunt Emma heard that her nephew was go- 
 ing to Alsace, she remarked unctuously: 
 
 " Let us hope he will behave prudently there. It is 
 not his business to fan the flame." 
 
 His University studies at Lausanne having come to an 
 end, in token whereof a little old secretary had handed 
 him the customary parchment, Andre Reymond was his 
 own master. Hitherto, when he had been told, "Do 
 this," he had done it; "Read that," he had read it; 
 "Translate this passage," he had translated it to the 
 best of his ability. . . . All at once, the certificated 
 persons who teach one to speak, write, and think, had 
 disappeared, and he stood face to face with life, which 
 one must get through somehow, elbowing one's neigh- 
 bours, meeting rebuffs with a smile, playing one's part. 
 
 Sentimental by nature, and with a heart ravaged by 
 an impossible love-affair, Reymond felt an almost physi- 
 cal need to see something of the world before he was 
 caught up into the machinery of routine: the college in 
 the small country town, the bewildered little boys one 
 drags along from a declension to an irregular verb, the 
 petty salary, the petty cares, the petty successes, the eter- 
 
2 THE HE4RT OF ALSACE 
 
 nal harking back to beginnings, a kind of narrow worth, 
 of puny dignity, until the day when a colleague in a 
 frock-coat pours out the customary periods on your grave. 
 
 To see the world, did I say? When a youth is the 
 eldest of seven brothers and sisters, the youngest of 
 whom is still an infant, and his parents, terrified by the 
 rising prices of provisions, thrusts the elders of the brood 
 resolutely out of the nest, there is not much choice of 
 methods. What a good idea it was of Monsieur Bohler's 
 to engage a tutor for his children! . . . Alsace . . . 
 storks, hop-gardens, old men in red waistcoats, women 
 in caps with large black bows. . . . Alsace, the tragic 
 land where strangers press your hand and murmur: 
 "Long live France! " Thus at least did it suggest itself 
 to Reymond, whose ideas of it were founded on lachry- 
 mose lyrics and feuilletons whose heroes, like Hannibal, 
 bound themselves by terrible oaths! His imagination 
 was fired. He left his native town on a warm September 
 morning, accompanied by the good wishes of his family 
 and the moderating counsels of his Aunt Emma. 
 
 Farewell, calm waters of Leman, farewell to the opti- 
 mism of curving bays and sunlit slopes! 
 
 At Basle the young man wandered through streets 
 bordered by low houses. On the lofty terrace of the 
 Cathedral of pink sandstone, he lost himself in con- 
 templation of these new horizons. To the right the hills, 
 the distant chaos of the mountains, the blue line of the 
 valleys, the little country districts with their clear rivers, 
 each snugly enclosed in the space allotted to it by Nature, 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 3 
 
 with its acres, fields, flock, and belfry. In front and to 
 the left, the Duchy of Baden, the plain that stretches out 
 between the Vosges and the Black Forest, and then 
 more hills, but without the massive groundwork of rock, 
 hills that undulate gently, like a stormy sea sinking to 
 rest, allowing one to divine beyond them tracts of level 
 groimd, marshes, heaths, rivers with sluggish waters, and 
 the smoke of busy towns. 
 
 Reymond's birthplace was a canton from which tragedy 
 is banished. Its inhabitants drink wine. They live with- 
 out violent passions and mad ambitions. They crack 
 jokes; they have a gentle belief in equality and liberty, 
 but, above all, in happiness. Reymond, parted from 
 these peaceful surroundings for the first time at the age 
 of twenty-two, was moved. His eyes turned again and 
 again to the river. The torrent foams round the surface 
 of the rocks, gathering up the cold waters of the glaciers, 
 hardly abating its turbulence in a lake, amusing itself 
 again by leaping down among the rocks of Schaffhausen, 
 and roaring between the narrow banks; then, suddenly 
 expanding, it turns its back on the land of the mountains; 
 its green waters roll in strength, they slap the abutments 
 of bridges and glide among the reeds with an impulse so 
 unanimous that for an instant, in spite of the vortex of 
 whirlpools, they produce an illusion of perfect immobil- 
 ity. 
 
 Reymond strained his ears to catch the rustling move- 
 ments of this monster with supple scales. Before this 
 mass, sweeping forward irresistibly, his ideas were in 
 
4 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 upheaval; he conceived of forces that despise, deny, and 
 crush; he felt himself carried away, reduced to nothing- 
 ness by this green river, going off to conquer the world 
 with the confidence of a violence that grinds and pul- 
 verizes. 
 
 Resting his hands on the warm stone of the terrace- 
 wall, Raymond seemed to hear the soft voice of his Aunt 
 Emma, the gentle pacifist: " Be careful, my boy. Don't 
 excite the Alsatians. War is so horrible! " The river 
 flowed on to its fate. 
 
 In the central hall of the railway-station was a cos- 
 mopolitan mob; persons running, others gesticulating, 
 rows of commissionaires with buckled straps, persons who 
 had subsided, exhausted, on a bench and sat mopping 
 their heated foreheads, all types and all tongues, as 
 seen in a corridor through which every one has to pass. 
 Through a half-open door, people were to be observed, 
 eating with great gravity. A huge advertisement of 
 a special chocolate dominated the hurly-burly of this 
 return after the holidays. It represented a flower- 
 spangled meadow at the foot of violet peaks, in which 
 stood sleek milch cows and a theatrical shepherd, carol- 
 ling to the sun. Reymond cast a lingering look at these 
 cows. Then, seizing his valise, he followed the crowd. 
 
 In the German Custom-house voices were lowered, as 
 if in deference to the dismal discipline which reigned in 
 the place. The Customs officers, haughtily civil, in 
 belted green tunics, bent over the luggage, felt among 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 5 
 
 it, asked brief questions, entirely absorbed in those pro- 
 fessional rites which culminate in the hieroglyphs they 
 trace with chalk. In other countries Customs officers 
 are sceptical, or good-natured, or gallant. Those of Ger- 
 many have the gravity proper to servants of the Empire. 
 They watch its portals as outpost sentries. Kaiserliche 
 Zollrevision. Kaiserlich! This is the business device, 
 the rallying sign, the mystic word, the secret of success. 
 Kaiserlich! Posts, prisons, policemen, and prefects, all 
 are Kaiserlich. And on the buckles of belts we read: 
 Gott mit uns. The Emperor and God! The two forces, 
 which are but one, proclaim themselves on the very 
 frontier. 
 
 Reymond bore himself humbly. His voice sounded 
 muffled. When the man in green declared himself sat- 
 isfied, he passed unobtrusively into the corridor where 
 the man who punches the tickets submitted to him waits 
 mournfully in a kind of cage. No one would ever think 
 of laughing, whistling, or joking here. The atmosphere 
 was impressive, orderly, decent, heavy. 
 
 Presently the train was gliding smoothly over the plain 
 of Alsace, among potato-fields and copses and vine-clad 
 slopes. A dull noise intimated the passage of the train 
 through a station. Then the traveller noted the red cap 
 of the station-master, the man at the level crossing 
 shouldering arms, the policeman with his spiked helmet. 
 And all saluted the passing train. 
 
 "Miilhausen!" 
 
6 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 Standing on the platform, Reymond was considering 
 which way to go, when a man with a short, bristling 
 moustache touched him on the arm. 
 
 " Where do you come from, sir? " 
 
 " From Lausanne." 
 
 " And you are Swiss? " 
 
 " I am." 
 
 " You serve in the army? '* 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Infantry? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " The name of your commanding officer, please? " 
 
 "Apotheloz." 
 
 " And where are you going? " 
 
 "ToFriedensbach." 
 
 ** Thank you. The train starts in two hours. Down 
 there." 
 
 The police-officer in plain clothes moved away, leaving 
 Reymond petrified by this formal interrogatory greeting 
 him as he stepped from the train, this threatening polite- 
 ness, this steel-grey scrutiny boring into the depths of his 
 eyes, 
 
 "Damnable country!" thought the young man. 
 "You were a fool to bind yourself for two years! If 
 they begin to suspect you the very first day, you are likely 
 to have a pleasant time." 
 
 Much impressed, he set out to explore Miilhausen, 
 strolling haphazard from street to street, on the watch for 
 a word, a gesture, a scene which should evoke the Alsace 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 7 
 
 of his dreams. The passers-by spoke a guttural patois. 
 There were German inscriptions on the shop-fronts. At 
 the cross-roads stood huge policemen wearing the in- 
 evitable spiked helmet. Noticing some persons in front 
 of him who were talking French, Reymond followed them 
 instinctively until the moment when they looked back 
 at him so distrustfully, dropping their voices, that he 
 fell behind. 
 
 Not far from some barracks, soldiers were drinking 
 beer on the terrace of a Wirtschaft, If an officer passed, 
 buttoned tightly in his long blue tunic, or a square- jawed 
 non-commissioned officer, these men sprang up, clicking 
 their heels sharply together, holding up their chins, ex- 
 tending their little fingers against the seams of their 
 trousers, as if mesmerized. Falling back into their 
 chairs, they plunged their noses anew into their mugs, 
 ready to jump up again at the warning clink of a sword 
 on the pavement. Reymond, accustomed to a discipline 
 tempered by geniality, was astonished; he looked at the 
 round faces of the soldiers, seeking the imperceptible 
 smile of one who is not a complete dupe, or evidences of 
 weariness, and finding nothing but a kind of intoxication 
 of subservience, a superstitious reverence for the emblems 
 of rank. 
 
 In front of the iron gate of the barracks a sentry paced 
 backwards and forwards, pirouetted, counted his steps, 
 pirouetted again and again, like an automaton fully 
 wound up. In the courtyard, a hundred soldiers were 
 stamping on the ground with disconcerting gravity, a 
 
8 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 kind of sacred fury, at the orders of a non-commissioned 
 officer who might have been in command of a brigade, 
 so loudly did he yell. At a sign from the sentry, Rey- 
 mond moved away. 
 
 A canal bordered by poplar-trees. Barges coming 
 from France or Germany cleft the dead water with their 
 broad breasts. On the decks of these craft barking dogs 
 ran along the flat edges, and then stood motionless, nose 
 to nose, belching forth insults before going their way — 
 irreconcilable creatures with curly coats and beardM 
 chops, giving utterance to things their masters were 
 saying within themselves. These masters, red-haired and 
 placid, fellows with a lively twist of the hips, wearing 
 gaily-coloured handkerchiefs round their throats, leaned 
 on the tiller, looking at each other. And the slow barges 
 crossed each other, their smooth flanks slipping along in 
 opposite directions, some towards a lower, others towards 
 a lighter sky. 
 
 . . . Again the train was gliding across the plain, 
 among heaths where broom and heather mingled and 
 hares and pheasants crouched. The Vosges were nearer. 
 At a narrowing of the valley, prettily grouped about its 
 cathedral with bronzed tiles, appeared an unexpected 
 town: Thann. And the policeman was there on the 
 watch. . . . Then the valley, the river with its white 
 pebbles, the inn near the arched bridge, the villages 
 planted among meadows, and in the valley the little train 
 threading its way, amusing itself by whistling to rouse 
 an echo, hiding itself in a tunnel for fun, acclaimed by 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 9 
 
 washerwomen kneeling before their tubs, shouted at by 
 boys, heralded by barking dogs. And up above, the blue 
 of the Vosges mountains, intersected by the deeper blue 
 of valleys running in every direction, a gay, translucent 
 blue laid upon the roseate earth and yellowing bushes. 
 
 Seated opposite to Reymond was a smooth-faced young 
 man with a pale complexion and a bitter mouth, who 
 seemed ready to embark upon a monologue for men only. 
 He started at his solitary fellow-traveller, and began sud- 
 denly: 
 
 " A fine day." 
 
 " Yes, indeed. And the country is charming." 
 
 " You are a Frenchman, perhaps? " 
 
 " No. I am from French Switzerland." 
 
 " Really? And I thought they talked only a German 
 patois in Switzerland! Have you come to spend a few 
 days in this corner of the world? " 
 
 "A few years." 
 
 "Ah! well met. . . . We shall probably be neigh- 
 bours at the restaurant-table. . . . The portly Made- 
 moiselle Schmoler, whose voice is as harmonious as her 
 name, has already trumpeted your advent. . . . My 
 name is Coquart, at your service. I am in the chemical 
 department of the factory. . . . You'll find it delightful! 
 . . . Workmen, ofi&cials in green hats, storks. . . . The 
 girls are all some forty kilometres away." 
 
 Reymond blushed ingenuously. 
 
 " Well, but Alsace ..." 
 
 " All gammon ! . . . Books tell you all that, and bar- 
 
10 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 rel-organs (the chemist, seizing an imaginary handle, 
 cast his eyes heavenwards and whined : " Alsace-Lor- 
 raine . . ."). Commonplaces for the delight of the soft- 
 hearted. They do very well on the stage, for the 
 apotheosis: music! and the Alsacienne sinks into the 
 arms of the French oflScer. In reality, there are perhaps 
 some few grandpapas who remember us. But as to the 
 majority! . . . Well, in the first place, they speak a 
 lingo ... oh ! I shall never believe that it can mean any- 
 thing. . . . And the revanche! . . . The place for that is 
 the Deroulede Museum." 
 
 There was a silence, broken by Reymond: 
 "But there are the Germans and the Alsatians? " 
 " Certainly. But it's not very easy to distinguish them 
 with the naked eye. . . . It's very difficult to know what 
 people think when you can't understand what they say. 
 In books, of course . . . zim, boom, up with sentiment! 
 In real life profit is the main thing. And then, you know, 
 it is a long time since the annexation. A good deal of 
 water has flowed under the bridges since the war. One 
 must live. You see, I don't blame them. . . . Mean- 
 while, it is not very lively." 
 
 The train stopped. The chemist Coquart jerked his 
 thumb at a little sunny station and a waiting carriage. 
 
 "This is Landbach. I suppose you get out here? 
 Your employer's house is nearer here than Friedensbach. 
 Oh! you have plenty of time. The express is in no great 
 hurry. Look, those urchins who are coming forward 
 are your pupils. So long! Delighted to have met you." 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 11 
 
 The two boys approached shyly, hat in hand. They 
 seemed to be about fourteen and fifteen respectively. 
 Jean, the elder, tall and thin, with a bird-like head, and 
 an attractive expression, touched by the melancholy of a 
 youth growing up in solitude; Rene, the younger, had a 
 more knowing air, nice round cheeks, and a roguish 
 twinkle. They stammered : " Have you had a comfort- 
 able journey. Monsieur? " 
 
 The coachman, a big ruddy fellow, had already stowed 
 away the luggage. The horses sprang forward, shaking 
 their manes. Master and pupils examined each other 
 stealthily. Rene, dilating his nostrils and pursing up 
 his lips, ventured on a grimace, followed by a laugh. 
 
 " That boy," said Reymond to himself, " is a handful. 
 If I don't take the offensive, and attack him with absurd- 
 ities, my authority will be nipped in the bud." 
 
 Then, suddenly: 
 
 " You look anaemic, my boy. We shall have to take 
 care of you. And what do you think of the future of 
 metaphysics? " 
 
 " Monsieur," replied the bewildered Rene, " I don't 
 know them." 
 
 "That's your fault. They go about a good deal. 
 True, you live somewhat off the main lines of communi- 
 cation. And how old is the aunt of the municipal sec- 
 retary? " 
 
 " I don't know. Monsieur." 
 
 "Well, is she any better?" 
 
 " I don't know her at all, Monsieur." 
 
12 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 " You seem to know no one. I thought you would have 
 a wider circle of acquaintances." 
 
 Rene, completely quelled, was reduced to silence. The 
 coachman, whose finger-tips emerged from sleeves too 
 long for him, drew up before a closed iron gate, and 
 cracked his whip to bring the lodge-keeper out. The 
 man hurried forward, readily subservient. The carriage, 
 somewhat shy of conveying its cushions through this 
 scene of labour, bumped over the uneven slag, passing 
 diagonally across the courtyard of the factory, which was 
 enclosed by low synometrical buildings with pointed 
 roofs. Behind the window-panes gleamed the sudden 
 light of a reviving fire and naked torsoes; elsewhere 
 heads were seen bent over ledgers; on every side there 
 was the slap of transmission -belts, the whir of machinery, 
 a smell of oil and sweat, and, above all this, a plume 
 of smoke, resolving itself slowly into a fine black rain. 
 Finally, the master's house, with a very simple fagade, 
 disfigured by a marquise due to the skill of some local 
 craftsman. 
 
 After the questions usually put to a traveller, the 
 party sat down to dinner. It was evident that Monsieur 
 Bohler disliked chatter. Sitting very erect, in a coat 
 buttoned up to the cravat, he confined himself to a few 
 brief phrases, as if his business cares pursued him even 
 in the family circle. The square forehead enframed in 
 short white hair, the masterful clean-cut features, the 
 clear, authoritative look, the abrupt gestures, inspired 
 fear and respect. He seemed the natural centre of the 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 13 
 
 group. Madame Bohler sat facing him, fair and slender, 
 gay, yet with a touch of gravity that gave an extraordinary 
 charm to her pretty face; she looked very young beside 
 her big sons, to whom she spoke chiefly by smiles. 
 
 To keep himself in countenance Reymond contem- 
 plated the decanters, which sparkled in the lamplight. 
 Embarrassed by this speechless reception, he systemati- 
 cally refused to help himself a second time, in spite of 
 the mute insistence of an old servant, who pressed the 
 dishes upon him, breathing hard into his ear. He 
 thought to himself: " We might be in the crypt of a 
 cathedral. ... I wonder if they dislike me. ... I can- 
 not begin to tell stories. . . . One is evidently expected to 
 hold one's tongue." 
 
 " What a splendid sunset there was this evening," 
 said Madame Bohler, unexpectedly. " The Drumont was 
 ablaze." 
 
 The young tutor did not know the Drumont yet. Rene 
 promised to show it to him the following morning from 
 the schoolroom window. 
 
 They went into the drawing-room. Reymond held 
 back to let Monsieur Bohler pass. 
 
 " Please go first. You are my guest." 
 
 " I'm afraid we shall never get on together," thought 
 Reymond. He felt very lonely, very far from all he 
 loved. 
 
 They sat down. A drawing-room not in everyday use 
 is as dismal as a family vault. Statuettes stood dully 
 on brackets. The Discobolus seemed to have lost heart, 
 
14 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 and to have given up the idea of hurling his missile. 
 There were corners where the candelabra shed but a 
 feeble glimmer. On the walls hung some uninteresting 
 pictures. But a violoncello near the open piano spoke of 
 life here. 
 
 Madame Bohler questioned Reymond. Had he any 
 brothers and sisters? . . . Seven! There was a moment 
 of stupefaction. Did he live on the shores of Lake 
 Geneva? 
 
 At nine o'clock exactly, Monsieur Bohler frowned. 
 
 " Come, boys." 
 
 They were pinching each other's calves on a corner of 
 the sofa. At these words, which were repeated every 
 evening, they rose, embraced their parents, shook hands 
 with their tutor, and wished him good-night. From the 
 corridor came the sound of laughter and of resounding 
 slaps. 
 
 " Let us go into the smoking-room." 
 
 Suddenly, Monsieur Bohler became a new man. He 
 offered Reymond a cigar. He himself, stretched out 
 in an arm-chair, lit his pipe, puffed out a cloud of smoke, 
 smiled benevolently, and began to talk with much ani- 
 mation. It was one of those metamorphoses often to 
 be seen in those who are a prey to crushing responsibili- 
 ties; they have their hours of expansion, all the more 
 attractive for being rare. 
 
 Reymond was to learn to know those manufacturers 
 of the small^ towns scattered among the Vosges valleys, 
 who rise at six every day of their lives, and go to work 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 15 
 
 more punctually than the meanest employe, severe to 
 others and also to themselves, a part of the machinery 
 they have set up, the slaves of that machinery. At noon 
 they escape for an hour. And in the evening, when the 
 hooter sounds and the workmen have trooped out through 
 the iron gates with a clatter of sabots, they scan the prices 
 of wool or cotton, run through the letters of the last post, 
 read the petition of the man dismissed for drunkenness, 
 sign a hundred papers — the soul of the great enterprise 
 which gives bread to hundreds of families. 
 
 If they relax their grasp the whole machine creaks. 
 The last lamp to be extinguished is theirs. Meals are 
 a matter of business which must be despatched expedi- 
 tiously, like all the rest. And looking out of the window 
 as they fold their table-napkin, they see the courtyard 
 where the rails of the Decauvilles gleam, the roofs and 
 chimneys of the factory which never suffers them to for- 
 get it for a moment. On Sundays, however, they call 
 their dogs. Gaitered and clad in heather-mixtures, pipe 
 in mouth and gun on shoulder, they take the road that 
 leads to the forest. When these men, whom the people 
 call in their patois the Barons of the Chimney-stacks, 
 return to their homes, they are not expansive. The win- 
 dows of the ofi&ce are already beckoning to them. 
 
 Their women spend much time alone; while their 
 husbands are hunting the hare or playing auction-bridge 
 at their clubs, their horses trot along the road that winds 
 like a ribbon along the valley; they pay visits to each 
 other, and as the little towns are far enough apart to 
 
16 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 prevent them from seeing each other frequently, yet near 
 enough to permit of weekly intercourse, they have many 
 subjects to discuss over a cup of tea. They talk of the 
 last play published by U Illustration, which they hope to 
 see in Paris in the spring, of the novel just begun in the 
 review. Meantime the children play in the garden, 
 climbing trees and dabbling in the basin of the fountain. 
 
 Then another slow week begins to the eternal rhythm 
 of the machines. There are a thousand household tasks: 
 the cleaning days, the washing days, the making of 
 Kougelhopfs, for the Alsatian housewife is her cook's 
 collaborator, and is not afraid of the heat of the stove. 
 But she also plays her part in civic matters: the creche, 
 the orphan school, the infirmary, the domestic training 
 school, the old women with coughs. Returning from her 
 perambulations, she sits down to her piano. And still 
 the machines rumble on. 
 
 It is a life of austere charm, very simple, very real — 
 a solid life in which every one contributes his daily effort 
 imostentatiously. And thus the dyke is built up which 
 the enemy cannot pierce. 
 
 All this Monsieur Bohler explained to his boys' tutor 
 in his concise speech. 
 
 "We are counting a good deal on you. ... I am 
 afraid I am a poor kind of father. It is a serious matter, 
 I know. The Socialist gentry, of course, think we all 
 have a good time. As a fact, we are slaves. We have to 
 struggle unceasingly. . . . Competition, overproduction. 
 . , . And Alsace is so out-of-the-way, so far from ports 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 17 
 
 and coalfields. Then we have so many other drawbacks. 
 . . . The political situation. ... It is an arduous game. 
 One has to be always on the spot . . . and one's family 
 suffers. ... On the other hand, we can hold no inter- 
 course with the officials and professors . . . and the re- 
 sult is isolation. Each man shuts himself up in his shell. 
 We have to be self-sufficing. The education of our sons 
 is a problem for us. There are, of course, the official 
 schools, which are good, and even excellent up to a cer- 
 tain point, but they destroy individuality. And, be- 
 sides, Alsatians are fed on lies in them. You see, you 
 will have to be a great deal to our boys." 
 
 " I will do my best," replied Reymond. " I am al- 
 ready interested in them. Rene has a scientific and sport- 
 ing bent, I should say. Jean is more dreamy, more 
 literary." 
 
 Both father and mother smiled, touched and pleased. 
 
 "Oh! " said Madame Bohler, "Rene is still a child. 
 He is barely fourteen. For the moment he is all for 
 athleticism. He talks of nothing but matches and rec- 
 ords. He knows the names of all the boxers in the 
 world. But he has a good heart. Only he must be 
 handled the right way, firmly. . . . Jean is thoughtful. 
 He is fond of music, a bit sentimental, philosophical . . ." 
 
 " In short," interrupted Monsieur Bohler, " they are 
 two boys much like other boys, not ill-disposed, not un- 
 intelligent, who must be made into men." 
 
 "You might tell Monsieur Reymond about his other 
 pupils . on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons. You 
 
18 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 must know, monsieur, that a French tutor is a rara avis 
 among us. Everybody wants him." 
 
 " Yes, it's true. Twice a week you will have a little 
 class. You must not boast of this, for it will rather 
 exceed the educational regulations. Our masters dread 
 the diffusion of the French language in Alsace above all 
 things. The number of pupils authorized to take a course 
 not given in the German language is strictly limited. 
 So your lessons will take the form of walks together, if 
 you are willing. Besides our two boys, you will have 
 Emile Zumbach, Andre Berger, and Charles Weiss, my 
 godson, the son of my agent. You will certainly meet 
 Monsieur Weiss presently. He will teach you to know 
 and love the Vosges. He is a delightful person, some- 
 what of a dilettante, a great collector of mushrooms, 
 raiser of poultry and rabbits, a nursery gardener, a horti- 
 culturist, a manufacturer, and I know not what besides. 
 The moving spirit of our Valley. A born optimist. And 
 yet he has had a great grief. Two years ago his eldest 
 son died at Munich during his term of military service." 
 
 "At Munich?" 
 
 " You are surprised. But, after all, some Alsatians 
 must remain in Alsace. Those who can hold their own 
 imder the whip are her true sons. I shall send my boys 
 to France in two years' time; but, then, my wife is a 
 Frenchwoman, and I myself fought in 1870. So there 
 are things which are impossible to us." 
 
 There was a sound of wheels in the courtyard. Ma« 
 dame Bohler rose. 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 19 
 
 "You will not understand our old Alsace in a day. 
 Elsewhere, folks live and let live. Here, nothing is 
 simple. If one goes, it is exile. If one remains, it is a 
 renewal of suffering every day. . . . But I think the 
 carriage is waiting for you. You will lodge at Friedens- 
 bach, as we told you, with the old Schmolers, the parents 
 of Madame Vogel, a widow, and Mademoiselle Stephanie 
 Schmoler, the owners of the restaurant where you will 
 take your meals. They are excellent people. You will 
 only have to come down one story from your bedroom 
 to the dining-room. You will have companions : chemists 
 and employes of our offices, a few Germans also, I be- 
 lieve — officials. But I think they have a separate table." 
 
 " Isn't there a Monsieur Coquart there? We travelled 
 together." 
 
 Monsieur Bohler began to laugh. 
 
 "Oh! he's just a buffoon. That's why the Germans 
 tolerate him." 
 
 In the darkness, through which the trickle of the river 
 could be heard, the carriage rolled along an unknown 
 road. Dogs barked indignantly in the distance. Then 
 a deep calm fell on everything. A woman pulled back 
 a curtain. The lowered persiennes twinkled against the 
 black walls of the houses. The carriage stopped pres- 
 ently in the heart of the little town before a very low 
 house which, with its projecting wings, looked like a sit- 
 ting hen. There was a flutter of welcome, in spite of the 
 late hour. Mademoiselle Stephanie held the lamp, be- 
 hind which her cheeks shone like ripe fruits. Madame 
 
20 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 Vogel was a highly decorative widow, whose professional 
 smile brought out a most attractive dimple on either side 
 of her chin. Reymond was shown his place at the end of 
 a table already set for tomorrow's breakfast, and his 
 luggage was carried up the steep, well waxed staircase 
 leading to the home of the old people. 
 
 They were a delicious pair! Rosy and benevolent, 
 they gazed at you with old-world dignity: the old man 
 short, bearded, and long-haired like a Father Christmas, 
 with an amazingly round face in which little limpid eyes 
 twinkled under bristling eyebrows. His wife, who wore 
 a white cap modestly tied under her chin, submissive, 
 bent, and wrinkled, was always trotting about, no one 
 knew why. And each time he called her, often for no 
 reason, " Jacobine! " she replied like an echo: "What 
 is it, Joseph? " This she said in French, for it is a point 
 of honour with the old folks to speak it still, more or less, 
 with that Alsatian accent of which it may be said that 
 if heaven and earth pass away, it will remain. 
 
 Joseph Schmoler received his guest gravely. 
 
 " You will be very quiet here with us. . . . Only our- 
 selves, two old good-for-nothings, our two daughters, and 
 Jacob, our little grandson of nine, a very obedient child." 
 
 Jacobine showed him two rooms which smelt of soap; 
 he saw a china stove, some artless engravings, and a num- 
 ber of sea-shells, relics of some roaming ancestor; the 
 bed stood on high legs, and was surmounted by a tester 
 of printed cretonne. 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 21 
 
 The old couple retired solemnly, with benedictions on 
 their guest. 
 
 Reymond closed his eyes. ... In his dreams he saw 
 Lake Leman, its russet shores bending over the smiling 
 waters; the Basle Munster and its cloisters paved with 
 tombstones, the Rhine rolling its green waves, spiked 
 helmets, Coquart, the Bohlers' drawing-room, Joseph and 
 Jacobine, the little Alsatian town under the stars. . . . 
 
II 
 
 Friedensbach, 
 October 20, 1907. 
 
 Dear Parents, 
 
 ... I went back yesterday to old Kraut, to give 
 him the certificate of good conduct and morals you sent 
 me, as it was lacking in my collection. Kraut planted his 
 spectacles on the extreme point of his inquisitive nose. 
 After going through all my papers again, one by one, 
 examining the seals, the signature, the very flourishes, 
 he finally said in French, also paternally: 
 
 " You have an excellent certificate of morals and gen- 
 eral conduct. . . . That's more essential than anything. 
 . . . You are going to teach Monsieur Bohler's sons, I 
 understand? . . . Teach them French, I believe? I 
 speak French too, like a good many Alsatians. One may 
 be a true German and yet be able to speak foreign lan- 
 guages." 
 
 I maliciously insinuated once more that I am a French 
 Swiss. 
 
 I thought Kraut had suddenly gone mad. He grasped 
 the edge of his desk with both hands, he half tore himself 
 away from the well-being of his padded stool, and thrust- 
 ing his enormous head into the opening in the grating, 
 he shouted, tapping on his stomach: "And your heart. 
 ... Is it Swiss or French? " I drew back in alarm. 
 
 22 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 23 
 
 Kraut then, seeing my confusion, fell back upon his stool, 
 and laughed as he laughs in the restaurant when some one 
 explains a pun for his benefit — laughed long and loud, 
 with face, throat, shoulders, and stomach. By degrees 
 the paroxysm subsided. Then Kraut concluded: 
 
 "Thank you. Monsieur le Professeur. Everything is 
 in order. As an Alsatian, I welcome you to our German 
 soil." 
 
 As twelve o'clock was about to strike, and Monsieur 
 Kraut began to take off his black calico sleeves, I offered 
 him a cigar, which he accepted very naturally. The 
 negroes, we are told, appease the fury of their gods by 
 little presents. Why should not civilized persons use 
 the same methods to propitiate an omnipotent bureau- 
 cracy? 
 
 The Schmolers tell me that this Kraut is not a bad 
 fellow; he loves his ease above all things; as to being 
 an Alsatian, he comes straight from the heart of Thu- 
 ringia. He is one of the innumerable Germans who have 
 fallen on Alsace-Lorraine as starlings flock to a vineyard 
 of ungarnered grapes. They are very comfortable there. 
 They increase and multiply. They burrow into the soil. 
 They say unctuously: " Unser Elsass, our Alsace! " 
 And their children learn the patois of the country. 
 These sons of true-born Pomeranians and Brandenburgh- 
 ers even come to treat those on the other side of the 
 Rhine as Schwobs. But the blood that flows in their 
 veins has a basis of beer, and not of Riquewihr wine. 
 They retain that love of the colossal, that passion for 
 
24 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 bowing, that subservience to the world of command, that 
 collectivity of soul, of which the true Alsatian knows 
 nothing. 
 
 I am amused to see old Kraut every evening at the 
 restaurant. He lords it at the German table with the 
 head-keeper of the forest, the magistrate, a secretary of 
 the excise, and a few humbler scribes. It seems that he 
 has been a widower for five years. His children are out 
 in the world. So Kraut is dull. His heart stirs within 
 him. He fixes a melting eye on the cunningly arranged 
 tresses of our hostess, Madame Louise Vogel, the hand- 
 some Alsatian widow. With his goggle eyes, his puny 
 shoulders, his gasping breath, he is like a frog hypno- 
 tized by a water-lily. It is obvious that for him marriage 
 with an Alsatian would crown the work of annexation. 
 
 When we joke Madame Vogel about this, she replies 
 calmly: 
 
 " Monsieur Kraut is an excellent customer." 
 
 She sees in him only the man who pays. 
 
 There are, you must know, two tables at the restaurant, 
 two water-tight compartments. The assortment takes 
 place without any previous arrangement, each person 
 following his instinct. Aunt Emma must not protest. I 
 think that if strangers had seized one of our cantons, 
 we Swiss would hold ourselves aloof from them. It is 
 a highly moral impulse. I play my part in this defensive 
 operation discreetly. At the end of the room the officials 
 sit in state. Fixing a napkin between two buttons of 
 a waistcoat becomes a rite. A sonorous Mahlzeit stands 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 25 
 
 for a prayer. After this, eating begins — the essential 
 thing, as Kraut says. At a quarter-past one they retire 
 with military punctuality, after a bow, invariably of the 
 same depth. During the meal, the two tables — at ours 
 we have Coquart, the disillusioned chemist, and some 
 half-dozen Alsatians — ignore each other. At one the 
 diners flourish and Zeit, the Strassburger Post, at the 
 other the Express or the Journal d' Alsace-Lorraine, 
 Morally the bolts are shot. The two groups bow to each 
 other on arrival and on departure. They never go be- 
 yond this. I can imagine nothing more correct and 
 more dignified. 
 
 The other day, after the officials had made their bows, 
 I asked the Alsatian Kleinlogel : " Do you bear them 
 such a grudge as all that? " He replied: " Oh! they're 
 quite amiable" (chentils) . I saw that it would be use- 
 less to insist. I am as yet too new in the country to 
 invite confidences. Then Friedensbach numbers less than 
 two thousand inhabitants. Everything is repeated. So 
 the two races live side by side. They have need one of 
 another. But they scrupulously respect the clauses of a 
 tacit convention. They sulk, without indulging in futile 
 provocation. This is what makes Coquart say some- 
 times: " After all, which are you, French or German? " 
 They answer, not unintelligently: "We are Alsatians." 
 The day before yesterday Coquart lost his temper: 
 "Alsatians! Alsatians! One is either French or Ger- 
 man! " Kleinlogel answered very calmly: "What one 
 gays and what one thinks are not quite the same thing." 
 
26 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 When he is alone with me, Coquart vociferates: 
 " They have no blood in their veins. And these are the 
 best. Imagine what the others are." 
 
 " And what should we do in their place? " 
 
 Coquart whistled between his teeth : " Malbrouck s'en 
 va en guerre." 
 
 A week ago I began to take German lessons from the 
 schoolmaster Kummel. By chance one day, behind the 
 post of the level crossing, I asked the way of this gaunt 
 magister. After this, we bowed to each other when we 
 met. And now I am his pupil. I should no doubt have 
 done better if I had gone to the other teacher, an 
 Alsatian, whereas Kummel is a Prussian. I did not 
 know this when I made the arrangement. . . . Poor 
 Kummel ! He is nauseously pedagogic, very obsequious. 
 The phrase " to profit " has no secrets for him. Some- 
 times I am not sure whether it is I who am learning 
 German or he who is learning French. As the lessons 
 progress, he gradually unmasks his batteries. He is bent 
 on converting me, and shows a pertinacity which amuses 
 me. German virtues! German order! the blessings of 
 German culture! German administration! 
 
 Aunt Emma urged me so strongly to be prudent that 
 I confine myself to listening. Moreover, I am ready to 
 admit that the German postal system and the German 
 railways are as near perfection as possible. So, if the 
 Alsatians nevertheless show themselves hostile to the 
 regime, it must be because other things go to the creation 
 of patriotism — such things as memory, sentiment, and 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 27 
 
 dignity. But what would be the use of explaining this 
 to Kummel! 
 
 I will end with a few words about my pupils, of whom 
 I wrote to you at length in my last letter. We are be- 
 coming very good friends. I arrange their work as I 
 think best: Latin, Greek, French, history, geography, 
 etc. — all that a young passman is expected to have in 
 stock. They are just what I supposed: Jean subtle and 
 imaginative, Rene more vital, more spritely, much in- 
 terested in geology as long as one discourses of volcanoes, 
 because volcanoes vomit stones and fire. On Wednesday 
 and Saturday afternoons I am in charge of a band of five 
 urchins. We go for walks, and talk about a great many 
 things. You cannot imagine how Alsatian and French 
 these boys are, but they are French because they are 
 Alsatian. They discuss politics and strategy with de- 
 licious gravity. I will write further on this head. . . . 
 
Ill 
 
 THIS morning the conscripts went off singing. 
 From a sky but lightly veiled in clouds a dust of 
 fine rain was falling, washing the brilliant foliage of the 
 trees which flaunted on the hill-sides like red and yellow 
 banners. And with this dust of rain a gentle melancholy 
 fell from heaven, punctuated by the tinkle of the cow- 
 bells. 
 
 And the conscripts went off singing. The day was like 
 all other days. At the usual hour old Catherine came 
 to fill her pail at the fountain, in which her goitre was 
 reflected for a moment on the dancing waters, mingling 
 with the image of the pot-bellied deity who squats be- 
 tween the garrulous water- jets. . . . Twenty times at 
 least during the day old Schmoler went to the window and 
 leaned upon the sill. From the street all that was to be 
 seen of him was his pipe, his nose, and his otter-skin 
 cap. And twenty times Jacobine asked him: "What 
 can you be looking at from that window? " To which 
 twenty times the old man made answer in his rugged 
 patois: " Ech lueg was ech lueg" (I am looking at 
 what I am looking at) . 
 
 What he saw was always the same, yet always new, like 
 life. The main street running parallel with the valley 
 and the ten side-streets, tumbling down the slopes and 
 
 28 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 29 
 
 rushing into it, like torrents into a river; the stream trip- 
 ping and murmuring over the moss-grown paving stones; 
 a woman throwing the parings of her vegetables into it, 
 queer-looking things, green and white, which run along 
 the water, catch in the eddies, escape, and dance away. 
 Then a procession of geese. They are replete. They 
 come and seat themselves in a circle before a door, to 
 gossip and digest. The gander, like some admiral's 
 vessel, with his smooth sides and his prow-like breast, 
 waddles majestically. He sees the green-and-white ob- 
 jects, and stretches out his beak. The geese dart for- 
 ward, rolling and pitching, splashing in the stream, 
 screaming angrily. Now they are sitting again in front 
 of a doorstep, where they look like a heap of snow fallen 
 from the roof. 
 
 Now it is the children's turn. With their petticoats 
 tucked up, grave and unseemly, they lay walnut-shells 
 upon the stream. A dog laps the water, a cat jumps 
 across it, wets her paws, shakes them, and runs away. 
 And it is the same thing all the week: the older children 
 being at school, and all who can work at the factory, 
 there are only the infants and the old people left — all 
 who go on all fours, as Schmoler says. 
 
 But we must not forget Herzog the shoemaker and his 
 apprentice, always busy behind their shop-window, sew- 
 ing a vamp, cutting leather, waxing thread ; and the shoe- 
 maker's bald head is shaken by the vibration of the ham- 
 mer as it strikes a sole, as is also the curly red pate of 
 the apprentice. 
 
30 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 At ten in the morning and four in the afternoon Herzog 
 goes to the Golden Cask, where he drinks a humpe. 
 When he returns to his last, dragging his slippers on the 
 uneven stones, a white froth hangs in stalactites from his 
 moustache, which he wipes with his sleeve. He fought at 
 Gravelotte, but it is difficult to get the story of his 
 campaign out of him, for he only embarks upon it when 
 he is drunk; and this has not happened since Justice 
 Doring sentenced him to pay a fine of fifty marks and 
 spend a month in prison for having associated Prussia 
 too intimately with the memory of the late Marshal Cam- 
 bronne. Accordingly, he drinks his humpe in the morn- 
 ing, his humpe in the afternoon, and perhaps two or three 
 in the evening, but never more. Thus his will dominates 
 his feelings; the inner depths remain hidden, all he shows 
 is a grimace; he lives with his truth, no longer external- 
 izing it. 
 
 . . . And sometimes, on wheels with groaning axles, 
 the trunks of Vosgian pines are borne along, exuding 
 resin, breathing the aroma of sylvan solitude. Some of 
 them grew on summits whence may be seen a corner of 
 France, gleaming roofs, a valley like a carpet with green 
 and grey and yellow patches, marking plots of cultivated 
 ground. Born French, these trees too have to die Ger- 
 man; like the conscripts, they are on their way to the 
 distant provinces of Germany. Men accompany them, 
 the thongs of their whips twisted round their necks — 
 woodmen with bristly manes, sturdy fellows who raise 
 their voices to dominate the grinding of the axles, and in- 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 31 
 
 terlard every sentence with Gottverdammi! These tree- 
 trunks, these men, jolt and swear over the pavement of 
 the town, rouse the geese, who get up and protest, excite 
 the dogs, defile past the fountain where the pot-bellied 
 water-god sits enthroned, and past another where the 
 cock presides, drowning the tinkle of the water. Gradu- 
 ally they move into the distance ; one sees only the croups 
 of the horses, the long, light streak of the trunk, the man's 
 blue blouse, swaying to and fro, diminishing, finally 
 disappearing. . . . 
 
 A frock-coat on a stiff back, a neck forming three pink 
 folds over a tight collar, a tall hat on a head amply 
 furnished with jaw: it is the Justice of the Peace. Boots, 
 a portly torso clad in green, eyes that run from door to 
 door, from window to window, the spike of a helmet: 
 it is the Policeman. Worthy men, on the whole, faithful 
 to their duty, which is to draw up indictments and to 
 condemn. But so distant, so rigid, so inflated, that when 
 one sees them marching with measured tread through 
 the peace of the little Alsatian town, frowning at the 
 gaiety of the houses with their spritely roofs, so firmly 
 fixed in principles, so imbued with a vexatious spirit 
 of authority, so unmistakably representative of the royal 
 and imperial race, one is conscious of an error of taste, 
 a mistake in style. The stream, the half-naked children, 
 the modest facades, the gurgling fountains, are out of 
 scale. The one element is too gay, too much inclined 
 to irony, too human ; the other too lofty, too irascible, too 
 unbending, too haughty. Hence the geese have risen 
 
32 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 once more: in battle array, with outstretched beaks and 
 turned-in toes, they proclaim that which the natives keep 
 to themselves, and clamour urgently: "It won't do! 
 It won't do." The ofl&cials do not even smile. They 
 would excite less ill-will were they to smile. But no; it 
 is written that they shall never smile, that they shall 
 frown persistently, stamp on the pavement, arch their 
 hips, draw up unyielding necks. And so fear arises in 
 their wake, and sometimes hatred. It might be supposed 
 that they prefer this state of things. Yet they are strict, 
 honest, punctual people. Officials, soldiers, not men. 
 
 At certain hours, nevertheless, the street becomes ani- 
 mated. There is a sudden outburst, as if a man should 
 come and open the lock-gates of slumbering waters. 
 " Go ! " said Messrs. Kummel and Herrenschmid, walking 
 away with their hands clasped on the tails of their coats. 
 What a rush of children! They are like a flock of spar- 
 rows settling upon a newly ploughed field. They run, 
 they clamber up and down the double flights of doorsteps, 
 they spit into the fountain, dance round the protesting 
 geese, jump into the stream, clatter their sabots on the 
 pavement, chanting a curious doggerel: 
 
 " Wenn der Kater nicht haarig ist 
 Fangt er keine Mause." 
 
 ** Unless the torn be long of hair, 
 Never a mouse will fall to his share." 
 
 Putting o£F their sabots for slippers, the children pres- 
 ently appear at the windows, gnawing a hunk of bread. 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 33 
 
 Once more the lock-gates are closed. And again they 
 are opened at the signal of the hooter, a piercing scream 
 that dies away in the minor. On the road are bare- 
 headed women, laughing girls, boys smoking, men carry- 
 ing their jackets over their arms. The day of toil is over! 
 The toiler may sit on the bench outside his house and 
 play a mouth-organ, or dig in his garden, or make love 
 to his fair neighbour. . . . 
 
 And now, as every one is at home, the big vegetable 
 hc.vker swings his bell; the public. crier — with a red 
 nose and a wooden leg — beats his drum before announc- 
 ing that Ulrich Schuhmacher offers the public the meat 
 of his old cow at a mark a pound. A sound as of hail 
 on a roof — hundreds of little hoofs tapping on the pave- 
 ment — and here come the goats ! In front of the forest 
 of horns walks an old man, whose beard, stirred by the 
 effort of his throat, sways comically when he blows the 
 horn. The creatures stand straddling, so full are their 
 udders, and each bleats at its own door, till it opens at 
 last. 
 
 It is easy now to understand why old Schmoler, lean- 
 ing on the window-sill twenty times a day, should have 
 answered twenty times, " I am looking at what I am look- 
 ing at." 
 
 A little society, the rhythm of habit. Nothing hap- 
 pens. The sun rises over one rounded height and sets 
 behind another. Nowhere does he illuminate a more 
 peaceful valley. And yet the fathers of those who live 
 here once, in a terrible hour, cried aloud : " We declare 
 
34 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 the right of the Alsatians and Lorrains to remain mem- 
 bers of the French nation for ever inviolable, and we 
 swear for ourselves, our children, end their descendants, 
 to urge it eternally, by every possible means, to and 
 against all usurpers." 
 
 Since then nearly forty years have passed, two genera- 
 tions. 
 
 And the conscripts went off this morning. There were 
 twenty of them, all sturdy lads, all born in the little town, 
 all bred on this soil, sons of the ancient land of Alsace, 
 grandsons of those who fought at Wissembourg, many of 
 whom are still alive. 
 
 For a week past, the conscripts had been drinking and 
 singing. They must needs forget themselves for a while, 
 since they are going so far away, for two whole years. 
 They took up their station in the wine-shops betimes, in 
 the morning. And they sang the songs they knew, the 
 slow, sad songs they learned at school, songs brought 
 back by their elders from the German barracks. Forty 
 years! Habit weaves its strands. Hearts grow numb, 
 perhaps. A boundary-mark is but a stone, but it is also 
 the limit of language, the point beyond which everything 
 changes, and which one cannot pass without leaving be- 
 hind one for ever the house, the garden, the old folks, 
 the graves. 
 
 And these conscripts are twenty years old! At twenty 
 one must, of course, laugh, drink, and sing, put a flower 
 in one's button-hole, a garland round one's hat, dance 
 to the sound of the concertina, run after the girls, and 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 35 
 
 show oneself in the public square. Holding each other 
 by the litttle finger, they tramp along heavily in fours, 
 as they will march tomorrow. They sing U Alsace est un 
 beau pays, Mon amour, ne f eloigne pas trop de moi, and 
 many other songs which speak of the Rhine, and in which 
 the word Heimat (home) recurs constantly, with heavy 
 emphasis. What Heimat? . . . Meanwhile the drum 
 beats; they march round the fountain, ribbons and flags 
 fluttering, that red-and-white flag of which the old people 
 say: " When it floats against the blue of the sky, we get 
 the colour we miss." Do they really miss that blue? 
 
 The conscripts have marched past for the last time, 
 valise in hand. There is a crowd at the station. They 
 clamber into the carriages. They cry: " Good-bye! good 
 luck! " They are going to Danzig, to Poland, to the 
 fleet. The magistrate, raising his hand, wishes them a 
 " Gute Reise" (good journey). They make no reply. 
 The whistle sounds, the train moves. The crowd wave 
 handkerchiefs. But they are men ; they are twenty years 
 old; they wave their caps and shout incoherent things 
 which the train bears away among the autumn trees. 
 
 Without ceasing to hammer his sole, the shoemaker 
 Herzog mutters : " Geese are fattened up before their 
 necks are wrung." 
 
 Reymond was still constantly on the look-out for the 
 Alsace of the novels; the Alsace where " Hurrah for 
 France ! " is shouted in the face of the police ; the Alsace 
 where fathers curse their daughters vehemently for dar- 
 
36 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 ing to cast a glance at the handsome officer who passes. 
 The evolutions of the conscript, their paper garlands, 
 their songs, their noisy departure, had affected him pain- 
 fully. For, after all, these grandsons of the vanquished 
 were going to put on the spiked helmet, swear fidelity to 
 the Emperor, offer their youth to the Empire. 
 
 He spoke of this to his companions in the restaurant, 
 after the officials had withdrawn. Coquart tittered. 
 Seizing an empty bottle by way of a guitar, he again 
 began to vocalize: "Alsace-Lorraine . . ." 
 
 " It is very easy to make fun of people," said one of 
 the Alsatians with smothered anger. " I, too, have served 
 in the German Army. I am a sergeant . . . There are 
 only three courses open to us: we may go for good and 
 give up our country; we may break our rifles and rot in 
 prison; we may submit and put on the spiked helmet. I 
 say submit ... I do not say accept." 
 
 " No ! " exclaimed the others. 
 
 "But there are ways of doing so," objected Coquart, 
 " No one forces them to sing." 
 
 "They sing? But what does it come to? Words ex- 
 pressing the pleasure of fellowship, nothing more. They 
 drink, they become excited, they march in step, they sing, 
 hardly knowing what they sing." 
 
 " And if you had had the Germans on your back for 
 forty years! " said another. 
 
 "I think we should have held out better in Switzer- 
 land," said Reymond with ingenuous pride. 
 
 " We shall see when you have tried it," said the young 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 37 
 
 man who spoke with the most pronounced accent. " You 
 don't know the Alsatian. He loathes gestures and 
 speeches. He keeps. He hides. He does not show his 
 roots to every one. In short, he is an Alsatian. They 
 killed my grandfather at Sedan. And I serve in the 
 German Army. But this does not alter the fact that they 
 killed my grandfather. Still, I don't propose to chalk 
 it up on the doors. I know it. That is enough. The 
 reckoning is paid on great occasions. Meanwhile, one 
 has to live." 
 
 They ceased talking. Shortly afterwards, Reymond 
 paid a visit to the old Schmolers. And he put the same 
 question to them incidentally. 
 
 " What do you think about those conscripts? They 
 seemed quite pleased to go." 
 
 Schmoler tried to explain. 
 
 " They are young. . . . It's their first journey. . . ." 
 
 " Then, have they ' rallied ' to the occupying Power? " 
 
 "Rallied?" repeated Schmoler. "What does that 
 mean? " 
 
 " Well, have they become German? " 
 
 " They are not German, for they are Alsatian. But 
 to protest every day for forty years is beyond the strength 
 of man. There is no resistance to force. But none 
 knows what is going on beneath the surface. The 
 Alsatian is tenacious." 
 
 Schmoler laughed and took a pinch of snuff. The tall 
 clock in its wooden case groaned before striking ten, 
 as if some aged soul where stirring within it, Jacobine 
 
38 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 had crossed her toil-worn hands on her black alpaca 
 apron. Thrusting out her little withered chin, she said: 
 
 " The less one talks about such things the better. Each 
 district provides its people, you know. . . . The postman 
 here stands by the Schwobs, but he has two brothers in 
 the Foreign Legion." 
 
 This postman, Julius Bader, was a merry fellow who 
 came up the steps whistling, knocked at the doors with a 
 " Good-day " to the inmates, and went off again whistling. 
 To any one who would listen to him he would say : " I 
 a French postman? I get double his pay." 
 
 And so he had two brothers with the French colours 
 — two brothers who had sacrificed everything to obey a 
 sort of instinct, a tradition. 
 
 " The less one talks of such things the better," repeated 
 Jacobine. 
 
 And Schmoler added; " No resistance to force." 
 
 Each had a formula. 
 
 "And what does Jacob think of it all? " 
 
 Reymond pulled the ear of the child, who looked up, 
 surprised. 
 
 "May he know nothing worse than we old ones have 
 known! " 
 
 " Do you believe there will be another war? " 
 
 " It is not for me to say. God guides the ship." 
 
 Hereupon they parted. 
 
 When he returned to his own room, Reymond contem- 
 plated the tiles of his stove, ornamented with Alsatian 
 couples waltzing; the engravings hanging on the walls, of 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 39 
 
 Napoleon at St. Helena, the rush of the Zouaves at 
 Malakoff, the charge of the Cuirassiers at Reichshoffen. 
 . . . And he thought of the three generations of Alsa- 
 tians: the timid old people who had witnessed the great 
 disaster, the two worthy women who sold their soup 
 impartially to both camps, the little boy of nine, destined, 
 perhaps, to see great and horrible things. 
 
 Meanwhile, the child was going to bed on the other side 
 of the wall. The grandfather was chanting a prayer in 
 a cracked voice. Shortly afterwards the three genera- 
 tions were snoring in different keys. 
 
 Bending over his work-table, Reymond corrected the 
 compositions of his pupils. The theme was the speech 
 of a Gaul chieftain : " The chief declared that liberty 
 is the supreme good." In general the essays were awk- 
 ward, confused, and diffuse, but they rang true. Here 
 and there both Jean and Rene seemed to utter a cry from 
 the heart; their summaries were almost eloquent, ani- 
 mated by a fine sincerity born of suffering. Rene put 
 phrases of vigorous familiarity into the chief's mouth: 
 
 "To deprive men of their liberty, to tear them from 
 the country they love, is disgusting! " Jean, more liter- 
 ary, wrote : " It is conceivable that man should live in 
 poverty, or as a cripple, but not as a slave! Liberty is 
 not a blessing; it is life itself." 
 
 The clock struck eleven. The Alsatian conscripts 
 rolled forward in the darkness. 
 
 How beautiful 1$ All Souls' Day in this land of grief! 
 
40 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 . . . The dead speak. They have a memory, a thought, 
 a will to transmit. In other places they sleep. Mourn- 
 ers visit their graves and lay flowers on them, but they 
 are wrapped in their formidable sleep, strangers to the 
 living, and so remote! They are, as we say, in the other 
 world. 
 
 In Alsace one feels them, knows that they are very near, 
 because only they can knit up the thread of tradition, so 
 brutally severed. 
 
 Early in the morning on All Saints' Day the bells 
 of Friedensbach rang out, first a single one, a voice put- 
 ting a question, then the three, sometimes in a full peal, 
 sometimes very softly, as if a conversation were going 
 on at the top of the belfry, a murmur that the November 
 mist shuts in to the nest of stone. 
 
 Boys and girls, husbands and wives, old men and old 
 women, have come out of their houses and closed the 
 doors, but have not locked them, for no one is distrustful 
 on All Saints' Day. . . . The church is full. People 
 are standing in the passages, and under the porch where 
 the shining ropes hang. The old priest is in the pulpit. 
 He speaks to his flock in the rugged patois which is the 
 fruit of the race. He is not eloquent, he is something 
 far better. Speaking quietly and without action, his head 
 inclining a little to one shoulder, he holds communion 
 with eternal things. He speaks to the dead, or rather to 
 the living one no longer sees passing along the streets 
 of the town; for he knows only the people of God, those 
 who live at Friedensbach, and those who live elsewhere, 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 41 
 
 in the mysterious country towards which the human cara- 
 van is wending. "We pray likewise for those of our 
 ancestors who fell on the field of battle." A little bell 
 tinkles; the organ swells. Absolve, Domine! 
 
 The graveyard is on the back of the first hill, after 
 which come other hills that link themselves to the sum- 
 mits. Again hands lay hold of the ropes, and the bells 
 speak. Behind the crucifix and the banners, the proces- 
 sion follows the windings of the ascent. All carry 
 sheaves of chrysanthemums, which sway to the rhythm 
 of the march. Heilige Maria, bete fiir uns. 
 
 Now they are standing by their graves, which the priest 
 blesses with a sweeping gesture. And when the bells of 
 Friedensbach are silent for a minute, one hears all those 
 of the valley, big ones booming, little ones which have a 
 note of hope, now an isolated sound, now voices mingled 
 by the breeze. . . . Here it is that the past awakens. 
 Ci-git Jean Burger, says a stone. Ci-git Pierre Schnee- 
 herg, says another. The language of the dead is, of 
 course, French. This Ci-git (Here lies) is a certificate 
 of fidelity which the people sign for themselves. One 
 does not lie to the dead. 
 
 The priest lingered a while before the stone on which 
 are the words: Ci-git Louis Schmid, mort a 89 ans, 
 1788-1886. Schmid lived through the Revolution, served 
 under Napoleon the Great, witnessed the reigns of Louis 
 XVIIL, Charles X., the Second Republic, Napoleon III., 
 the great catastrophe. He waited sixteen years longer, 
 after which he died, full of years. They buried him here, 
 
42 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 whereas the masters of the present carry away their dead 
 to the other side of the Rhine, a sufficient evidence that 
 they do not belong here. Now it is the dead who speak 
 to the hearts of the people from the depths of their 
 silence. Their dust has mingled with the dust of the soil, 
 but their works live: the churches they built, the houses 
 they shut up every night, the letters in the box up in the 
 attic, and all the things that are neither seen nor heard, 
 all that takes flight and floats and bathes the soul as the 
 atmosphere bathes the body. The voice of the dead ! 
 
 This morning, when the factory hooter was sounding 
 — the night was passing away reluctantly, the lamp was 
 still shedding a bright circle of light on kitchen -tables — 
 workmen, standing on their doorsteps, burst into loud 
 laughter, terminating in resolute GoUverdammi. There 
 was a hum of talk. Neighbours called to each other from 
 street and gable-windows. Arms were extended. Laugh- 
 ter broke out anew. Some one said: 
 
 " On the fir-tree, near the bridge." 
 
 Boys, half dressed, were already galloping across the 
 fields. Old men in night-shirts, old women with their 
 scanty locks hanging on their shoulders, shaded their 
 eyes with their hands. 
 
 " Do you see it? " 
 
 "Yes indeed; there it is! " 
 
 It was the tenth year of the event. And the culprit had 
 never been discovered. A few days after the departure 
 of the conscripts, a red, white, and blue flag was discov- 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 43 
 
 ered at dawn floating over the landscape. On the school- 
 house lightning conductor, on the balcony of the police- 
 station, last year on the ruined tower, this year on the 
 giant fir-tree beyond the river. Blue, white, red: there it 
 is beyond doubt! How it flaps in the wind! There is 
 an irony in its flutterings, in its sudden drooping, as if 
 it were giving up the struggle, followed by a leap which 
 shakes it out again, with little tosses and quirks of merri- 
 ment. Is it the effect of these three gay colours, an asso- 
 ciation of ideas? Every one feels lighter of foot, 
 nimbler of tongue, more alert of mind. 
 
 All along the road, the workmen keep turning to look 
 at it. The boys are swarming round the tree, jumping 
 and laughing; then silence falls on them, for an official 
 delegation approaches: a Custom-house officer, two 
 policemen, the ranger, who has been dragged out of bed, 
 yawning. The annual ceremony begins. 
 
 . . . The officials estimate the height of the tree. The 
 ranger looks at the first policeman, who looks at the 
 Custom-house officer. They compare their respective 
 bulks. . . . Perhaps one of the boys? . . . The whole 
 band take to their heels, even Ruprecht, the son of the 
 bailiff, a thorough-bred Schwob; even Adolf Schorrer, 
 whose father is the president of the Kriegerverein. The 
 scandal has lasted too long. The policeman Taubens- 
 peck unbuckles his sword, and lays his pistol and his 
 helmet on the grass. He climbs from branch to branch 
 — how they bend! — cautiously, feeling with his foot, 
 breathing hard, and gazing skywards. His green uniform 
 
44 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 shows light against the dark green of the tree. A branch, 
 now another. How high it is! But a sense of duty over- 
 comes all difficulties. Taubenspeck is at the top of the 
 tree now. His neck shines; his square head stands out 
 against the pale sky; he stretches out his hand. The 
 flag shivers, hesitates, then drops into space. When 
 a flag is bent on mischief, it plays all sorts of tricks be- 
 fore it comes to the ground. The red, white, and blue is 
 so volatile! It soars in the air, drops, rises again, curves, 
 loops the loop, recovers itself, plays the butterfly, frolics, 
 and at last flutters to earth with the grace of a dead leaf. 
 Armed authority hastens forward, seizes the delinquent, 
 folds and refolds it so thoroughly that at last it is merely 
 a red package that can be tucked under a tunic. . . . 
 Lieb' Vaterland, magst ruhig sein! 
 
 But the incident will not be forgotten for a whole year. 
 Enquiry after enquiry will be set on foot. Twenty marks 
 will be off'ered to an informer. Action after action will 
 be brought to tame the seditious population. There 
 are so many carts without lamps, so many bicyclists who 
 exceed the speed-limit, so many innkeepers who close 
 five minutes too late. 
 
 Herr Kummel deplores "this stupid business." It 
 even gave him a pretext for talking French throughout 
 Reymond's German conversation lesson on the Thursday 
 evening. He said: 
 
 " It is quite unimportant. ... A boyish prank. But 
 it offends the authorities, it casts a slur on a population 
 of purely German stock. It excites the hotheads, of 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 45 
 
 which there are always a few. So it is foolish, and 
 cowardly too, for the culprit will not come forward. 
 The authorities are annoyed; they refuse a grant, decline 
 to raise salaries, and the honest, loyal, faithful inhabi- 
 tants have to pay the piper. Cowardly and foolish. The 
 work of Wackes. The True Alsatians deplore it heart- 
 ily." 
 
 Herr Kummel fumed indignantly. 
 
 One evening when Reymond had stayed to dinner with 
 the Bohlers, there was some music after the meal. Jean 
 played the violoncello, Charles Weiss the violin, Madame 
 Bohler accompanied them at the piano. It was a pretty 
 sight. The fair-haired mother, her face bathed in the 
 rosy light of the shaded lamp; Jean, with knitted brows 
 and a wrinkle in his forehead, too sentimental, perhaps, 
 for Mozart; Charles, his hair falling over his eyes, ab- 
 sorbed in the limpid, delicate design of the work. Mon- 
 sieur Bohler listened, smoking his pipe, his hands 
 clasped behind his head, after the manner of a man of 
 action giving himself up to a moment of emotion. After 
 the concluding note of a trio of Schubert's, he spoke 
 from his heart: 
 
 " Beautiful ! Oh, those Germans, what musicians they 
 are! But why to the devil didn't they stay on the other 
 side of the Rhine? " 
 
 The conversation turned naturally to Alsace. Rey- 
 mond described the incident of the flag. * 
 
 " How characteristic of our masters ! " said Monsieur 
 
46 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 Bohler. "The thing is unimportant in itself, but so 
 significant! There is a right way of dealing with such an 
 incident: the flag might have been left to its fate, with an 
 ironical salutation, till the wind carried it off to the devil. 
 Instead of which, the police are called out, a foolish joke 
 is treated as a conspiracy, long speeches are made, school 
 boys are questioned, bribes are offered to informers, 
 officials telephone to the Kreisdirektor, who telephones to 
 Strasburg. . . . We pay dearly for this flag. Really, it 
 is absurd of them to call us long-lost brothers; our minds 
 are of different families. Fisticuffs and pin-pricks are 
 our portion throughout the year. After all, it is irritat- 
 ing to be a servant in one's own house, a stranger in 
 one's own country, to be harassed in our memories, lec- 
 tured by pedants." 
 
 "Kummel said some priceless things to me on the 
 subject." 
 
 Reymond at once regretted having spoken this name. 
 
 "Kummel? . . . That Pomeranian who came among 
 us with all his possessions in a handkerchief, and now 
 poisons the minds of our children ! He poses as an Alsa- 
 tian to those who don't know him, on the ground that 
 he has been sucking our blood for twenty-eight years. 
 Whereupon — and there are thousands and thousands 
 like him — they assert that we have become reconciled 
 to the annexation. Do the French know this? ... He 
 is an out-and-out Pomeranian, that Kummel, a licenced 
 informer, a crafty pedagogue, the recognized leader of the 
 clique. ... He has given me a lot of trouble already. 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 47 
 
 If ever the school inspector comes down upon you, we 
 shall know whom we have to thank. By the way, how 
 long have you known this man Kummel? " 
 
 A formidable question. Reymond confessed, plead- 
 ing extenuating circumstances. A certain coldness en- 
 sued. 
 
 " It is a pity; you should have consulted me." 
 
 " I can easily stop the lessons." 
 
 "Not on any account. He would have his revenge. 
 You have begun, so you must go on. I know my man. 
 Of course, you must never speak of your pupils or of us 
 to him. Good heavens ! put yourself in our place. What 
 would you say if, on the plea that before the time of 
 William Tell you belonged to some one or the other, 
 they annexed a piece of your beautiful Switzerland? If 
 the usurper ordered your compatriots, ground under his 
 heel: Think this, don't say that, shout Hoch! hang out 
 flags; if they were suspected, treated as inferiors, perse- 
 cuted as criminals for remaining faithful to their country, 
 would you not applaud them for behaving as we do? " 
 
 " Papa, Alsace will be taken back," said Rene. 
 
 "When? ... Ah! let us talk of something else, and 
 live our little life." 
 
 Wrapped in a cloud of smoke, Monsieur Bohler sat 
 silent for the rest of the evening. 
 
 Let us live our little life! Reymond tried his best to 
 do so. Indeed, there was nothing else to be done. 
 Twice a day the tutor went to the factory. The road 
 
48 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 ran between hedges, crossed the railway and then skirted 
 the mountain. To the right lay the whole breadth of the 
 valley — the valley with its meadows, its orchards, its 
 gardens, its river fringed with alders; beyond, the boldly 
 undulating hills, roads climbing courageously upward, 
 copses, bare spaces where the goats, in spite of the ad- 
 vance of winter, still find something to crop. From a 
 distance these goats look like white stones laid upon the 
 yellowing pastures. Near the bridge there are nearly 
 always basket-makers, crouching round a cart covered 
 with a tarpaulin. Children with greasy locks, often 
 quite naked, keep watch over a knock-kneed horse which 
 snuffs the tufts of faded grass, its lips drawn back over 
 its blackened teeth. Crossing the river, Reymond pushes 
 open the iron gate. The porter greets him from the 
 back of his lodge. 
 
 In the schoolroom he finds Jean and Rene. They rise 
 respectful: "Good-morning, Monsieur." They read, 
 translate, recite a fable, work out problems, find coun- 
 tries and cities upon the map. How the hours fly! It 
 is the drone of the machine which helps you, carries you 
 along. 
 
 Reymond is on the road again. The gipsies are still 
 there, the naked children, the horse, the blear-eyed dog. 
 He nearly always has to wait a few minutes at the level 
 crossing, until the little train comes clattering along. 
 Heads look out at him from the carriage windows. In 
 his workroom, the stove burns cosily. Seven o'clock. 
 Good-evening, gentlemen. Mahlzeit. Always the two 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 49 
 
 tables, the usual rites, the same distance. Coquart tells 
 stories. Reymond lauds the Swiss army. The Alsatians 
 pass from French to patois, from patois to French. They 
 say what they wish to say, and nothing more. Cigars 
 are lighted, there is a little more conversation. Then 
 his own warm room, the newspaper. Looks. And then 
 sometimes the moonbeams glance off the roofs, some- 
 times the rain patters. Ten o'clock, curfew! Jacob 
 grumbles on the other side of the wall, old Schmoler 
 chants his prayer, Jacobine coughs; their daughters, 
 after double-locking the door below, mount the creaking 
 stairs. Bedtime. The little train passes again, and whis- 
 tles, no one knows why. Reymond falls asleep. 
 
 This monotonous life is a pleasant one. It rocks and 
 soothes the soul. Sunday is an oasis in the greyness of 
 the week. The bells ring; people coming back from 
 Mass show their fine clothes — a green tie, a hat wreathed 
 with jonquils; they gossip interminably on their door- 
 steps, their gilt-edged prayer-books in their hands. In 
 the afternoon the geese, alarmed by the hooters of motor- 
 cars, make off in Indian file down a side-street, moving 
 with great dignity, their beaks uplifted. The inhabi- 
 tants take walks, go to see their friends in neighbouring 
 villages. The policeman Taubenspeck also takes a walk. 
 He smokes a cigar and wears white gloves. By his side 
 walks his wife, and they are followed by their children, 
 whose names Hansi has told us: Irmentrude, Hildegarde, 
 Elsa, Hulda, Wilhelm, Siegfried, Karlchen and Hanschen 
 . . . and no doubt this is not the last of the clan. . . . 
 
50 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 The belfry marks the hours. The geese return by the 
 side-street, and youths pass, arm-in-arm with their be- 
 trothed. Night. The lamps are lighted. Nothing is to 
 be heard now but the shoemaker Herzog's concertina, 
 and the songs of the drinkers sitting in the Golden Cask: 
 Quelle est belle, la terre d^ Alsace! 
 
 As weeks follow weeks, the stranger begins to under- 
 stand a country. Slowly, its soul stands revealed. It 
 is in what one sees, in what one divines. It is in the 
 patois, in the forest depths, in the gestures, in the home- 
 sick yearning of the songs, in the All Saints procession, 
 in the memories unspoken, in the sentiments concealed. 
 What can force do against feeling? 
 
 Play your concertina, shoemaker Herzog; drinkers at 
 the Golden Cask, sing: Qu^elle est belle la terre d' Alsace! 
 And thou, ringer, spit on thy palms at the close of this 
 Sabbath day, and sound the curfew. 
 
IV 
 
 A JANUARY night, and snowfall. He who has never 
 lived in Alsace, in a village of one of the Vosges 
 valleys, cannot imagine the charm of looking out on wak- 
 ing into a snow-clad world. On all the slanting roofs, on 
 the ridges of the chimneys, even on the weathercock, the 
 mantle of winter has been spread. It lies like a thickly 
 padded roll along the tops of fences, it crowns the pot- 
 bellied water-god of the fountain, the stork's empty nest, 
 the Christ on the churchyard cross. The heights, the 
 forests, all the hills which die away into the plain, all 
 the sinuous valleys, have donned a brid&l gown shot 
 with pink, and with blue, a deep blue, almost black, the 
 glory of the mountain. 
 
 Under the snow, the mountain is terrible in its icy 
 solitude. All is white, down to the lowest depths of the 
 abyss. The Jura shivers, an austere wall stretching from 
 north to south, bristling with the dark halberds of pine- 
 trees and assailed by the north wind. The Vosges, how- 
 ever", remain winsome and human, with their clumps of 
 broom, their birches and beeches, their laburnums; and 
 here, accordingly, the snow is more playful in its deal- 
 ings, turning a fir-tree into a shining lance-head, a labur- 
 num into a dome, a birch into a Gothic arch, a clump 
 of broom into a hedgehog powdered with hoar-frost. 
 
 51 
 
52 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 Then there are also the colours of the close ranks of tree- 
 trunks, the sunlit bark of pines, the greenish bark of the 
 laburnum, the whitish bark of the birches, the russet 
 foliage of the beeches; and all around them the bluish- 
 white of the snow, over which steals the voice of bells, for 
 there is always a sound of bells in every Alsatian day. 
 
 Little boys, their red caps pulled down over their ears, 
 climb the slope, harnessed to a sleigh with two seats. 
 How the red caps fly along the smooth track! Their 
 shouts ring out on the crisp air. 
 
 On a certain Sunday afternoon every one seemed to be 
 taking part in the sport: Fritz, the shoemaker's appren- 
 tice, who guided his sleigh lying flat on his stomach, and 
 playing his mouth-organ ; and Bader, and Schramm, and 
 Spinner, and 'Becker, and Klipfel, and a great many 
 others, lads and their lasses, the buxom, apple-cheeked 
 girls, who settle down upon the knees that are offered 
 them without much coyness. But the maiden who at- 
 tracted most attention was Suzanne Weiss, the sister of 
 one of Reymond's pupils, a joyous, laughing apparition, 
 whose fair complexion against the whiteness of the snow 
 made her look like a wild-rose blooming out of season. 
 
 . . , Mademoiselle Suzanne! Voices took on caress- 
 ing tones when they spoke of her. Coquart turned to 
 look after her when he met her. Reymond thought the 
 valley enchanting after he had greeted her. Even Kraut, 
 the sexagenarian widowed bureaucrat, looked at her like 
 a dog seated before a closed door. Even Justice Doring 
 found his way regularly past the Weisses' windows, but- 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 53 
 
 toned up in an interminable frock-coat, a Christmas rose 
 in his button-hole, his moustache twisted up to his nos- 
 trils, a silver-headed cane in his hand. 
 
 Jean and Rene, Andre Berger, Emile Zumbach, Charles 
 Weiss, their sisters and cousins, enjoyed the sport whole- 
 heartedly. All these people, amidst a chorus of " Herr 
 Je's " and " Jesus Maria's," by which the girls sitting on 
 the knees of the boys commended their souls to God, flew 
 down the incline to the bridge, where stood those who 
 would not trust their dignity to the whims of a sleigh; the 
 muffled-up manmias, the rheumatic papas, the old men 
 smoking their pipes silently, the leading manufacturers, 
 and also Kraut, Kummel, and Justice Doring, forming 
 a solemn group. 
 
 The only one of the notables who was taking part in 
 the sport was Monsieur Weiss, and he was lugeing as en- 
 thusiastically as any woodman. This man never did 
 anything like other people. His legs cased in blue gait- 
 ers, his fur cap pulled over his face till all that was to 
 be seen of it was a straw-coloured beard, his broad shoul- 
 ders and flowing artist's cravat rising above the crowd, 
 he radiated gaiety. 
 
 This self-made Alsatian felt himself surrounded by 
 respectful affection. Papa Weiss was not proud, and he 
 was as good as a slice of Kougelhopf. How many who 
 were behindhand with their rents he had helped! How 
 many poor devils he had snatched from the claws of 
 money-lenders! By his virtuous example and his out- 
 spoken language, this man upheld national traditions. 
 
54 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 A born leader. All that was essentially local, genuinely 
 Alsatian was warmly supported by Victor Weiss. To a 
 highly placed personage who once, during a discussion, 
 reminded him that he was a German citizen, he replied: 
 "Pardon me. I am an Alsatian citizen and a German 
 subject. They are not quite the same thing." This 
 speech was much quoted in Friedensbach. 
 
 Seated on his luge, his pipe in his mouth, Weiss swept 
 along, towed by another sleigh in which his daughter and 
 his two sons had installed themselves, with Reymond 
 as pilot. Intoxicated by the rapid motion, they felt them- 
 selves the lords of the dazzling landscape. But disaster 
 was before them. As Kraut, Kummel, and Doring were 
 crossing the frozen track, the widower, whose heels 
 slipped under him, caught at the arms of his companions. 
 The next moment the sleigh scattered the distressful 
 group! A permutation of human values! For a mo- 
 ment the pedagogue stood on his head, his spine con- 
 tracted with anguish, his heels turned up to the stars. 
 Justice Doring was spinning round on his posterior like 
 a top ; as to Kraut, he lay with his beard flat on the snow, 
 his scanty locks bristling, his ten fingers clutching the ice, 
 rousing the echoes with his cries of Was! (What!) 
 
 A laugh burst from the crowd. Kraut got up, rubbed 
 his back ruefully, and repeated his Was! Kummel, who 
 had also risen, shook his head mournfully. The offensive 
 fell to the share of Justice Doring, whose forehead, 
 streaked with purple veins, dilated, short-sighted eyes, 
 and the scars which had suddenly appeared on the deadly 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 55 
 
 whiteness of his face, revealed an unusual degree of fury. 
 
 "Keep calm, and say very little," whispered Weiss to 
 Reymond. " If things become unpleasant, count on me." 
 
 The Justice approached obliquely. The boors had 
 dared to laugh. The dignity of the magistracy must be 
 vindicated. Nevertheless, in presence of Mademoiselle 
 Weiss, who was looking at him with a certain degree of 
 fear, Doring's fury was transformed into gallantry. 
 Clicking his heels together, he bowed. Then, in excellent 
 French, but with a slight accent, he said: 
 
 " I hope you, at any rate, were not hurt. Mademoi- 
 selle? " 
 
 "And you. Monsieur? " replied the young girl, with a 
 show of solicitude. 
 
 " Oh ! nothing to speak of. If you are not hurt, then 
 all is well." 
 
 " Yes, that's the main thing," added Kraut. 
 
 The Justice turned to Reymond. He eyed him as one 
 eyes a man to decide whether he is satis factions fdhig. 
 Then, in his official voice: 
 
 " One question, Monsieur. Was this accident inten- 
 tional on your part? " 
 
 Reymond looked up. 
 
 "Intentional? You and those two gentlemen were in 
 the very middle of the track! I think that question 
 would come better from me to you. I may point out to 
 you that we very nearly crashed into that tree." 
 
 Playing a losing game handsomely, the Judge bowed 
 again. Then, in measured tones: 
 
56 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 " In that case, it is my business to apologize. Had 
 the reverse been the case, the consequences might have 
 been serious. As it is, we must look upon the accident 
 as the result of a vexatious concatenation of circum- 
 stances. This was what I wanted to prove. Mademoi- 
 selle, gentlemen, I have the honour , . ." 
 
 For the third time the heels clicked together. For the 
 third time the magistrate bowed. Drawn up side by side 
 at the edge of the road, their feet turned in. Kraut and 
 Kummel did their best to imitate this hieratic salutation. 
 Walking slowly and holding themselves very erect, the 
 three men went off. 
 
 When they had disappeared, Weiss uttered a mighty 
 laugh, holding out both hands to Reymond. 
 
 " Monsieur, you must sup with us. No thanks ! I 
 owe you one of the greatest pleasures of my life, perhaps 
 the greatest. That Kraut clasping an icicle to his heart, 
 that Kummel standing on his head, that Doring trans- 
 formed into a dancing dervish. It was really delight- 
 ful! " 
 
 "Priceless, priceless!" cried the pupils with great 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 A woodman with a matted beard like lichen detached 
 himself from the crowd, and held out his hand to Rey- 
 mond, explaining something in patois, 
 
 " What does he say? " 
 
 "He is thanking you. Last Friday the Justice fined 
 him fifty marks as a result of an accusation by the ranger. 
 So he is thanking you. He calls the accident his revenge. 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 57 
 
 So now let us go home. Our day has not been wasted." 
 
 On the way, Weiss teased his daughter. 
 
 "We have to thank you for this honeyed solution. 
 Doring positively cooed." 
 
 Suzanne laughed. " Poor man ! He was really quite 
 touching." 
 
 " That's right, pity him. We know what pity is akin 
 to." 
 
 " Don't be afraid. I think I should prefer Kraut. He 
 yearns so for affection." 
 
 What a feast! And what merriment! Every one 
 laughed on the slightest pretext — Monsieur Weiss in 
 great gusts, Madame Weiss in a cascade, Suzanne in 
 ripples, Charles in gurgles, Mariette after the manner of 
 little girls of six, her nose buried in her table-napkin. 
 Those Weisses! They expanded without mystery, with- 
 out formula or stock phrases, or precautions, just as 
 Nature prompted them. Scarcely had a peal of laughter 
 subsided when Weiss said: 
 
 " Did you notice how tall Kummel looked, standing 
 on his head? . . . And his pink socks! ... I should 
 never have suspected him of being such a dandy! " 
 
 Meanwhile every one did justice to the meal. 
 
 " Come, Monsieur Reymond, you are not taking any- 
 thing," said Madame Weiss, with her maternal smile. 
 
 " No more, thank you." 
 
 It was too late. The plate was full. He had to begin 
 again. The pleasant warmth, the dresser loaded with 
 pewter-plates, crudely coloured bowls, tureens of /oie- 
 
58 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 gras, long-necked bottles, the savoury steam that rose to 
 the coffered ceiling, all invited festivity. And Madame 
 Weiss repeated smilingly: 
 
 " You are not helping yourself." 
 
 " Come now, mamma," said Suzanne at last, a little 
 bit ashamed. 
 
 They passed into the drawing-room, a characteristically 
 Weissian apartment, original to the verge of comicality; 
 here stood a spinning-wheel, there a stuffed stork beside 
 a sheaf of bulrushes; there were great arm-chairs, ex- 
 quisite engravings, and many other pleasant things, 
 making up a very harmonious whole by reason of a kind 
 of good-natured cosiness, a somewhat crude fancy. As 
 soon as they entered the room, the father caught his little 
 girl by the hands, and began to dance an improvised 
 bourree, singing: 
 
 " Cigogn', cigogn' t'as de la chance, 
 Tous les ans tu passes en France, 
 Cigogn', cigogn', rapport' nous 
 Dans ton bee un p'tit pioupiou. . . ." 
 
 [Stork, stork, how lucky you are. You go to France every year. 
 Stork, stork, bring us back a little French soldier in your beak.l 
 
 Throwing her head back, the child laughed delightedly. 
 After this she asked for a sad story. 
 " Which one? The Black Uhlan? " 
 "Oh, yes!" 
 " Well, now we must sit very still." 
 
 "Quand la nuit descend 
 Fermons les persiennes, 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 59 
 
 Car le vieux uhlan 
 
 Fait souvent des siennes." 
 
 [When night falls, let us close the shutters, for the old Uhlan will 
 be playing his tricks.] 
 
 "Shall I go on?" 
 
 " Oh, yes! " cried the child, with a shudder. 
 
 "Les petits gourmands 
 Crac! dans sa besace, 
 Les petits enfants 
 Les enfants d' Alsace." 
 
 [He seizes the little gluttons, and stuffs them into his pouch, the 
 little children, the children of Alsace.] 
 
 " Is that enough? " 
 
 Marianne was holding her breath, awestruck. 
 
 " More? " 
 
 " Bismarck, chez le diable, 
 
 II n'a plus de dents, 
 
 Trouve delectable . . ." 
 
 [Bismarck is with the devU. He has no teeth left, so he appre- 
 ciates . . .] 
 
 The child began to cry, throwing herself into her 
 father's arms. 
 
 " No, not about Bismarck! . . . not about Bismarck! " 
 
 " Little goose ! Look at your father. Do you think 
 he is afraid of Bismarck? . . . Suzanne, play us some- 
 thing! Something lively. And you. Monsieur Rey- 
 mond, have a glass of kirsch? It's good stuff, from my 
 own orchard." 
 
 While his daughter was playing a victorious march, 
 more noisy than melodious, Weiss drew Reymond into a 
 window recess, and began: 
 
60 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 "Con^,ss that you think me a little cracked. . . . 
 Talking of Bismarck to a child of six! But one cannot 
 begin too early to talk to them. . . . Everything is law- 
 ful for those who have been robbed of their country. 
 And what a country! ... No one will ever know the 
 kind of lives we lead here. The Alsatian has a broad 
 chest. He needs to breathe deeply, to express his feel- 
 ings, to dance when his heart is merry — in short, to be 
 himself. Now, for forty years, we have been stifling. 
 Espionage, denunciations, suspicions, vexations, annoy- 
 ances, petty regulations, sneers, fines, imprisonment, per- 
 secutions, expulsions — this is the portion of the proud- 
 est people in the world. When a man has to be keeping 
 watch over hiipself perpetually, holding his tongue, 
 clenching his fist in his pocket, living bent double, so to 
 speak, his heart on an anvil, he breaks loose in the bosom 
 of his family! 
 
 "As a Swiss, Monsieur Reymond, you ought, indeed 
 you ought to understand and love us. People say some- 
 times: liberty is but a word. Only those who have lost 
 it know what it is. We have paid dearly for our state of 
 slavery. That photograph over the piano, that handsome 
 fellow, was my eldest son Jacques. He died in garrison, 
 at the age of twenty-one. If I told you what they did to 
 him, you would not believe me. Well, in spite of this, 
 they will have our two others. The elder boy is at Stras- 
 burg University. I mean them to stay in Alsace. Our 
 brave people must have leaders. If the middle classes 
 abandon them, all will be lost. 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 61 
 
 " I know that Bohler is going to send his boys to 
 France. I do not blame him. We want some of our 
 stock, too, beyond the Vosges, to tell what we are suffer 
 ing, to blow upon the embers. . . . My poor boy! It is 
 hard to bear ! Oh ! you mustn't think that I am so stupid 
 as to hate the Germans on principle. I know their fine 
 qualities. They are industrious, disciplined, tenacious. 
 If force is the last word in life, they are even a great 
 people. But impartiality is a forbidden luxury to us 
 Alsatians. We must only think of one thing: they have 
 taken our country, they trample upon it, they keep it by 
 the power of the mailed first. Credulous, like all those 
 who are puffed up with pride, they imagine that they will 
 bring us along in a leash from fraternity to feudality. 
 If we were to agree to this, we should be cowards, the 
 most despicable of all cowards. We should admit tacitly 
 that a nation is a flock which the master leads whither 
 he will by means of the whip. 
 
 "Ah! they build us railway-stations, post offices, and 
 schools, and they cry out at our ingratitude because they 
 cannot buy our souls! And they frown, and brandish 
 the whip! A whip for the Alsatians! For us, the sons 
 of the free towns, of the land which made the Revolu- 
 tion; for us, who lived through the Napoleonic epic, 
 sword in hand; for us who fought at Sebastopol, at Sol- 
 ferino. . . . The whip for us! " 
 
 Weiss's voice broke. He paused. Then he repeated 
 once more : " The whip ! " 
 
 An attempt, however involuntary, to upset the equi- 
 
62 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 librium of Imperial functionaries may not be made with 
 impunity. 
 
 Rene Bohler's voice, muted by the snorting of machin- 
 ery, was extolling the beauty of Calypso, when the old 
 servant knocked at the door and pronounced words that 
 struck a chill to the hearts of master and pupils: 
 
 " The Inspector of Schools." 
 
 He entered the room forthwith. What struck them 
 first was a head like a pensive vulture's, an enormously 
 long body, and very large feet. Reymond, Jean, and 
 Rene rose and bowed respectfully. The tutor then in- 
 troduced himself and his pupils in halting German. 
 
 "Are you also their German teacher?" asked the 
 Inspector in French. And he wrinkled his nose, which 
 gave his spectacles a singular up-and-down movement and 
 made his cheeks, bristling with short, stiff hairs, quiver. 
 
 " No, Monsieur." 
 
 " Then, who teaches them German, may I ask? " 
 
 "A lady . . ." 
 
 "Ah! ... A lady! A tutor for French, a lady for 
 German. And what is the name of this lady? " 
 
 " Mademoiselle Wahler." 
 
 " Where does she live? " 
 
 "AtMulhouse." 
 
 "Ah! I know that this lady also gives French les- 
 sons in that centre of learning, Mulhouse. The dual cul- 
 ture! the great Alsatian idea! We graduates of German 
 Universities cannot aspire to knowledge which exhausts 
 the possibilities of our German culture, but Mademoiselle 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 63 
 
 Wahler, it seems, assimilates the two cultures. ... I 
 congratulate this lady on her brilliant capabilities." 
 
 Delighted at having winged so many shafts of irony, 
 the Inspector ceased to wrinkle his nose, a smile flashed 
 from his green eyes, and he sat down. After a rapid 
 glance at surrounding objects — oh! oh! a map of 
 France, a statuette of Jeanne d'Arc, some little tricolour 
 flags on the walls, souvenirs of a Fourteenth of July fes- 
 tival — he came back to his mother-tongue with pon- 
 derous geniality. 
 
 "Today we will be content with a short examination 
 in history and geography. These are touchstones. I see 
 on this table books by Monsieur Seignobos, by Monsieur 
 Gallouedec, and others by my colleagues of the Great 
 Nation. I have no doubt that they contain much ex- 
 cellent and accurate information touching our Alsace, 
 for instance, and our Imperial colonies. . . . Now, you, 
 my young friend, shall tell me something about Togo- 
 land. Speak, young man: your servant is all atten- 
 tion." 
 
 Jean opened his mouth twice, and uttered a vague 
 sound. 
 
 "Very good," said the Inspector, with a loud laugh. 
 " Quite right so far. What next? " 
 
 " Togoland is a German colony ... a German colony 
 . . . very prosperous ... a fine colony ... in Af- 
 rica." 
 
 " I have suddenly forgotten my French, young man. 
 Kindly translate that into German." 
 
64 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 Jean obeyed. 
 
 " Good. I almost understood what you said. But I 
 should like a few additional details. The date of con- 
 quest, the principal towns, rivers, situation, flora and 
 fauna, the annual budget, etc., etc. — a great many 
 things! " 
 
 " There are no large towns. . . . The rivers dry up in 
 the summer. . . . The productions are cocoa, coffee, 
 and cotton. . . . There are giraffes and elephants." 
 
 Jean raised his eyebrows to indicate that he had ex- 
 hausted the sum of his knowledge. 
 
 The Inspector seemed depressed. 
 
 "When a person lives in Germany, my young friend, 
 under the protection of German might, he should show 
 some gratitude. It is his duty to take an interest in the 
 German colonies, in the elements of that German wealth 
 by which you benefit so enormously in Alsace. Now, I 
 am quite sure that you know by heart the names of the 
 eighty-six departments of France, and of two or three 
 hundred towns, the most important of which is inferior 
 to Friedensbach in intellectual and industrial life. . . . 
 The other pupil shall answer a question in history. Tell 
 me the names and principal achievements of the first six 
 Electors of Brandenburg." 
 
 Rene threw himself boldly into the breach. 
 
 "Albert the Bear, Otto the Fowler . . . Louis the 
 German. ... No; that's wrong . . . and then . . . and 
 then . . ." 
 
 "That will do." 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 65 
 
 But Rene assumed the offensive. 
 
 "Monsieur, I know the history of Germany. . . . 
 About the House of Saxony, the House of Franconia, the 
 quarrel concerning Investitures, the Golden Bull . . ." 
 
 The Inspector closed his green eyes, shook his head, 
 and began wrinkling his nose again. 
 
 " My young friend, when I ask for the names of the 
 first six Electors of Brandenburg, I don't want a dis- 
 course on the Golden Bull. German pupils form the 
 habit of answering a question in the most exact and 
 absolute manner. We call such a habit the discipline 
 of the mind. ... I will wish you good day. Monsieur 
 Reymond." 
 
 The three looked at each other dumbfounded. Dis- 
 aster! Jean seized an atlas, Rene looked up a list of 
 sovereigns. The one exclaimed: 
 
 "What a shame to catch me with Togoland, when I 
 know the names of all the German principalities! " 
 
 The other protested: 
 
 "And I know the names of all the Hapsburgs and 
 Hohenstauffens . . . and heaps of other things. And I 
 should have astonished him with the Golden Bull." 
 
 Reymond said nothing; he foresaw trouble. It was 
 with an effort that he at last exhorted them: 
 
 " Go on with Calypso again." 
 
 When Monsieur Bohler was informed of the adventure, 
 he opined, like a man of sense, that there was nothing to 
 be done, and that they must await further developments. 
 
 These were soon forthcoming in the shape of a com- 
 
66 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 minatory letter. The Inspector deplored the ignorance of 
 the culprits " in geographical and historical studies, the 
 touchstones of a solid practical education. Moreover, 
 their knowledge of our national tongue leaves much to 
 be desired. To acquire the knowledge indicated in the 
 schedules it will be necessary to apply to a man whose 
 profession familiarizes him with the said schedules and 
 their requirements." 
 
 Monsieur Bohler pondered the terms of this letter, 
 tapping the table nervously with one finger. 
 
 "There is some plot behind this; a Kummel or some 
 spy of the same sort is at the bottom of it. . . . Evi- 
 dently, they want Mademoiselle Wahler's head! The 
 worthy old soul teaches my boys German, but she also 
 teaches dozens of Mulhouse urchins French. For the 
 last thirty years she has done more to maintain French 
 influence in Alsace than all the fine speakers. They 
 know this, and they want to starve her. ... As to you. 
 Monsieur Reymond, I think we shall be able to arrange 
 matters. They won't go any further. Our factory sub- 
 sidizes various associations, courses of instruction for ap- 
 prentices, etc. Those who hold weapons are respected. 
 But where are we to find a German professor? " 
 
 " I can only think of one," replied Madame Bohler. 
 " We should be left in peace then." 
 
 " Who is your man? " 
 
 "Kummel himself. Four hours of private tuition a 
 week would be a pleasant addition to his salary. He 
 would think it his mission to Germanize our boys, and. 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 67 
 
 with this end in view, he would refrain from denouncing 
 us. Really, Kummel is our fate. He will be our light- 
 ning-conductor." 
 
 " No. I won't have the cur in my house at any price. 
 Still less will I send my boys to his." 
 
 "How would it be to let him give the lessons in my 
 rooms, Monsieur? " proposed Reymond. " I could then 
 be present at them." 
 
 "That's an idea, and a very good one. It's no use 
 kicking against the pricks. I agree. Will you make 
 the pVoposal to the pedagogue on my behalf? I should 
 prefer to have no direct dealings with him. . . . But 
 now tell me just what the Inspector said to you? " 
 
 There was a good deal of laughter about Jean's ele- 
 phants and giraffes and Rene's Golden Bull. 
 
 " Luckily for us," said Madame Bohler, " these worthy 
 Germanizers are not very dexterous. If they were, we 
 should be lost! Imagine an Inspector who would talk 
 pleasantly to children, forgetting for a moment that he 
 is a German and showing himself as a man, quite simply; 
 telling them stories about Togoland, congratulating them 
 on what they know instead of ridiculing them. But this 
 is not their way. They come as missionaries, bringing 
 culture, science, art. They bring their German might to 
 bear upon everything. They have no conception of tact. 
 This Inspector evidently knows — indeed, they know 
 everything — that my husband's two brothers were killed 
 in 1870. So, of course, he talks of ' our Alsace ' to the 
 nephews of those dead men. This enrages the boys 
 
68 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 beyond expression. But these methods are the outcome 
 of the German mind. The conqueror is irresistible; he 
 is endowed with every grace, from the mere fact that he is 
 the conqueror, and this even when he instals himself in 
 the house of his victim. His irony is but another attrac- 
 tion added to all the rest. 
 
 "Let us thank God for having made them what they 
 are," said Monsieur Bohler. " If they had combined 
 tact, respect for others, and delicate feeling, with their 
 genius for organization, the whole world would have been 
 at their feet." 
 
 After the snow came a heavy black rain. The gutters 
 overflowed. The water lay in pools amidst the slimy 
 mud. A yellow fog hung over the hill-tops and mingled 
 with the smoke from the factories. Umbrellas glistened 
 along the road; the workmen plodded along, their coat- 
 collars turned up. 
 
 " A wet day," said one. 
 
 "So much the better," replied another; "it couldn't 
 be too wet today." 
 
 Before the town-hall and the police-station figures 
 were moving about in the gloaming. Thick necks and 
 uplifted arms were distinguishable. The dim light and 
 the persistent rain gave a dismal air to the silent prepara- 
 tions. For a moment the flags floated out from their 
 standards. Presently, weighed down by the rain, they 
 fell into a sullen mass, showing only the black. / 
 
 And the bells of the valley were ringing. They 
 sounded dull and hollow. What could those poor bells 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 69 
 
 say? They speak in the voices given them by men. 
 Reymond's heart ached for all the dead sleeping under 
 the earth of battlefields, for all the living shut up in their 
 houses. The bells of Thann, of Mulhouse, of Sainte- 
 Odile, of Strasburg, of Metz, the bells of all the villages 
 in the upper valleys of the Vosges, swinging to tell men 
 that the morrow would be the birthday of the Conqueror. 
 And the music was unspeakably sad. The joy-bells 
 seemed to be ringing a knell, for a lie lay heavy on the 
 souls of those who were forced to pull the ropes. 
 
 " What would you say," thought Reymond, sitting in a 
 corner of his room in the dark, " if the bells of Basle, 
 Zurich, Berne, Geneva, and of your own Cathedral of 
 Lausanne, which have so often pealed on the red-letter 
 days of your happy fatherland, should some evening ring 
 to celebrate the victory of the foreigner? If the dead 
 were lying in the churchyards by thousands, men who 
 had gone down into the land of shadows for the salvation 
 of their country, but in vain! The flag you love is 
 furled. It is hidden in an attic. Another floats in its 
 place. The tramp of the invader echoes from the pave- 
 ment of the streets. Torches flare. Military bands, 
 with their sonorous brasses, parade the insolent joy of 
 the alien whose claws are planted in the very heart of 
 your country." 
 
 From the Vosges to the Rhine, from Luxemburg to 
 Switzerland, in the birthplace of Kleber and of Rapp, the 
 bells rang on until the thick darkness came down upon 
 the roofs. 
 
70 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 The next day it was still raining. Sporrmann the po- 
 liceman made an early round. ... A flag on the bal- 
 cony of the town-hall, another on the balcony of the 
 Justice, another at Kraut's house, another at Kummel's, 
 another at Maus the merchant's, another at the bailiff's, 
 another at the ranger's, another at the station-master's. 
 Ten red, white, and black flags in all, as there were last 
 year, and as there had been as far back as he could 
 remember, counting his own and that of his colleague, 
 Taubenspeck. He made a note of it, for statistical pur- 
 poses. And nine red-and-white flags at the rural police- 
 man's house, at the house of Kummel's colleague, on the 
 fronts of the seven Wirtschaften, Elsewhere, or rather 
 everywhere else, nothing was to be seen but closely 
 drawn curtains. Nineteen flags! . , . Policeman Sporr- 
 mann indulged in a dream. He longed to bring the 
 total up to twenty. Next year, perhaps, if Karl is really 
 applying for an innkeeper's licence . . . 
 
 The chimneys belch out smoke. The machines whirr 
 and buzz. The river runs swiftly over its white pebbles. 
 The day is like all other days, save in the school. The 
 children cannot escape. Willingly or unwillingly, they 
 have to swallow what others refuse. Sent to ramble in 
 the forest, they have gathered holly, ivy, and little 
 branches of fir, with which they will presently bedeck a 
 niche. . . . Now, drawn up in procession behind the um- 
 brella of Schoolmaster Kummel, who is arrayed in a 
 frock-coat and a tall hat, they go to the town-hall to 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 71 
 
 fetch the plaster bust of the Emperor with the strongly- 
 marked forehead, the severe eyes, the hard mouth, and 
 the fierce moustaches, accentuated by the dust which has 
 gathered for a year on the august effigy. . . . The bust is 
 duly installed. Kummel rises. He speaks of God, of the 
 Emperor, of the Emperor and God. He speaks of the 
 colonies. He speaks of the eight millions of German 
 soldiers. He speaks of the influence of Germany in the 
 world, of all she still has to do in order to purify the 
 world of the sins which are consuming it like a leprosy. 
 Armed with a switch, he points out on the map the course 
 of German steamers on the blue oceans. He shows in 
 Brazil, in Argentina, in Nicaragua, in China, everywhere, 
 a hundred youthful Germanies in process of formation. 
 It is the will of God! With mystic fervour he enlarges 
 on the gratitude of Alsace, her joy in belonging to the 
 regal nation, of the incense smoking upon her altars and 
 rising to the thrones of God and the Emperor, the Em- 
 peror and God. 
 
 The grandsons of those who died for France listen to 
 his words. These innocents, the biggest of whom is 
 hardly higher than a man's knee, gaze at him open- 
 mouthed. Then Kummel turns to the bust, to which he 
 bows reverentially. And thrice, raising his arms to 
 heaven, his eyes gleaming, his long body quivering, he 
 shouts to the ceiling: Hoch! hoch! hoch! . . . The 
 children, who think this very amusing, and love a noise, 
 echo him loudly: Hoch! hoch! hoch! The boys group 
 
72 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 themselves at a given sign. Standing in a semicircle 
 round the bust, cap in hand, they chant: Deutschland, 
 Deutschland ilber A lies! . . . 
 
 The rites are over. The boys are dismissed. And as 
 they are now free to do what they please, they march 
 along, stamping on the ground, and throwing their caps 
 into the air, they sing in deafening chorus: 
 
 Wenn der Kater nicht haarig ist 
 Fdngt er keine Mouse. . . . 
 
 This is more spontaneous than the Deutschland iiber 
 Alles! 
 
 Wrapped in a number of the Strassburger Post, the 
 Imperial bust is carried by Kummel to the inn, Zum 
 weissen Lamm, 
 
 Shortly afterwards, the procession starts from the 
 railway-station: all the ofl&cials of Friedensbach, and in 
 addition the Customs officers, rangers, postmen, rural 
 policemen and clerks of the neighbourhood, the presi- 
 dents, vice-presidents, and treasurers of the Kriegerve- 
 reine or military associations: exactly forty-one frock- 
 coats, forty-one tall hats, and forty-one umbrellas. 
 Kraut, Kummel, and Doring are there, of course. On 
 their breasts are medals enough to decorate a division. 
 In front of the frock-coats — cedant togce armis — march 
 those who have some sort of right to wear a uniform: 
 officers of the Reserve, retired officers of the Reserve, 
 privy councillors and very privy councillors, plumes, 
 epaulettes, spurs, boots, gold, shoulder-knots, paunches 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 73 
 
 severely held in by belts buckled to the last hole. At the 
 head of the procession, six musicians lent by a regimental 
 band. In short, a complete mobilization of missionaries 
 of the national Idea. Strength of conviction gives a cer- 
 tain grandeur to these men. They hold a cure of .souls. 
 They are the priests of a religion. The chief has or- 
 dered them to advance . . . and they advance. Outposts 
 of Deutschtum in a rebel land, or rather in a land per- 
 verted by foreign influences, it is their task to impose 
 Truth. Sentiment is but weakness, the worship of the 
 past but perversity and disease. 
 
 You laugh, you who have not seen them. You shrug 
 your shoulders. You talk of a grotesque caricature, of 
 absurd exaggeration. . . . Come, I say to you peaceful 
 dwellers in a free country, draw aside the curtain and 
 look; see here, in the rain, the swing of those forty frock- 
 coats, the swords, the helmets, but, above all, the fore- 
 heads, the jaws, the bristling moustaches, the gloved fists, 
 the furious eyes that note the absence of flags on the 
 house-fronts, the haughtiness of the tread, the scorn in 
 the shoulders, the infallibility of the chests, the doctrine 
 that seems to ooze from every pore: "We are the mas- 
 ters. We will break down all resistance. God has given 
 us our right, the Emperor has given us our orders." 
 
 When you have seen such a Pan-Germanist parade in 
 a humble Alsatian country town you will say: "Yes, it 
 is lamentable, but, after all, you must acknowledge the 
 indisputable virtues of these men." 
 
 "Yes," a Victor Weiss will reply, "they are perfect. 
 
74 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 All we complain of is that they have been sitting on our 
 hearts for forty years, and that they are heavy ! " 
 
 What a banquet! What libations! At intervals a 
 stentorian chorus. Then a succession of Hochs! . . . 
 An orator rises. From the street we can only see his 
 outstretched hands, the movement of his jaws, his asser- 
 tive paunch. What is he saying? . . . The Hochs! are 
 reiterated with savage energy. Another song. Now 
 they are laughing, and as the windows have been opened 
 to let out the tobacco-smoke, this post-prandial laughter 
 echoes in the empty street. The merchant Maus, one of 
 the "rallied," raises his glass higher than the others. 
 They congratulate him. The idea is gaining ground. 
 . . . Deutschland liber A lies! 
 
 Policeman Taubenspeck little knows that some rascals, 
 taking advantage of this patriotic delirium, have got 
 hold of his white tom-cat and have painted its head blue 
 and its tail red, so that when he returns to his home in 
 the small hours he will find a tricoloured flag on his 
 doorstep! . . . But Taubenspeck has no forebodings. 
 He is too busy lifting his glass. And the tricoloured 
 cat is patient. It will wait. 
 
 Reymond had paid a visit to the old Schmolers. The 
 tall clock ticked sedately in the warm room, every slow 
 movement seeming about to be its last. . . . The sounds 
 of the festival echoed faintly in this quiet nook. After 
 an outburst of stamping and cheering, old Jacobine 
 trembled. 
 
 " Do you think, Monsieur, that they are getting ready 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 75 
 
 for another war, as some people say? Oh! war! war! 
 . . . We have had enough of it in Alsace! Ever since 
 there has been a France and a Germany they have been 
 fighting here, on the backs of us poor folks. My mother, 
 for instance — we need not go further back than that — 
 saw the Cossacks in Friedensbach, in the time of the 
 great Napoleon. How often she has told us the story! 
 Thump! One evening some one was kicking the door, 
 that very door you open every night. . . . Lord, it was 
 the Cossacks! And they were hungry, and so ugly, 
 dirty and black as the bottom of a saucepan. My mother 
 hastened to bring them a soup-tureen full of potatoes. 
 Her hand trembled as she stood among these savages 
 armed with lances, grimacing like devils. The handle 
 slipped, the tureen crashed to the ground, and the con- 
 tents lay on the road in the mud. Well, Monsieur, those 
 ten Cossacks sprang from their horses, knelt down, gath- 
 ered up the soup and the potatoes from the dirt and 
 manure, gobbled them up, jumped into their saddles 
 again, gave a shout and a laugh, and galloped away. 
 My mother was lucky to get off so cheaply. ... In other 
 places they set fire to the houses and stabbed the peasants. 
 " I myself saw Strasburg burning in 1870. I was in 
 service in a village fifteen kilometres away. Every night 
 bombs burst with a flash, just like lightning, and we 
 heard the noise some time afterwards. At last one night 
 we saw fire. All the sky was red, red, as far as the eye 
 could reach. I watched it for a minute from my bed- 
 room window. And then I couldn't look any longer. 
 
76 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 I hid my face in my handkerchief and cried. And I 
 could still see the red through the handkerchief. Yes, 
 indeed, we know something of war in Alsace. There 
 was a field hospital at my sister's house near Wissem- 
 bourg. And they buried thirty legs and even more arms 
 behind the lilacs in her garden. Oh! war! Just listen, 
 how they are shouting! War! My husband, too, has 
 seen it; he even took part in it." 
 
 Madame Vogel and her sister came in. They sat 
 down, their hands on their knees. 
 
 "Yes, indeed; I served all through the Metz cam- 
 paign. . . . They talk of victories, but we were betrayed. 
 How we marched and fought for days and nights to- 
 gether! What bombardments! What masses of dead! 
 And the wounded! How they screamed! When we 
 charged, we jumped into pools of blood. When we had 
 to retreat, we wept with rage. In the evening the sky 
 was all red, as at Strasburg. Blood, above and below! 
 ... I saw a ditch with forty-seven dead men in it, and on 
 the top was my best friend, staring at me with wide-open 
 eyes. Such horrors! And then I was a prisoner. And 
 when I came home, they were here, just as they have 
 been ever since. The soil is good, life is easy. . . . 
 Corn, hops, vines. . . . Those who find a good thing 
 stick to it." 
 
 Jacob listened to these tales, seated on the bench by 
 the stove. Suddenly he said: 
 
 " Grandfather, shall we fight the Germans again? " 
 
 "Be quiet, child," said his mother. "You do not 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 77 
 
 know what war is. All that is over, fortunately." 
 
 " No! " protested the boy; " once more, and then never 
 again." 
 
 The grandfather smiled. 
 
 " You see, it's in their blood." 
 
 All night the rain that lashed the window-panes min- 
 gled its murmurs with the Hochs! At dawn uncertain 
 footsteps, wandering frock-coats, decorations, and flushed 
 faces, confronted the storm. Leaving the merchant 
 Maus to address a martial harangue to the trunk of a 
 plane-tree, Taubenspeck leant over the basin of the 
 fountain, "breathing out threatenings and slaughters" 
 as he washed his tom-cat, held by two functionaries who 
 had laid their tall hats on the stone margin. 
 
 Herzog the shoemaker, disturbed in his sleep, grum- 
 bled: 
 
 "Back to your kennels. Imperial hogsheads! " And 
 this was the epilogue of the feast. 
 
 The next day, when Kummel opened the door himself 
 to Reymond, his eyelids were still swollen, his features 
 drawn, his complexion mottled. This did not prevent 
 him, however, a few minutes later, from catching a new 
 French idiom on the wing, as it were. 
 
 "Very good; an excellent Gallicism that. Allow me 
 to make a note of it." 
 
 As always, the lesson was prolonged into a conversa- 
 tion. Kummel asked for advice. 
 
 " Faithful to our notions of culture, Monsieur, I read 
 
78 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 the best French authors. That is the difference between 
 us and the French; they know nothing of our writers; 
 we know all of theirs. This is necessary for those who 
 intend to gain the victory. During the last few months 
 I have studied a novel by Loti, one by Anatole France, 
 one by Bourget, and one by Prevost, just a characteristic 
 work of each, enough for my catalogue. It is a literature 
 for artists, the latest flowers at the moment when one 
 goes to gather them. Once gathered, there is nothing 
 left. No; it is not a literature that inspires energy, 
 braces one for conflict. However, I read it. Culture 
 requires that I should. Can you recommend me some 
 other author who is considered representative of French 
 mentality? " 
 
 Reymond was aghast! Kummel, booted and spurred, 
 ranging the parterres of France! He controlled himself: 
 
 " You should read the complete works of Stephane 
 Mallarme. They are rather difficult; the thought is some- 
 times elusive, but with a good dictionary you will be able 
 to follow him." 
 
 "Thank you. I will make a note of it. Two Ts in 
 Mallarme? Thank you. By the way, do you consider 
 my accent very bad? " 
 
 " Not at all. ... It is a little hard, a little guttural, 
 but you articulate well." 
 
 " That is the result of our excellent methods. In our 
 teachers' colleges we learn intuitively and phonetically. 
 That is the German method. Yes, here again the French 
 might take a lesson from us. . . ." 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 79 
 
 "No doubt. . . . And what about your banquet? 
 Was it interesting? " 
 
 "Magnificent! . . . The merchant Maus, who is a 
 thoroughbred Alsatian, made a remarkable speech. Like 
 all thinking men, he has gradually come round to the 
 German point of view. He realizes our irresistible 
 strength. He has succeeded in throwing off sentiment, 
 and has rallied to our culture whole-heartedly. We are 
 incontestably, are we not, the people destined to direct, 
 the people organized in view of a rational conquest, of 
 a normal utilization of the world's capital? Our philos- 
 ophers, our scientists, our statesmen, are preparing the 
 event. Just think: in the eighteenth century we were 
 divided, we were ideologists and dreamers, and our coun- 
 try was the battlefield of Europe. Later we loved flow- 
 ers, moonlight, love, mystical theories. Then Napoleon 
 rose, and planted his foot on our belly — yes, on our 
 belly. Monsieur! . . . And he was right, for we were 
 weak. Germany pulled herself together. She reflected. 
 She elaborated her doctrine. Bismarck, our great Bis- 
 marck, with his great broom, swept away pity, divaga- 
 tions (you say divagations?) on liberty, equality, and 
 fraternity. And we beat Austria, we beat Denmark, we 
 beat France, as we shall beat the rest. This strength of 
 ours bases its eventual victory on its truth. It says, in 
 short: only the strong man can realize himself. It is 
 thus that humanity is fashioned. The strong command. 
 The weak obey. And at last everything is working to 
 this end. This we proclaimed yesterday at the anniver- 
 
80 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 sary banquet of His Majesty. Alsace, whose ship we 
 have launched on the great river of civilization, must be- 
 come one of the horses of our Imperial chariot, or refuse 
 to draw it and perish miserably. We care little which 
 fate she chooses. We are strong enough to hold under 
 our fist millions of men incapable of understanding our 
 ideal and our truth, which is the truth: the scientific 
 exploitation of human energies." 
 
 Reymond listened attentively. He felt no inclination 
 to smile at this man, whose patriotic mania made him 
 formidable. He merely asked him a question — an in- 
 sidious one, it is true. 
 
 "Are you an Alsatian by birth. Monsieur Kummel? " 
 
 Kummel threw off his mask. 
 
 "No. I am an Alsatian by adoption. For over 
 twenty-seven years I have been struggling in this prov- 
 ince, which is so perverted by foreign idealism. I have 
 adopted this country, to which I am giving all my 
 powers, I am consequently an Alsatian. But, of course, 
 pure German blood only runs in my veins. I say these 
 things to you, because you, who belong to a nation the 
 main portion of which speaks the German tongue, are 
 capable of collaborating in our work." 
 
 The gaunt schoolmaster raised his head. His truth 
 seemed, indeed, to inflate his hollow chest. The subject 
 was exhausted for the moment. Reymond, in a voice 
 he strove to make as natural as possible, took occasion 
 to say: 
 
 " By the way. Monsieur Kummel, could you undertake 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 81 
 
 to give German lessons to my two pupils, the young Boh- 
 lers? Their father asked me to speak to you about it. 
 Four hours a week, to begin. . . ." 
 
 Kummel's face was illuminated. 
 
 " Certainly ! . . . Yes, certainly. It will be an hon- 
 our and a pleasure to me to enter Monsieur Bohler's 
 house." 
 
 Reymond hastened to put the dots on the i's. 
 
 "The schoolroom would not be available. The les- 
 sons would be at my rooms, if you don't mind." 
 . "Or here?" 
 
 "Your house is rather out of the way for us. And 
 there are other reasons. Let it be at my rooms, please." 
 
 Kummel bowed. 
 
 " We may look upon the matter as settled. We can 
 arrange the details more precisely. ... I congratulate 
 Monsieur Bohler. A lady cannot instruct men, es- 
 pecially in our virile tongue. Only he who considers 
 our German tongue as the expression of our German 
 soul can be worthy of this sacred office." 
 
 When Reymond was gone, Kummel said to his wife, 
 who entered, followed by the small fry: 
 
 " Wife, I, thy husband, Konrad Kummel, am appointed 
 tutor to the young Bohlers. We are at last breaking 
 open the doors of high Alsatian society. ... As they 
 say themselves, patience and time do more than force 
 and rage." 
 
 And he filled his pipe with a guttural laugh. 
 
AND so in the hollow of the valley the noise of the 
 sabots, the cry of the hooter, the toil of the men and 
 machines, go on. From morn till eve workers bend 
 over the spindles, or follow the course of the shuttles, or 
 tie the broken thread. The whole factory is an instru- 
 ment of precision, in which men, too, are wheels. Every- 
 thing is a matter of calculation, of returns. He who con- 
 sumes so much must produce so much. Regardless of 
 chatter and irresponsible theories, the manufacturer keeps 
 his eye on the current prices of wool and cotton, adds up 
 figures, compares them with other figures, dispatches his 
 telegrams. 
 
 So, then, here there is this industrial life, this com- 
 plicated machinery, this struggle with the raw material, 
 which has to be bought, transformed, and exported. 
 Elsewhere, this is all. But here the struggle is embittered 
 by the struggle against men who wage war upon one's 
 habits, one's traditions, one's language, one's soul. 
 Thus, a man can never unbend entirely, and take his 
 ease, either in his office, in the street, in his family circle, 
 each member of which brings in some echo of the conflict, 
 or even in church, where he is ordered to pray for the 
 usurper. 
 
 Pacifism? Disarmament? The enemy is within the 
 82 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 83 
 
 fortress — a cunning and a powerful enemy. So one has 
 to choose between suicidal abdication and a strenuous, 
 dangerous life. Every evening — what will happen to- 
 morrow? — is something of a vigil under arms. 
 
 Solitude, meditation. But when so many machines 
 are in motion, there is a constant appeal from practical 
 things. And when one's country is suffocating, there 
 must be a struggle for life even in silence, while at times 
 a fever takes hold of one, restless impulses; then one 
 says: " No, this cannot go on." And yet it does go on. 
 One resigns oneself. One has to be patient, to hold one's 
 peace. 
 
 Those who grow up in this virile and melancholy 
 atmosphere bear rude traces of the conflict. The young, 
 whose blood runs swift and hot, are full of indignation 
 and astonishment. Why do we not rise and thrust the 
 intruder out? They collect prints showing the prohibited 
 uniforms; they have notebooks in which they inscribe 
 the names of battleships, the number of guns and aero- 
 planes? They talk of the time " when we shall have got 
 back Alsace " with all the superb light-heartedness of 
 youth. Meanwhile, year is added to year, experience to 
 experience; they feel in their turn all the weight of the 
 yoke. Many, in the revolt of their hearts and bodies, 
 struggle furiously against the strait-waistcoat in which 
 they are to be clothed; others, with precocious gravity, 
 wrap themselves in silence, and prepare for a long pa- 
 tience. 
 
 Reymond found all these traits of the Alsatian char- 
 
84 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 acter, fashioned by nearly forty years of annexation, in 
 Ihis pupils. 
 
 Emile Zumbach, aged fifteen, was a taciturn lad, 
 greatly interested in chemistry and mathematics. It 
 sometimes happened that he never opened his lips 
 throughout a walk of two hours. He had no pretensions 
 to elegance. Thick calves, short thighs, a solid torso, 
 crowned by a head with full cheeks. In his eyes a per- 
 tinacity, a slow reflectiveness — slow, but sure of its 
 object. As an engineer or chemist, he would continue 
 the line of those who have made the wealth and strength 
 of Alsace. To be and not to seem., to act and not to talk, 
 is their motto. 
 
 Andre Berger, a handsome fellow, distrustful and 
 argumentative, was apparently very different, but in real- 
 ity closely akin to him. His favourite phrase was: It's 
 not proved. According to him, antiquity, people with 
 nymphs and interwoven with myths, lasted until the Uni- 
 versal Exhibition of 1900. Then the scientific era be- 
 gan. Fiction made him smile. . . . Racine? Pretty 
 words, which lead to nothing. This harshness in the ex- 
 pression of his thought, this sense of utility, and also his 
 splendid rectitude, made Andre a typical Alsatian. His 
 tutor said to him one day: "You are always mocking 
 at sentiment. Now listen. On what grounds do you 
 protest against the annexation? " 
 
 He replied as follows : " Before a transaction is con- 
 cluded, all those concerned have to agree to it. Did we 
 Alsatians ever agree to the annexation? No; so to us 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 85 
 
 it is not binding, it was not a loyal compact. Loyalty is 
 not a sentiment. By sentiment I mean the whimperings 
 of yomig girls, their forget-me-not albums, and the like." 
 
 By which, no doubt, Berger meant to say that loyalty 
 is more a matter of intellectual purity than a quality of 
 the heart, and that sentiments which are too freely formu- 
 lated are enervating. He had the reticence of a healthy 
 boy brought up in the German school, who had deliber- 
 ately adopted something of its hardness. He summed 
 up his thoughts in these terms: "We shall not get Al- 
 sace back by means of literature." 
 
 Charles Weiss and Rene Bohler were very much alike. 
 The two friends, who had long bent over the same alpha- 
 bet and played the same pranks, were now separated by 
 their studies; for one was to remain in Alsace, while the 
 other was to seek his fortune in France. Delighted to be 
 together twice a week, they whistled the same tunes, ran 
 at the same pace, greeted the same old people, and 
 climbed the same trees. If one threw a stone into the 
 river, the other thought it incumbent on him to perform 
 the same feat. They were a frank, noisy, greedy, pair, 
 bubbling over with laughter at every trifle. Their fa- 
 vourite studies were geography and geology, everything 
 connected with figures, superficies, and the bones which 
 enable the scientist to determine periods. They were the 
 Alsatian hedonist in bud. Yet sometimes from out this 
 apparent superficiality came a profound word, a right- 
 eous anger, revealing the drama that underlay their 
 youthful joy and health. 
 
86 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 One evening the band was returning from a walk. As 
 they passed the graveyard of Moosch, Rene said suddenly 
 to his friend: 
 
 " I am glad I'm not one of those in there. They won't 
 see us drive the Schwobs out of Alsace." 
 
 Charles Weiss replied: "Drive out the Schwobs? 
 And if we are killed? . . . Then it will be our turn for 
 the churchyard." 
 
 " It won't matter being killed, if we have had time 
 to see them clearing out first." 
 
 " That's true. But it will be wretched for those who 
 fall at the beginning, before one can be sure." 
 
 Such are the words of Alsatian boys — boys of thir- 
 teen, fourteen, and fifteen, whose voices are changing, 
 whose socks are turned over their shoes, who have sturdy 
 legs, good digestions, and a great capacity for frolic and 
 mischief, and yet who can suddenly talk in the sunshine 
 of dying for their province. 
 
 Jean Bohler was a creature of a different clay. To 
 understand him, one had to know his mother, a refined 
 and cultivated Frenchwoman, exquisitely tactful; born 
 in the country, she had been brought up in Paris, and 
 had married into Alsace. Suddenly she had accepted 
 the task of silent duty. From the concerts, lectures, 
 and lively conversations of Paris, she had come to the 
 sheltered valley, the patois of workmen, the Sunday bells 
 ringing for High Mass. She was a Protestant, which 
 increased her isolation. Thus, in the temple of her soul 
 there was a sort of quiet blossoming, nourished by beauti- 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 87 
 
 ful books, read and re-read, clarified until all that lin- 
 gered in the memory was their human quality; she 
 planned and dreamt during the long afternoons, when all 
 were at work, evolving a habit of personal courage, of 
 resignation to uncongenial things; the wish to shed 
 around her that warmth of heart thanks to which the 
 home — all that really belongs to the Alsatian — is a 
 home indeed. 
 
 This wealth of pensive feeling, this warm sensibility, 
 this respect for work — which was Monsieur Bohler's 
 religion — Jean had received at birth. At fifteen he 
 loved to seek the knotty points of a question, listening 
 attentively to arguments and objections, recognizing the 
 complexity of problems. Reverent and sensitive, grieved 
 and agitated by the sight of injustice triumphant, he was 
 foredoomed to suffer in life, to be caught in more than 
 one net, to bruise his wings against more than one bar- 
 rier. In difficult hours he would seek consolation in 
 music, that world of sonorous reverie, of immaterial 
 realities, of poignant beauty and divine appeasement. 
 . . . Passionate, shy as boys naturally are who have no 
 sisters, few friends, hardly any one to confide in outside 
 their own family, Jean concentrated all his powers on 
 his studies. How often Reymond had unobtrusively 
 watched his pupil bending over a problem or a transla- 
 tion, had noted the beautiful outline of the brow, the 
 clear eyes, the precocious gravity of the expression, the 
 delicacy of the hands pressed upon the temples as if to 
 hold fast attention. 
 
88 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 Reymond was fond of all his pupils, and rejoiced to see 
 them asserting their different individualities with all the 
 exaggeration of their age, but he could not help feeling 
 a special attraction in Jean Bohler, recognizing as he did 
 the spiritual beauty of his character. 
 
 On Wednesday and Saturday afternoons the boys fore- 
 gathered. In winter they crowded into the small school- 
 room, but as soon as the fine weather set in there were 
 outdoor excursions, butterfly hunts, and searches for crys- 
 tals, discussions, and happy bursts of laughter. 
 
 On a certain Wednesday in March the little band set 
 out. The first mild days were at hand, when the prim- 
 roses shed their radiance on the sloping banks. Near 
 the washing-troughs, where kneeling women were wring- 
 ing out linen, sheets were drying in the azure air. The 
 geese, walking sedately in couples, were seeking pastur- 
 age in the meadows. . . . The little terraced gardens and 
 brown roofs of Friedensbach, the still leafless orchards, 
 the yellow line of the river swollen by the melting of the 
 snow, lay in the embrace of the blue hills and mountains 
 to which the smoke of fires lighted in the fields rose in 
 joyous columns. 
 
 Suddenly the road was animated by a rhythmic tramp, 
 the flash of drawn swords and bristling helmets. Some 
 battalion was exercising. 
 
 "Let us be off! " cried Rene. " Hort's garden; the 
 gate is open." 
 
 It was a very old garden, with a hornbeam hedge box 
 borders, and a service-tree in flower. Old Hort was clip- 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 89 
 
 ping his hedge. They could hear the sharp click of the 
 secateurs. He laughed silently at the invasion of his 
 domain. At the school, Kummel was full of energy. 
 He drove his pupils out and arranged them in line; fear 
 and curiosity struggled for the mastery in their little 
 faces. The Justice appeared; the policemen, marching 
 slowly, buttoned tightly into their closely fitting tunics; 
 then Kraut, beaming, his pen behind his ear. 
 
 " There is storm in the air ; the worms are coming out," 
 said old Hort on his ladder. 
 
 The battalion approached. Reymond's five pupils hid- 
 ing behind the thicket, the kneeling washerwomen with 
 their bowed heads, seemed living images of conquered 
 Alsace. . . . There was a hoarse shout. The sharp slap 
 of a thousand guns on a thousand shoulders. A second 
 shout; the heavy sound of boots grinding the soil; the 
 splendid clamour of brass instruments; the shrill piping 
 of the fifes; the Chinese bells all a-quiver; the dull, 
 intermittent thud of the drumsticks on. the great drum. 
 The numbered, ticketed, trained and disciplined mass, 
 belaboured by orders, flowed along like the stream of an 
 embanked river. Confronted with this manifest cohe- 
 sion, the individual hesitated and effaced himself. 
 Round faces, flat faces, all submissive; harshly outlined 
 chins, the rictus of lips contracted by effort, the flash of 
 the eye quenched in obedience, lined necks stretched for- 
 ward as towards a fatality; and everywhere so mathe- 
 matically aligned that it made the spectator's head swim; 
 the four booted feet thrown forward, the four booted 
 
90 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 feet planted on the ground, the four swinging arms, the 
 four cowhide knapsacks, the four parallel rifles, the four 
 docile faces, the four spikes of the four helmets; among 
 the officers, a tension of every muscle, a haughty ele- 
 gance, swords upheld like principles; the whole rolling 
 along behind the strident cries of the fifes and the boom- 
 ing of the big drum, a formidable force, one man the 
 counterpart of another, one section the replica of an- 
 other section, one company identical with another com- 
 pany; each physically alike, mentally alike, each show- 
 ing the same alert expectation of an order, after which 
 all would halt, as if thunderstruck, and then proceed as 
 before. 
 
 When the noise died away in the distance, when the 
 last rifles had turned the corner of the street, a kind of 
 disciplined terror still prevailed. The inhabitants shook 
 their heads, subjugated. 
 
 The walking party entered the path that climbs the 
 mountain in silence. Suddenly, as if an order had gone 
 round, the five pupils began to declaim. . . . Around 
 them, ever since they could remember, there had been 
 sighs and lamentations; exiles who were forbidden to 
 come and greet father and mother, or to follow their 
 coffins; peaceable folks ordered off within forty-eight 
 hours, for no ostensible reason; others tolerated from 
 sunrise to sunset, but obliged to go and spend the night 
 at Basle; disorganized lives, resentments, hatreds. 
 
 "You know," said Rene, "when our cousin Marthe 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 91 
 
 married a Saxon, father said: 'She is dead now.' No 
 one ever mentions her." 
 
 Then Charles Weiss: 
 
 "My father says the French pacifists are fools, and 
 that one does not throw away one's stick when the wolf 
 is prowling round the house." 
 
 Zumbach continued: 
 
 " As to me, I will never forgive them for forcing us to 
 shout Hoch! on the Emperor's birthday." 
 
 " What! Do you really shout? " 
 
 " One has to. They watch to see whether you open 
 your mouth or not." 
 
 All five exclaimed in chorus: "It's disgusting! dis- 
 gusting! . . . We are made to tell lies all the time." 
 
 "We have to say that Charlemagne was a German 
 Emperor." 
 
 " We have to sing, ' Germany, my fatherland ! ' " 
 
 " We have to say that Alsace suffered under the French 
 yoke." 
 
 " And that Kummel ! " interjected Jean Bohler. " The 
 day you were at Mulhouse, Monsieur, he told us that 
 France was rotten to the core, that she had no longer 
 any children, any religion, any morality, anything! He 
 said that all the authors of the Revolution were madmen, 
 and that they had proved this by guillotining each other; 
 that God had decreed the triumph of the healthy nations, 
 and that those who oppose the plans of Germany are 
 fools or people who prefer debauchery to discipline." 
 
92 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 "And what did you say? " asked Reymond. 
 
 "Nothing. Father has forbidden us to answer." 
 
 "However," said Rene, "the other day, when he 
 turned his head away, I squirted six drops of ink on his 
 grey trousers." 
 
 Below them, on the winding ribbon of the main road, 
 the battalion advanced. And the sight was terribly im- 
 pressive: in this peaceful Alsatian valley, on this road 
 where forty years ago French infantrymen in red trousers 
 had gone along singing, As-tu vu la casquette, la cas- 
 quette . . ." moved this Prussian battalion, whose hymn 
 rose to the crest of the momitains: "Z/ie6' Vaterland, 
 magst ruhig sein ..." 
 
 "Monsieur," asked Jean Bohler, the tears glistening 
 in his eyes, " if you were an Alsatian, would you stay 
 here or would you go?. . . To stay means marching 
 with those men. ... To go means forsaking Alsace for 
 ever. . . . What would you do? " 
 
 " I shall stay," declared Weiss. " Those who go away 
 leave empty places. We know who fills them." 
 
 They began to dispute. One cried: 
 
 "Those who stay are the finest; they suffer more." 
 
 " No, those who go do, for they leave everything they 
 love." 
 
 " They are cowards to go." 
 
 " Cowards ! Say that again ! . . . The cowards are 
 those who put up with insults in the German barracks 
 for two years without a word. At last they must begin 
 to despise themselves." 
 
. THE HEART OF ALSACE 93 
 
 " It is right to go." 
 
 "It is right to stay." 
 
 Jean Bohler repeated his question obstinately: 
 
 " Well, Monsieur, would you go? " 
 
 What could Reymond say? The goatherd was play- 
 ing a tune on his flute. The children came dancing and 
 singing out of school. A spring sweetness filled the air. 
 On the mountain path five ,boys, aged from thirteen to 
 fourteen, wrangled, one crying " Go," the other " Stay." 
 And they were talking of their little fatherland. Yes, 
 what should he say? Deeply moved, Reymond replied; 
 
 " Dear boys, you are all fine fellows." 
 
 Another of these walks remained graven in Reymond's 
 memory. One morning Weiss had said in a mysterious 
 tone : 
 
 " Now's the time. They are in flower." 
 
 "What are?" 
 
 "The jonquils, of course. I know the places. This 
 afternoon my wife expects you and your pupils to tea. 
 At a quarter-past four I shall come in from the ofl&ce and 
 carry you off. Not a word; it's all settled." 
 
 This tea was of a kind to be expected at the Weiss's 
 house: almond Kougelhopfs, cakes of various kinds with 
 cream or kirsch, butter, jam, tea. Passing round the 
 table continually, Madame Weiss filled cups, cut slices, 
 offered and served without paying the slightest attention 
 to refusals. 
 
 " I don't like people to pick like birds. . . . You must 
 
94 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 have this piece, Suzanne, after giving lessons for two 
 hours." 
 
 " What ! " protested Reymond, " are you going to com- 
 pete with me. Mademoiselle? " 
 
 "Yes, indeed. And quite clandestinely. Not very 
 high-class literature, however. I am just teaching a 
 little French to three young girls who are going out to 
 service. And then I have my evening classes: eleven 
 pupils. . . . One must do what one can. ... I have 
 an idea that if I have not been troubled hitherto I owe 
 it to Justice Doring. Ever since the famous accident, 
 he bows almost to the ground when we meet. I re- 
 spond, and even smile a little. It's quite worth 
 while, if it enables me to teach Fr-ench to eleven little 
 girls." 
 
 " Perhaps it was Doring who sent you those anony- 
 mous verses," said Charles, and he declaimed : 
 
 " Tu as perdu la clef de ton cceur, 
 Tu ne peux la trouver, 
 Et cela te fait peur. . . . 
 Je vais te rassurer! 
 La clef est dans mon cceur 
 Pour toujours en siirete." 
 
 [Thou hast lost the key of thine heart; thou canst not find it, 
 and this alarms thee. Have no fear; the key is in my heart, and 
 safe for ever.] 
 
 " Perhaps it was you. Monsieur," said Rene. 
 Reymond blushed. 
 "Little simpleton! " 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 95 
 
 " Excellent Doring ! " said Suzanne, " collector of lost 
 objects! ... I shall be obliged to ask him for my heart 
 again. It will be touching." 
 
 "You would be magnificent as Madame Doring," 
 continued Charles. "Take my arm. We will march 
 along the square of Friedensbach on the Emperor's birth- 
 day, you in a Reformkleid, I in a frock-coat, with my 
 moustaches turned up to the stars." 
 
 The company laughed till they cried at their evolu- 
 tions. They then proceeded to imitate the young Lieu- 
 tenant who walks about with his eyeglass in his eye, his 
 feline graces when he passes a lady, the condescending 
 thrust of his jaw to inferiors, his unfathomable bows to 
 the Colonel. 
 
 " Enough of this," said Suzanne at last. " We see too 
 much of them out of doors; we don't want to bring them 
 in here." 
 
 She sat down at the piano. Humming the words, she 
 played : Ma terre est la plus belle et pourtant qu^elle est 
 triste.^ 
 
 A Saint Odile smiled prettily from the light back- 
 ground of a piece of tapestry. The walls were covered 
 with souvenirs of happier times, the records of an entire 
 past. The song continued its lament. To be twenty, to 
 be made for happiness, to live in this moribund land, 
 and to feel that one could not live elsewhere. 
 
 The sudden irruption of Weiss put an end to this 
 momentary melancholy. In five minutes they were all 
 
 1 "Fair is my land, and yet how sad! " 
 
96 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 on the mountain path. The boys ran on in front. Weiss 
 began to explain his passion in lyric terms: 
 
 " The Vosges ! ... If you want to know the virtues 
 of a woman, you must question the man of her heart. 
 Well, I am the faithful lover of the Vosges. I once went 
 to the Oberland. A delightful journey. My wife, 
 leather trunks, big hotels. . . . But more Schwobs even 
 than here. And such peaks and heights! They crushed 
 me. They are too grandiose for poor Victor Weiss. So, 
 when I came back, the Vosges said to me : * It serves 
 you right, Weiss; you should have stayed here.' And 
 now I stay." 
 
 Then, without giving Reymond time to defend the 
 Oberland, he asked: 
 
 " What do you think of Alsace? Do you feel that 
 we are standing firm? " 
 
 Reymond hesitated a little. 
 
 " I hardly know how to answer you. I know so few 
 people beyond my pupils. The middle classes, of course, 
 are sound, firm as a rock. As to the workmen, I brush 
 by them; I don't know them." 
 
 " The reason I ask you the question is that I have just 
 been reading an article which has enraged me by its 
 superficiality, one of those articles written by a journalist 
 after spending a few hours in one of our towns, where he 
 has conversed with a couple of Germans he has taken 
 for native Alsatians. When people deal with Alsace 
 they should explain everything, or they should not meddle 
 with her affairs. Do you suppose this gentleman knows 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 97 
 
 that after the annexation two hundred thousand Alsatians 
 gave up their homes? And that every year since then 
 from twenty to thirty thousand others, disgusted by 
 absurd and harassing regulations, have followed them? 
 That we have been bleeding ourselves white for love 
 of France? Where are our intellectuals? In Paris. 
 Where are our ardent spirits? In the Foreign Legion. 
 Now, I maintain that both are equally necessary to the 
 life of a country. And in place of these four or five 
 hundred thousand Alsatians, the flower of the nation, 
 a like number of Germans have settled upon our soil as 
 upon a colony. These are the conditions under which 
 we, thus weakened and deprived of our natural leaders, 
 have to struggle against a people of sixty-five million 
 souls, who crush us with the whole weight of their army, 
 their administration, and their educational system." 
 
 Weiss bowed his tall figure, sighing as if he felt the 
 whole weight of the burden upon his shoulders. He con- 
 tinued: 
 
 " You must not expect verbal heroism from us. No ! 
 the drama is a hidden one, buried like our dead who fell 
 in the war. We have had the heroism of the heart, 
 the fidelity that makes no sound. How many have they 
 succeeded in ' rallying ' after forty years of persecution? 
 A few dozens. How many Alsatians have become Ger- 
 man officers? They may be counted on the fingers of 
 one hand. Just calculate what our profits would have 
 been had we laid our hand in the German hand. How 
 many offices! How many decorations I What a future 
 
98 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 for our industry? What a lift for a little province like 
 ours to be accepted as a member of the mightiest nation 
 in the world. We answered No! They threatened us. 
 No! They harassed us. No! Do not misunderstand 
 me. There were no disturbances, no cries, no ostenta- 
 tious hysteria. You might live among us for years with- 
 out witnessing any overt manifestation. It is our hearts 
 which cry No! And that is enough. No army in the 
 world can break down that barrier. What I tell you is 
 the truth, Monsieur Reymond. ... Oh! there have been 
 defections. We are human. But in spite of everything, 
 I, who know so many stories, and how many are the lives 
 that have been shattered and overthrown, I am proud — 
 yes, proud — of being an Alsatian! Come. You were 
 at Friedensbach on the Emperor's birthday. Well, save 
 Maus, the exception which proves the rule — and his 
 mother is a German — how many red, white, and black 
 flags did you see on the house-fronts of thoroughbred 
 Alsatians? Answer me. How many of these flags 
 among our own people? Not a single one. After nearly 
 forty years, it's magnificent. Remember that the master 
 is among us, the master with the mailed fist, the owner 
 of the cash-box and everything in it. How human it 
 is to flatter the master, to try to get a smile, an approving 
 word from him. But there was not one! Not one! " 
 
 The flood-gates were opened. Reymond was tactful 
 enough not to interrupt. 
 
 "Shall I explain our attitude? It is so simple. I 
 have already touched on it with you once or twice. We 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 99 
 
 have been used to liberty for centuries. And we have 
 also been used to invasion. Ever since Arminius, only 
 think! Our love of liberty gives us strength to await 
 the end of the storm. We bow to it. We draw our 
 heads down between our shoulders. And always, always, 
 deliverance has come to us, often contrary to all expec- 
 tations. You know our history. ... In the Middle 
 Ages, our ten free cities; our alliance with the Swiss 
 cantons against the marauding nobles. . . . This is why 
 there are so many ruins on the Vosges peaks! . . . On 
 the other side of the Rhine they still have their squires 
 and their Junkers, all the folks whose backs we broke 
 four or five centuries ago. . . . Ah! we are the sons of 
 an ancient civilization; we cannot be persuaded by kicks 
 on our behinds! We shall triumph once more, if only 
 our young people are left to us, and we have leaders. 
 And we have them! We shall have them! The day of 
 groans and jeremiads is past. When we have ten Dr. 
 Buchers in Alsace — nay, five even — we shall be assim- 
 ilating the Schwobs. It is beginning already. . . . 
 The grandfathers were beaten, stunned, terrorized. They 
 closed their doors. The sons expected everything from 
 France, instead of expecting everything from themselves. 
 Seeing that nothing came, they in their turn closed doors 
 and windows. And now we have the grandsons, the third 
 generation. They play football, they box. They un- 
 dergo their term of service in the German barracks 
 valiantly, for love of Alsace. After that, they cannot 
 be expelled from their country. They are at home. 
 
100 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 They have rendered to the Empire all that the Empire 
 can expect from a man. But do you think they find an 
 ideal in those barracks? any food for the soul? No. 
 All they find is disgust, melancholy. Then they reflect. 
 They have it out with themselves. They turn to the past 
 and question it. And tradition makes its power felt. 
 They realize what they lack. Liberty! Liberty! There 
 are hundreds of these young men now at Metz, Strasburg, 
 Colmar, Mulhouse, in our little towns, often in the vil- 
 lages, everywhere! . . . Alsace is seeking and finding 
 herself — a young, strong Alsace, matured by the suffer- 
 ings of two generations. Count upon her ! . . . Listen ! " 
 
 From the French summit of the Drumont, a bugle — 
 some patrol of Chasseurs had arrived there — sent its 
 shrill appeal to Alsace in clear, high notes which rang 
 through the stillness of the valley. Weiss had stopped 
 short, rooted to the ground, quivering, his finger on his 
 lips. 
 
 " Listen ! How gay it is, how frank, how free ! Ah ! 
 tradition! " 
 
 His eye ranged over the heights, plunged into the 
 valley flecked with points of silver by the wandering 
 river, searched the depths of the forest as if in quest of 
 that Liberty which one almost expected to see, in human 
 form, resuscitated and rejuvenated, gliding along the 
 slopes. 
 
 They resumed their walk in silence. And suddenly, 
 quite close to them lay the jonquil fields, like broad 
 shafts of light, a golden laughter on the banks of the 
 
THE HEART OF AtSACE 101 
 
 bounding stream. Bending over the yellow petals, 
 Weiss gathered them eagerly, as if these jonquils were 
 the liberty he dreamt of. Presently a goat and two 
 white kids came dancing among the gold. Weiss, touched 
 to the heart, opened his arms. Bounding on its stiff 
 legs, with adorable awkwardness, its pretty trustful eyes 
 fixed upon him, the kid ran to the man who was calling 
 it. Giants are very susceptible to the appeal of weak- 
 ness. Weiss picked it up tenderly and kissed it on its 
 pink muzzle. 
 
 The boys came up, in company with the owner of the 
 goat, an old man from a neighbouring village. 
 
 " Good-day ! " said Weiss to the old man. " Did you 
 hear the bugle? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Well . . .?" 
 
 "Well, what!" 
 
 The old man looked cunningly at the strangers. Driv- 
 ing goat and kids before him, he answered: 
 
 " A bugle is a bugle." 
 
 Weiss was irritated. 
 
 "You see how they have terrorized these poor old 
 people. They will say nothing. Everything is hidden, 
 kept dark. We have to look to you young ones, you see." 
 
 The boys laughed gaily. Then Weiss, sniflSng his 
 bouquet of jonquils as if to draw strength from the 
 perfume born of the soil, uttered a mountaineer's cry, 
 the echo of which mingled with the lively echo of the 
 bugle. 
 
VI 
 
 A CLASS of thirty to forty pupils; to the teacher they 
 are an almost anonymous crowd. There is a cur- 
 riculum to be carried out, marks to be given, discipline. 
 Teacher and pupils meet and part. The years pass and 
 soon make them strangers. 
 
 Two pupils. The teacher lives with them. He be- 
 comes their friend. He divines their thoughts, their 
 reticences. He gives lessons, but he also converses and 
 discusses with them, seated on the corner of the table. 
 In this way ties are formed that last a lifetime, and it 
 is a joy to meet again later those to whom one has 
 given the best of oneself. 
 
 The delightful schoolroom, so well lighted, so attrac- 
 tive, with its map, its globe, its blackboard, its glazed 
 bookcase, its two desks, its statuette of Joan of Arc, its 
 collections of insects and of stones, its engravings rep- 
 resenting the bombardment of Strasburg, a street in the 
 old town of Colmar, the castle of St. Ulrich. . . . Jean 
 and Rene are seated. Beside them is the big Quicherat 
 dictionary. And the tutor is dictating the text of the 
 Latin exercise: "Socrates exhorted all those who 
 aspired to an office to ask themselves if they were ca- 
 pable of filling it. He was fond of saying: it is really 
 disgraceful that a man who desires to lead an army 
 should neglect to learn how to do so, when he might. 
 
 102 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 103 
 
 And he would be more deserving of punishment from his 
 fellow-citizens than another who should undertake to 
 make statues without having learnt the art of the sculp- 
 tor. It is not sufficient to walk about in one's town. . . ." 
 
 The tutor broke off: " Take care; there is no displace- 
 ment: Ambulat in horto. 
 
 " M'sieur," remarked Rene artlessly, " when I walk in 
 the garden, I displace myself." 
 
 "True; but you don't go out of the garden. . . . Let 
 us go on. . . ." 
 
 The pens scratch the paper. Jean and Rene bend their 
 heads over the blank sheets. They have an hour's 
 work before them. Reymond opens the Journal d' Alsace- 
 Lorraine, which the old servant has just brought in. 
 There has been a lively debate in Parliament at Strasburg: 
 " You will end by telling us," said a deputy to the mem- 
 bers of the Government, " that in Paradise the angels have 
 red, white, and black wings. But this will not encourage 
 us to go there." Said another: "You are always talk- 
 ing of the French white-wash, the French varnish. But 
 there are indelible varnishes. Are you sure that yours 
 is one of this sort? " So, while Jean and Rene are put- 
 ting Socrates' counsels to his contemporaries into faulty 
 Latin, men are doing battle round an idea over there. 
 One party is saying: "We have power." The other is 
 replying: "We have memory." 
 
 "M'sieur, m'sieur," asks Rene in a plaintive voice, 
 "what use is Latin? It is a dead language." 
 "And French?" 
 
104 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 " French is a living language." 
 
 " Yes, but it is derived from Latin. To know French 
 thoroughly, one has to know Latin." 
 
 Rene submits. But presently he returns to the charge. 
 
 " M'sieur, you dictated : ' Carthagenian, it is disgrace- 
 ful to lie.' Did the Carthagenians lie as much as all 
 that? " 
 
 " They were habitual liars." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 Jean, exasperated, exclaimed : " Monsieur, please tell 
 him to be quiet. It is impossible to work." 
 
 The window is open. The lilacs planted along the 
 wall send out their fragrance. Beyond is the courtyard 
 of the factory, the handcarts pushed along by men with 
 grimy faces. One breath of air wafts the scent of the 
 lilacs. Another brings the dull thud of long-armed steel 
 pistons, together with a smell of rancid oil. 
 
 The tutor looks out of the window. In the courtyard 
 really interesting things are going on. The coachman 
 Hintermann is washing the carriage, as he does every 
 morning at the same hour, throwing pails of water to 
 wash the seats, the naves, the axles, the springs, and the 
 hood of the carriage. A ring of smoke rises from his 
 pipe. He scratches his head. Now he is cleaning Jean's 
 bicycle with a skilful hand. 
 
 " M'sieur, does quin always need the subjunctive? " 
 
 And now comes the gardener, basket on arm, a tall 
 dry fellow, his left eye half closed. From one of the 
 workroom windows, the girls blow him a kiss on their 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 105 
 
 fingers. The gardener responds by closing his left eye 
 completely. He walks with a heavy step to the door of 
 his master's kitchen, to hand in radishes and salads. 
 Hintermann unchains the two dogs that they may stretch 
 their legs and get an appetite for their soup at ten o'clock. 
 The animals gallop round madly, and at last return to 
 their kennels. . . . The exercise is finished. 
 
 The next lesson is geography: the Rhine and the 
 Rhone. 
 
 Reymond waxes eloquent. He dwells on general ideas. 
 He shows the two streams, gushing from the hollow of 
 a rock a few paces one from another, mingling the 
 murmur of their voices for a moment, swelling with the 
 waters of a hundred other streams, roaring in the depths 
 of valleys, running in the plains, becoming mighty rivers, 
 the grey waters of which are lost in blue lakes. There 
 is a period of repose, of disengagement. Suddenly the 
 two rivers flee from each other at right angles. The 
 Rhone leaps towards the land of the sun, the Rhine to- 
 wards the land of mists, one greeted by the smile of 
 Mireille, the other by the melancholy song of the Lorelei. 
 . . . Mulberry-trees, cypresses, pines, and olive-trees . . . 
 birches and firs . . . the Palace of the Popes, Saint- 
 Trophyme . . . the ruins of the Burgs, the pierced spires 
 of Gothic cathedrals; the tambourines of the Cigales, the 
 two Homers of Serignan and Maillane, the daughters of 
 Aries with their graceful caps, Tartarin of Tarascon, the 
 stones of the Gran with their guardians and their black 
 bulls. . . . Spires, Worms, Mayence, and Bonn, the black 
 
106 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 country of the Ruhr, the horizon intersected by tall 
 chimneys, the innumerable iron bridges, the clank of 
 hammers and the glow of furnaces. Here, the rivers 
 rushing in torrents from the bare Alpine slopes, dragging 
 their waters over beds of white pebbles; there, slow 
 rivers among fat meadows, the highways of ships; the 
 Mediterranean, its rippling waters smiling and dancing; 
 ... the North Sea, with its low coast lines, its grey skies, 
 its greenish billows. 
 
 "Monsieur," interrupted the philosophic Jean, "you 
 talk of geographical fatality; you say that a man is 
 moulded by his surroundings. But don't you think that 
 the will of man often gets the better of these surround- 
 ings? For instance, the Germans say to us: 'You Ive 
 on the banks of the Rhine, which is a German river, 
 so I want you, I take you, I keep you.' Whereas the 
 French say to the Corsicans, the Bretons, the Flemings: 
 'We are equals, we are brethren; why should we not 
 keep together? ' Don't you think that this is the secret 
 of France's greatness? Her humanity breaks down geo- 
 graphical aflSnities; she wins the affection of Alsace-Lor- 
 raine; she creates wills which are stronger than geo- 
 graphical fatality." 
 
 "All theories!" cried Rene. "It's a question, not 
 of geographical affinities, but of aeroplanes and guns. 
 The one who has most of these beats the other." 
 
 These speeches are characteristic: Jean is a meditative 
 spirit, attracted by general ideas, always deep in his 
 books, eager to rationalize his sentiments and to sentimen- 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 107 
 
 talize his reasons; Rene is the good-hearted boy, mat- 
 ter of fact and downright, ready for frolic and fisticuffs. 
 
 But the lessons are not always given in the schoolroom. 
 Sometimes, in the afternoon, Virgil is taken up on the 
 hillside. The ants are running about along the rugged 
 trunks. A squirrel, seated on a high branch, strokes 
 his muzzle with his forepaws. The woodman's ax rings 
 out from the depths of the forest. . . . Silver-leaved 
 poplars, beeches and birches, flowering pear and cherry- 
 trees; the river rippling over its stony bed; yellow butter- 
 flies dancing in pairs, wing touching wing; the hum of 
 insects like a bell quivering in the sky; the two oxen, 
 coming and going with bowed heads along a field; the 
 flash of the ploughshare as il: cuts its furrow: it is the 
 very cadence of Virgil's verses, the setting which gives 
 actuality to the alternate speeches of the shepherds. 
 
 Poor Meliboeus driving his flock before him on the way 
 to exile! Tityrus pities him. 
 
 "Meliboeus, you may spend yet another night here, 
 and rest upon this bed of branches. I have ripe fruits, 
 cooked chestnuts, bowls full of thick cream. It is late. 
 See, the smoke rises from the roofs of the village; the 
 shadow that creeps down the mountains lengthens on the 
 plain." 
 
 Jean looks at the valley, at his home, at all the paths 
 he has so often trodden. Then his eyes fix themselves 
 on a distant point. 
 
 "Meliboeus is like us. Monsieur. . . . We shall soon 
 have to leave our valley, and for ever. But we shall not 
 
108 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 be so happy as Virgil's shepherd, for we shall not drive 
 our flocks before us. The police will see to it that no 
 one shall say to us: ' You may spend yet another night 
 here.' " 
 
 Jean knows that poetry is eternal. He takes that 
 which comes from distant centuries, and clothes the 
 thought which haunts him therein. It was a poignant 
 moment: a lad of sixteen recognizing his own story in 
 one of Virgil's Bucolics. Reymond looked at his pupil. 
 They talked a little. They paraphrased the speeches of 
 the shepherds. They imagined them in their own sur- 
 roundings, at the corner of the hedge, under the rays of 
 the setting sun. 
 
 " A little history, and then we will go down." 
 
 Reymond speaks of Joan or Arc, of the village of 
 Domremy, of the voices which counselled and ordered. 
 
 "Voices! . . . What does that mean? " asked Rene. 
 
 Whereupon his brother interrupted: 
 
 " Monsieur, please don't explain. It is so much more 
 beautiful just as it is. . . . Voices. . . . Every one can 
 imagine what he likes." 
 
 Reymond describes the battles; the anointing of 
 Charles at Reims; the reverses; Jeanne before her judges. 
 
 " Do you think it was right to leave your home without 
 the permission of your father and mother? . . . Ought 
 we not to honour father and mother? . . , They have 
 forgiven me. . . . Did you think it was no sin to behave 
 in this way? . . . God commanded it. If I had had a 
 hundred fathers and a hundred mothers, I should have 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 109 
 
 gone. . . . Does God hate the English? ... I know 
 nothing as to God's love or hatred for the English, but I 
 know that they will be driven from France, all save those 
 who will perish here." 
 
 " It is a beautiful story," said Rene. " But do you 
 think. Monsieur, that it all really happened as we are 
 told? " 
 
 Jean shrugged his shoulders. Then he asked: 
 
 " Monsieur, do you think there could ever be a second 
 Joan of Arc? " 
 
 "Ah! who can tell?" 
 
 "Why not? Not quite the same of course — but 
 with the same strong will, the same faith in victory." 
 
 They walked downwards towards the valley. Jean 
 went on talking, as if to himself: 
 
 " I cannot say how I love Alsace. I think of it all 
 the time. Alsace! It is a fine country, the finest in 
 the world. And I am sure there will be another Joan 
 of Arc." 
 
 On the main road they parted. When they got home, 
 Rene threw himself upon his statistics: French army, 
 German army. He knows the names of all the battle- 
 ships, their tonnage, the capacity of the airships, the feats 
 of the aeroplanes. Madame Bohler bends over the fig- 
 ures and numbers. 
 
 " This is a positive mania, my child. Instead of pre- 
 paring your lessons for tomorrow, you waste your time 
 adding up tons and cannon. Later, when you are at 
 Saint-Cyr. . . . But now! " 
 
110 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 "Mother, what is the use of all those stories they 
 tell us about the mother of the Gracchi! They are not 
 worth one good aeroplane." 
 
 " Really, you are absurd ! " Madame Bohler smiled. 
 
 "What do you say, Jean? " 
 
 " I have finished my lessons. Shall we have a little 
 music? " 
 
 Monsieur Bohler, who had just come in from the 
 factory, threw back the curtain which divided the smok- 
 ing-room from the drawing-room. He listened to the 
 song of the 'cello, artless as childhood, but suddenly be- 
 coming agitated: halting efforts, storm, calm, gentle 
 memories which lull the soul. Seated in an arm-chair, 
 he saw reflected in the mirror, as in a dream, the move- 
 ment of the bow, the fingers flying over the ivory keys. 
 Another year, and they, the parents, would be alone. 
 Longer, more silent evenings, letters at intervals. Think- 
 ing of these things. Monsieur Bohler let his pipe go out. 
 . . . The instruments became silent. 
 
 " Monsieur Reymond," said Kummel after one of his 
 lessons, " I have a proposal to make to you. Monsieur 
 Maus, the merchant, an Alsatian, a most worthy man, 
 of the highest intelligence, has commissioned me to ask 
 you whether you would be so kind as to give some French 
 lessons to his son, a lad {galopin, don't you say?) of 
 thirteen, very industrious and very studious. Perhaps 
 you would take me also, for even in an elementary 
 lesson there is always something to learn. Ah ! Monsieur 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 111 
 
 Reymond ! As a Swiss, as the representative of a neutral 
 country, you might collaborate with us in our work of 
 conciliation between immigrants and natives, as you say. 
 You are, of course, outside parties. Yes, indeed, you 
 might work to fill up that ditch of pride which certain 
 Alsatians have dug between them and us, their brethren 
 in race and language. That is the part a true Swiss 
 should play. The truth is that we German intellectuals 
 are cut off from all agreeable relations in this country 
 which is our country. And yet it would all be so simple 
 if we met, explained things, cried: 'You are our lost 
 brethren; we love you.' The future of Alsace would then 
 be truly magnificent, enviable, whereas now her child- 
 ish pride and sulkiness plunge her into retrogradism. . . . 
 Is that the right word? . . . You see the plan; you 
 give lessons to the Bohler boys; I give them lessons; 
 you give some to the son of Monsieur Maus, a man of 
 an old Alsatian stock, who has succeeded in breaking 
 down the bondage of prejudice and has come to us with 
 outstretched hand and open heart. ... In this way, 
 gradually, you will bring about a reconciliation between 
 sons of the same nation. You will leave Alsace with joy 
 in your heart, and every one will be ready to certify: 
 * Monsieur Reymond is a worthy man. As far as he was 
 able, he strengthened national sentiment in the country 
 where he earned his bread.' " 
 
 Kummel had thrown himself back in his arm-chair. 
 His grey eyes were fixed suggestively on Reymond. 
 What was the tutor to say? 
 
112 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 "Monsieur Kummel, I feel much honoured by your 
 confidence in me. . . . Please thank Monsieur Maus 
 from me, but I am very busy. . . ." 
 
 "But in the evening . . ." 
 
 " In the evening especially. I work on my own ac- 
 count then. I am preparing a thesis." 
 
 " Well, couldn't you sometimes take the Maus boy with 
 the Bohlers? " 
 
 " It would be difficult. We work chiefly at Greek and 
 Latin. . . . Our program is drawn up very precisely. 
 Really, I can't think how it could be managed." 
 
 "Try to find a way, Monsieur Reymond. Just think 
 what a magnificent task is offered to you. Try." 
 
 "Really, it is quite impossible." 
 
 "Think, think." 
 
 "What impudence! " thought Reymond, when he was 
 left in peace. "This Kummel is artful and audacious 
 to an unimaginable degree. He is no half-hearted agent 
 of Deutschtum. I must tell Monsieur Bohler, just to 
 hear what he will say. It will be interesting." 
 
 Next day, as Reymond was lunching with the Bohlers, 
 he described Kummel's proposition in jesting terms. 
 Monsieur Bohler frowned. He said nothing. Shortly 
 afterwards he suggested a stroll in the garden. At first 
 he and Reymond walked along the fine gravel of the paths 
 in silence. The dogs ran in front of their master, gam- 
 bolling and biting at each other. Monsieur Bohler 
 smoked his pipe in short puffs. Suddenly he began : 
 
 "Monsieur Reymond, I am not given to talking, as 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 113 
 
 • 
 
 you know. Words, words are things the winds carry 
 away. But I must just explain to you, once for all, more 
 fully than I have been able to do incidentally, the reasons 
 for our attitude. . . . Now as to these lessons that have 
 been offered to you, I don't want you to refuse them 
 simply to please me. Higher motives are involved. As 
 the tutor and friend of my sons, you make common cause 
 with us up to a certain point; you undertake to observe 
 a certain reticence and even abstention in respect of cer- 
 tain persons. It is a matter of tact, and more especially 
 of feeling, as, indeed, you have perfectly understood, for 
 which I thank you. 
 
 "What is the question, in fact? We have been an- 
 nexed against our will, on the pretext that in the seven- 
 teenth century Germany ... I am wrong, for in the 
 first place there was no Germany in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury. And since that time respect for right, and a cer- 
 tain human decency which forbids men to treat peoples 
 as flocks of cattle, have permeated our minds. Accord- 
 ingly, we care little whether we are of German stock or 
 not. That is not the question. This is the conclusion of 
 the matter: we know to which side our instinct, our heart, 
 our will incline us. All the rest is mere verbiage. 
 
 "But then they change their tactics and say: 'But 
 the annexation is good business for you! (with what 
 scorn Monsieur Bohler snapped out the words!) What 
 advantages it has given you! ' The advantages of an- 
 nexation! You feel what an insult such words are! 
 Does a man forsake his family because it would profit 
 
114 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 him? Abominable thought! Does one go over to the 
 conqueror because he is the conqueror? Defeat binds 
 hearts more closely together than victory. This the 
 Germans will never understand. 
 
 "They say — for we have been arguing for thirty- 
 eight years: ' Two centuries of union with France have 
 perverted your real nature, have led you astray. To 
 purge you of these pernicious influences, so foreign to 
 the German genius, come to the Germany of the scientists, 
 thinkers, and poets . . . Schiller, Goethe, Kant, and so 
 many others.' Pardon me. We love those men, we read 
 them. But where is their Germany? The Germany we 
 see, the living Germany, worships force, respects the 
 colossal, cultivates pedantry. Human emotion, the joy 
 of liberty, all that makes up the value of life, is else- 
 where; we know very well where. . . . Der deutsche 
 Gedanke befliigelt das deutsche Geschiitz (German 
 thought gives wings to German cannon). I read these 
 words only yesterday in one of their papers. We cannot 
 find anything akin to us in this formula. And we an- 
 swer ; ' We know but one thing, that once we were 
 happy, and now we are wretched.' 
 
 " They persist. They reel us off formulae by the gross, 
 all bearing the stamp of historical and scientific fact. 
 In the press, in the Universities, in the schools, by the 
 lips of officials of every kind, they cry: 'Erudition, 
 organization, discipline, the collective soul, the omnip- 
 otence of the State.' We reply: 'Respect for human 
 personality, right of peoples to self-determination, dis- 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 115 
 
 cipline — yes, but in a framework of liberty.' In the last 
 resort, despairing of convincing us, they throw us under 
 their steam-roller. Well, as we lie flat under it, we still 
 cry: 'Handed over by a duly signed treaty, we respect 
 its clauses. Here are our bodies and our purses. As 
 to the thoughts of our hearts, they are our own.' 
 
 "And note this. Monsieur Reymond, that when we 
 defend ourselves we also defend you — you Swiss, who 
 speak German, Italian, and French. If there are no 
 reasons of right and of sentiment to protect your little 
 country, you are lost. It is only a question of time. 
 When we proclaim that it is the desire for solidarity 
 which constitutes a nation, and only that; when we strug- 
 gle desperately against the might which aspires to force 
 us to our knees, we constitute a dyke for your liberties. 
 If we had yielded, if they had been able to digest us 
 without discomfort, in all probability our conquerors 
 would be gulping down a second and a third meal. 
 Yes, you may thank Alsace . . . ! 
 
 " You understand the meaning, the bearing of our 
 struggle. Its value is not merely national. It has a 
 human value. The consequence is that we, the manu- 
 facturers, who have become the leaders of the nation now 
 that all the higher educational posts and all the adminis- 
 tration are in the hands of the Germans, are obliged to 
 blow up the bridges, to avoid compromise, to build up 
 the walls which protect Alsatian hearths. Narrow, 
 intransigeant, petty, we are at times. We must be! 
 We have to be! We appreciate the good qualities of 
 
116 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 all these Richter, Lehrer, Inspektoren, Kreisdirektoren 
 and Oberforstassessoren, but we live apart from tliem 
 The hatch is opened, and through it we pay our taxes 
 our gun-licences; we project the necessary words. The 
 hatch is closed. . . . Professors, officers, non-commis 
 sioned officers, schoolmasters, officials, speak, order, 
 teach, catechize, insinuate, punish, reward. . . . All right 
 Continue. My silence is my reply. 
 
 " When I travel on the other side of the Rhine I ad 
 mire . . . nearly everything. These people are very re 
 markable. They have qualities of the highest order 
 There are moments when you are dazzled by their vital 
 ity. . . . But when I return home, I am silent. You do 
 not pay compliments to the burglar who has broken into 
 your house. 
 
 " And you must not think, on the other hand, that we 
 admire everything that is said and done in France, blindly 
 and implicitly. We deplore the scandals and disputes 
 of which the newspapers are full, the drunkenness, the 
 dwindling population, the liberty which degenerates into 
 licence; and the swarms of orators who chatter while the 
 hammer falls unceasingly on the German anvil to forge 
 the German arms and German mastery. Those who 
 travel, those who really know France, know that behind 
 this curtain of the theatre or the cafe-concert are the real 
 people, all the wonderful qualities of the race. But a 
 great many Alsatians, impressed by all these ugly 
 rumours, are saddened, and feel themselves condemned 
 to a useless resistance which will lead to suicide. We 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 117 
 
 are too much forgotten in France. They do not realize 
 there all that we suffer in order to remain faithful. 
 They have so many other irons in the fire! . . . Oblivion 
 would be terrible. Are there not some who would even 
 go farther? We hear of positive blasphemies as the re- 
 sult of an enquiry set on foot by a certain review. Ah! 
 our enemies quote them again and again, and thrust them 
 under our noses with sardonic laughter. Words such as 
 these have disgraced the pen of a French writer: 'In 
 exchange for the forgotten territories I would not give 
 either the little finger of my right hand, which sustains 
 my hand when I write, nor the little finger of my left 
 hand, with which I flick off the ash of my cigarette.' 
 Even if this be nothing but a peevish outburst, it is base. 
 
 " But even though such things be, France is always 
 France. Her genius and her traditions endure. It is 
 she who put into our hearts that which keeps us erect 
 before the foe. In spite of those of her children — a 
 mere handful — who insult us, we love her, and shall 
 always love her. No one and nothing can change our 
 motto : ' French if possible, Alsatian always, German 
 never! ' 
 
 " In conclusion : When Kummel speaks to you of that 
 Maus, of that man who sold himself to get an army con- 
 tract, of that thrice despicable creature, get behind the 
 wall. If Kummel spies on us, it is his trade and func- 
 tion. He comes from over there. If he teaches his 
 language to my sons at the rate of three marks an hour, 
 if by speeches bearing the impress of the Pan-Germanic 
 
118 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 want of tact he disgusts them with the abominable ideas 
 he hawks about, so much the better. But to allow him 
 to take one step further would be to compromise. Once 
 more, the wall." 
 
 Monsieur Bohler took out his watch. 
 
 "Two o'clock! . . . This is what comes of speechi- 
 fying! This is the last time I will be caught at it." 
 
 Followed by the barking dogs, he went off hurriedly. 
 
 Jean and Rene came up. 
 
 " What was father saying to you? He was gesticulat- 
 ing, and he never does that." 
 
 " He was explaining to me that there is really and truly 
 a second Joan of Arc, who has given herself up wholly 
 to her idea; that the enemy holds her captive, but that 
 she defies them without ever asking whether her quiet 
 confidence may not cost her her life." 
 
 Jean looked his tutor steadily in the eyes. 
 
 "A second Joan of Arc? " 
 
 " Certainly. And you know her well." 
 
 "And what is her name? " 
 
 "Alsace." 
 
VII 
 
 */^N Sunday," Weiss had said to Reymond, "I am 
 V-/ going to take my daughter to the other side of 
 the mountain to her grandfather's at Milchpach, where 
 she is to pay a short visit. . . . My father is eighty. . . . 
 For nearly fifty years he managed a little cotton-mill, 
 founded by himself. Since my mother's death he has 
 lived alone in our modest old home with Catherine, the 
 housekeeper, who is as old as Time! We arrive at nine 
 in the morning. There is bread, coffee, milk, butter, 
 honey, as much as you like. We talk to the grandfather, 
 and walk about the garden. . . . After this a two hours' 
 walk through the woods to Reichburg, where we shall 
 taste the nectar of Alsace. Every year my friend Klug 
 invites the notables of Reichburg, a few friends from out- 
 side, and his fifteen or twenty vine-dressers. From 
 twelve to five we feast. Afterwards we play a game of 
 skittles to aid digestion. Our Alsatian meals are things 
 to see, or, better still, to eat. Droll stories are told in 
 good dialect; we brace ourselves; we take courage till 
 we meet again the following year. ... It is really good 
 to spend a few hours by ourselves. And you are coming 
 with us? " 
 
 This is the Alsatian's formula of invitation. 
 
 They started at five in the morning. What freshness! 
 119 
 
120 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 What peace brooding over the meadows! The little 
 caravan climbed the first slopes by the winding path: 
 Suzanne Weiss in a short skirt, her complexion blooming 
 under a broad-brimmed white hat; her father with his 
 vast gestures, his picturesque, abundant speech; Reymond 
 more alive, perhaps, to the presence of the pretty Alsatian 
 than to the beauty of the surroundings. 
 
 " Yes," repeated Weiss, " Dictionary extols the race 
 which shows itself too much. I am going to reveal to 
 you the race which hides itself, the splendid race of our 
 country." 
 
 "Dictionary? . . ." asked Reymond. 
 
 "Kummel, of course. They each have a nickname. 
 The White Rat is Taubenspeck, the Ogre is his colleagues, 
 Arminius is the chief Customs officer, April Smiles is 
 Kraut, and Dutchman (i. e., the Dutch cheese) is Justice 
 Doring, my daughter's admirer. Ah! we Alsatians are 
 malicious! " 
 
 "Poor people! I pity them," said Suzanne. "We 
 are really too much given to mockery." 
 
 " You see. Monsieur Reymond," went on Weiss, " you 
 see! She pities Doring! When a woman pities a man 
 she ends by loving him; and when she loves him, she 
 is ready to marry him. It's a pleasant prospect for my 
 old age. . . . We are a thousand metres high here. We 
 follow this crest, and then we go down into the valley. 
 Look! look! " 
 
 The mountain shadows were fleeing before the morning 
 brightness. They saw the labyrinth of the valleys, the 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 121 
 
 villages lying flat upon the verdure, the white line of the 
 highways; beyond, the plain with its symmetrical squares 
 of cultivated ground, the ribbon of the Rhine, the Black 
 Forest; Germany, Alsace, and France. It was so beauti- 
 ful that Reymond could not suppress a regret. 
 
 "*0h! what fools we mortals be!' All these bar- 
 riers, all these threatening fists! Nature is more intelli- 
 gent. Flowers bloom everywhere, and birds, heedless of 
 Custom-house and passports, wing their flight and coo in 
 France as they have cooed in Germany." 
 
 "We are quite ready to coo," cried Weiss. "But 
 there are birds which cannot coo in a cage. They prefer 
 liberty. Every one to his taste. When our Schwob 
 gentry . . ." 
 
 " Papa," intreated Suzanne, " it is so fine ! Leave the 
 wretched Schwobs alone for a quarter of an hour." 
 
 " You are right, my child. For a quarter of an hour, 
 I promise you." 
 
 Weiss whistled a song. There are some vows which 
 it is very diificult to keep. A little board nailed to a 
 tree instructed the passer-by: Halt! Schone Aussicht! 
 This order set Weiss off again. 
 
 "Isn't that like them? 'Stop! Admire the view!' 
 And just see how the tourists in green hats have obeyed 
 the mandate! Look at these empty tins, these egg-shells, 
 these greasy Strassburger Posts! What a shower of 
 Kolossals and W under schons must have fallen here! " 
 
 Planted in front of the notice, Weiss twirled his mous- 
 tache upward and threw out his chest, imitating th^ 
 
122 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 gestures of some official during an attack of Nature- 
 worship. 
 
 " You can't do it," objected Suzanne. " There is 
 something too fanciful in your beard, in your tie, in the 
 brim of your hat." 
 
 " Halt! Schone Aussicht! " repeated Weiss in ecstatic 
 tones. ..." And now let us get on. This time I prom- 
 ise you to talk of other things for a quarter of an 
 hour." 
 
 An impossible pledge! The pink sandstone walls and 
 lace-like battlements of a ruined fortress were outlined 
 against the blue. They approached it. On every tree 
 there were coloured arrows indicating the direction. 
 More placards: Restored in 1903, and the name of the 
 architect, one of His Majesty's privy councillors. At 
 the base of the tower was inscribed in red letters : Sixty- 
 three steps, 1126 metres above the sea-level. A remark- 
 able panorama. 
 
 Weiss worked himself up again. 
 
 " They can't leave us alone for a minute. They have 
 no respect for intimate thought. They even organize 
 our ruins! It is just the same in their schools. For 
 every composition there is a scheme. Everything that 
 is addded in the way of personal sentiment is scored out. 
 Pupils must not admire this passage. They must scream 
 like amorous peacocks over that. . . . Yes, Monsieur 
 Reymond, look at this ruin. Somewhere you will be 
 sure to find a note setting forth the cost of the restoration, 
 the names of illustrious visitors, a table of direction, 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 123 
 
 baskets for waste-paper, the depth of the wells in metres 
 and centimetres, bones numbered and labelled, the whole 
 history of these walls, together with the assertion that 
 they were built in German times, destroyed by the French, 
 and restored in all their splendour by the Germans! 
 I am wrong to joke about it. The men who do these 
 things are formidable. . . . The day when their leaders 
 cry ' Up ! ' they will rise to a man, and crush everything 
 on their way. Ah! Let us turn into the woods and 
 meet fair, free Nature ! " 
 
 The others followed him breathlessly. This senti- 
 mental giant bent the young laburnums to bury his face 
 in their gold, kissed the broom-bushes, ran after the but- 
 terflies, threw his hat up towards the sun with wild cries. 
 Drawn forward by an enthusiastic vigour, his jacket over 
 his arm, his waistcoat swelling, his shirt blown out by 
 the wind, his cane in the air, he hurried on with long 
 strides. And suddenly swinging round, he asked: 
 
 "What are you saying to my daughter, Reymond? 
 Eh? I will not give her to any one but an Alsatian." 
 
 The young people blushed. But Weiss was already 
 absorbed in a new interest. Kneeling against a tree- 
 trunk, he imitated the call of the cuckoo to perfection. 
 Presently a beautiful bird appeared, fluttering uneasily 
 from branch to branch. 
 
 " It is the female. You are sold, my beauty. Weiss 
 is only a man. Be off and look for the handsome un- 
 known." 
 
 This bearded giant was indefatigable. Bending down 
 
124 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 he pointed to what looked like coffee-berries on the moss, 
 "Look! they shine; they are quite fresh. And all in 
 line, five centimetres one from another. . . . That hare 
 was running fast! . . ." The next moment the beard 
 was presented to the astonished beaks of a nest of young 
 woodpeckers in the hollow of a tree. 
 
 Suzanne said to Reymond: 
 
 " That father of mine I It is impossible to be dull 
 when he is there. I understand his joy so well. After 
 living in constraint and suppressing one's feelings, a 
 reaction takes place, and one feels impelled to sing, to 
 talk to the trees, to elaborate fancies. I wonder if you 
 can put yourself in our place. You are so happy in 
 Switzerland." 
 
 " Perhaps too happy. I sometimes envy the Alsatians. 
 You suffer, but you live trebly." 
 
 " Doubly would be enough for us sometimes. And 
 yet you are right. When I give my French lessons to 
 the young girls of Friedensbach, when I destroy the frail 
 scaffoldings of Herr Kummel, I can assure you that I 
 feel a satisfaction I could not have in any other country. 
 The Germans watch the soldiers of the future. They 
 neglect us. We are only young girls. That is true. 
 But while our brothers are in barracks and our fathers 
 shut up in factories with their cares, we, together with 
 our mothers, work at the perpetuation of the Alsatian 
 soul. And when our brothers come back after their one 
 year or two years, more or less Prussianized, thanks to 
 us, in a month, this has worn off. . . . And so many of 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 125 
 
 our young men go into exile! What would become of 
 our country without us? " 
 
 Reymond ventured to put a question: 
 " You are not thinking of leaving Alsace? " 
 " I ? Certainly not. I am quite ready to die an old 
 maid at Friedensbach. I shall be a kind of aunt to all 
 sorts of excellent people. Like Penelope, I will destroy 
 every evening, thread by thread, the web the Kummels 
 of the future weave during the day. An old maid who 
 knows her mind is a very valuable person! She trots 
 about with her embroidered handbag! No one looks 
 upon her with suspicion. And she takes advantage of 
 this! " 
 
 Suzanne laughed gaily. . . . Reymond would perhaps 
 have preferred a less uncompromising attitude — vague 
 sentiment, discreet emotion. Suddenly he was conscious 
 of a certain mournfulness in the sunshine of this morning 
 and its Sunday bells, and even in the discs of light that 
 danced upon the moss. 
 
 They went down towards the valley, passing saw-mills 
 and villages; a churchyard blue with blossoming sage; 
 on the paths, men and women were wending their way to 
 Mass; all one saw of them was their broad-brimmed felt 
 hats and their black or white head-dresses, nodding above 
 the tall grasses. 
 
 " Look," said Weiss, " in this farmyard there is a hen 
 with eighteen chicks! Perhaps the Emperor is the god- 
 father of the last? And there, behind that plum-tree, 
 two kids and their mother. . . . Three kids! The third 
 
126 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 is sucking, kneeling in the grass. . . . And on this bench, 
 in front of the house, four children! . . . All this young 
 life keeps the heart fresh! Flowers, animals, children; 
 I love them all! ... And all those people on their 
 way to church: the good priest hurrying along — the 
 boys and girls dancing around the crucifix in the grave- 
 yard, and these houses, these hills, and the sun over and 
 in everything — all this is Alsace, the old, the good, the 
 excellent, the faithful country! Thank God, there is not 
 a Schwob to be seen on the horizon! How we ought to 
 miss that crowning charm! . . . Listen, listen to the song 
 of those children. It is real. patois: 'Alsace is a very 
 fair country, we know it. We hold it firmly by the 
 bridle, and we will not let it go.' Bravo, children! 
 Ah! I wish I could grow young again, cut off this beard, 
 where some white hairs are beginning to make their ap- 
 pearance, put on the good little face of former years, so 
 round and artless, and dance in the sun on Sundays round 
 the crucifix in the grave-yard. . . . Reymond, you see 
 Alsace! ... To think that they have taken it from us! 
 . . . Let us go to my father's house! " 
 
 A fine old man was waiting at his garden-gate, broad- 
 shouldered, broad-browed, with a big beard of white and 
 yellow. 
 
 " Good-morning, papa? How goes it? " 
 " Good morning, my son. All well with you? . . . 
 Good-morning, Suzele. How pretty you are growing! 
 I scarcely dare to kiss you. . . . Monsieur Reymond, 
 you are very welcome here." 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 127 
 
 He waved his hand hospitably towards the low house 
 and the garden. Victor Weiss had already gone to greet 
 Catherine by the fountain. 
 
 "Catherine! my good old Catherine! . . . What, not 
 married yet? I have an old fellow at Friedensbach for 
 you. ... He is sixty-eight and hale and hearty. A 
 word, and the business can be settled. I will marry you 
 and my daughter on the same day." 
 
 Catherine laughed, her arms akimbo, her cap awry 
 over one ear. Thrusting out her chin towards Reymond, 
 she whispered: 
 
 "Is he the man?" 
 
 " No, no ! He is a Swiss. . . . Oh ! of course he is 
 infinitely superior to Kraut and Kummel, but I must 
 have a suitor who has been drinking our Alsatian kirsch 
 for at least twenty years." 
 
 "Breakfast! Breakfast! " cried the grandfather. 
 The breakfast-table was a masterpiece, with its capa- 
 cious milk-jug, its portly coflfee-pot, its honeycomb, its 
 loaf, its preserve, its basket of strawberries. Two doves 
 cooing in a cage filled the house with their amorous 
 melancholy. 
 
 " How delightful it all is, grandpapa ! " said Suzanne. 
 "How happy we two will be all alone together for a 
 week! How I am looking forward to working in the 
 garden with Catherine! " said Suzanne. 
 
 "Yes, my Suzele," said the grandfather; "this is your 
 place, by me. Monsieur Reymond . . . Victor. And 
 don't let us forget that it is Sunday today. I will 
 
128 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 ask a blessing from on high. My God, bless this food 
 which Thou givest us abundantly, and grant that we 
 may use it with joy and thankfulness, and to Thy 
 glory." 
 
 They attacked the bread, the milk, the coffee, the honey, 
 the preserve, the strawberries. Reymond did not talk 
 much. He looked about, he listened to these Alsatians, 
 three generations which had remained faithful to the 
 speech of the province : the patois, harsh, hoarse, like the 
 sound of pebbles whirled along by a torrent, and break- 
 ing into this suddenly, French of the Alsatian variety 
 with its leisurely, good-humoured rhythms. The grand- 
 father gave all the Milchpach news. 
 
 "Kramm died on Wednesday. He was buried on 
 Friday. . . . Old Salome is ill. . . . Grot the poacher 
 has put a charge of small shot into his left shoulder. 
 Moscher's son is going to marry a Colmar waitress. 
 There is a great to-do in the family. And there is a new 
 chemist at the factory, a very agreeable young man, a 
 well-bred fellow. One of us, of course. He might per- 
 haps do for Suzele. ... I must invite him to come here 
 one of these days." 
 
 " Grandpapa ! Do you really think it is essential one 
 should marry? " 
 
 " Yes, when one is a pretty girl like you, with a com- 
 plexion like pink heather. Certainly. And you must 
 have ten children hanging to your skirts." 
 
 "And what would you say if I told you some fine 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 129 
 
 morning that I was going to be a nurse in the hospital 
 at Mulhouse? " 
 
 Weiss was alarmed. 
 
 " Never ! There are plenty of old maids in the world 
 for that business." 
 
 "Never?" 
 
 Father and daughter, both self-willed creatures, looked 
 each other in the eyes challengingly. 
 
 " Peace, peace," counselled the grandfather. " My 
 chemist will drive out these modern ideas." 
 
 Taking advantage of a pause, the doves began to coo 
 again. Roses peeped in at the window. Catherine ap- 
 peared to clear the table. 
 
 " To think there was a time, my good Catherine," said 
 Weiss with mischief in his eyes, " when you used to carry 
 me about in your arms. I shall soon have my revenge. 
 When you become childish, I will carry you about and 
 take care of you." 
 
 The old servant laughed, her hands on her stomach. 
 Her faithful face, clean and shining, neatly framed in 
 grey plaits, was radiant. She wiped her eyes. 
 
 " Always full of fun. Monsieur Victor." 
 
 " Father," said Weiss, " your clock simply gallops. 
 In half an hour we must be off to Reichburg, as I wrote. 
 Next Sunday, when I come to fetch Suzele, we will spend 
 the whole day together. Stay! I have an idea, father. 
 Show Monsieur Reymond the cupboard in the loft. I 
 want him to understand our country." 
 
130 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 " The cupboard in the loft? " repeated Reymond. 
 
 " Follow us. . . ." 
 
 There were piles of wood, a corn-bin, some tools. Be- 
 tween the beams of the roof spiders were sleeping, hang- 
 ing at the end of a thread. Roused from their slumbers, 
 they hurried off to their retreats, their slender legs work- 
 ing hurriedly. Two dormer-windows opened on to the 
 blue of the Vosges. In the penumbra, the old man 
 looked like a ghost. Only his forehead and his beard 
 were visible. Slowly, opening the door of a secret place 
 hidden in the thickness of the wall, he took out a flag on a 
 gilded standard. 
 
 " The flag you see here floated over this house to cele- 
 brate the fall of Sebastopol. How many times I hoisted 
 it! And for the last forty years it has been languishing 
 here . . . waiting, waiting! " 
 
 Weiss ran to his father, seized the flag, strode to one 
 of the windows, and waved the tricolour frantically over 
 the sunlit roof. For a moment there was an additional 
 flash of light in the peaceful garden, like the reflection of 
 a flame, like a bit of sky falling among the flowers. 
 " Jesus Maria ! " Standing between two rose-trees, old 
 Catherine clasped her hands. 
 
 " Victor ! Victor ! " cried the grandfather. 
 
 Returning to his daughter, Weiss wrapped the flag 
 about her. For a moment, with dilated eyes, beating 
 hearts, and constricted throats, they thought that their 
 dream had come down to Alsatian earth. 
 
 The grandfather was the first to recover. 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 131 
 
 "Enough, enough! it is too cruel. . . . But you will 
 see it, perhaps." 
 
 He rolled the flag reverently round the standard, and 
 replaced it. 
 
 "And here is the mother's spinning-wheel. How it 
 used to sing to us, night after night, by the big stove! 
 . . . And now it also is silent, like her who used to wind 
 its thread. . . . What a mournful thing life is! ... Do 
 you remember, Victor, how she used to recite Beau 
 papillon bleu to you? Ah! no more of that. And here 
 are the epaulettes of my uncle, one of Napoleon the 
 Great's officers, and his Saint Helena medal. . . . And 
 here are the family papers, proclamations of the Kings 
 of France to their subjects, and notices issued by the 
 Mayor, all signed Weiss — four generations of Mayors 
 — all with the French stamp. . . . The kepi of my 
 brother, a Colonel of light infantry, killed at Magenta. 
 How many times I have shown my herbarium of memories 
 to my grandchildren. They will show them to their 
 sons. Tradition is the food of the soul." 
 
 When Weiss and Reymond left the old house, they saw 
 the grandfather, leaning on his grand-daughter, and old 
 Catherine, waving farewell to them from the threshold 
 for some time. 
 
 "We might be starting for America!" said Weiss. 
 " Well, Reymond, you have now seen the sanctuary of an 
 Alsatian family. You will find such sanctuaries every- 
 where, in the home of the peasant as in that of the work- 
 man : a medal, a cockade, a kepi, the certificate of the sons 
 
132 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 who died in the Foreign Legion. They are our lightning- 
 conductors against the German thunderbolts. And now 
 let us go to see another bit of Alsace." 
 
 Weiss turned round on the top of the hill. He showed 
 the gardens of Milchpach at his feet. 
 
 " Look at those flowers. ... In spite of their decrees, 
 they cannot prevent Nature from embroidering our 
 flag every summer on each garden, each cornfield, each 
 meadow. . . . Red, white, and blue! . . . Nature does 
 not like black! " 
 
 Vine-clad hillsides. Overlooking the plain is Reich- 
 burg, a village where those who were laid to rest some 
 four or five centuries ago will rise when the trumpet 
 sounds, walk unsurprised through the familiar street, 
 push open the well-known door, and find the house just 
 as they left it when they were carried out feet foremost. 
 An encircling wall with battlements, machicolations, 
 watch-towers, posterns, and drawbridges; within this en- 
 closure, a curious jumble of roofs full of dormer-win- 
 dows, weathercocks, facades streaked with painted beams, 
 pulleys with hanging ropes awaiting their load of dry 
 vine-branches, and paved streets winding crookedly, now 
 almost choked by the protuberant houses, now widening 
 into misshapen squares. A nest of sticks and twigs, of 
 course, on the top of a gable, where the stork, in a black- 
 and-white waistcoat, claps his beak; and rusty signs, 
 balconies with balustrades, tiny windows, a thousand 
 whimsies in wood and stone, useless staircases, a flight of 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 133 
 
 steps fit for a mansion leading up to a shanty, and over- 
 hanging upper storeys so close that lovers can kiss each 
 other from opposite windows by leaning out a little. 
 
 Reymond was enchanted. Said Weiss; 
 
 " Do you think that the descendants of the burghers 
 who built Reichburg and declaimed in their underground 
 cellars against the robber barons are ripe for slavery? 
 , . . But let us make haste. I hear a sound of forks 
 already." 
 
 Under the archway leading to King's house, Reymond 
 halted in amazement. . . . Was there ever such a house? 
 Three irregular facades, mullioned windows, gargoyles 
 with great gaping mouths; an external staircase, con- 
 tinued in a turret, the well with its bucket and chain; 
 round this well, falling on the pavement from above, 
 patches of sunshine jagged by the inequalities of the roof, 
 and slashed by the cornices — the whole baked by sum- 
 mer heats, worn by the rain, invaded by green mosses. 
 And at the moment, the lively sounds and gay colours of 
 a kermesse in this courtyard, tables spread for a feast, on 
 which bottles glittered, loaves were piled, soup-tureens 
 were smoking; women ran about fetching provisions, and 
 strapping fellows with florid faces and abrupt gestures 
 smoked and spat and laughed in stentorian tones. 
 
 Hereupon Klug hurried forward, bearded and brawny, 
 holding out two mighty hands to the new arrivals. Oaths 
 were rapped out around them, like blows on the table. 
 
 " Good-day, Weiss. Good-day, Monsieur. You are 
 heartily welcome. Are you hungry? Are you thirsty? 
 
134 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 . . . That's right! No introductions here! We make 
 friends over the roast. Gentlemen! (his voice would 
 have carried to a whole brigade) Babele has waved her 
 apron. It is the signal for the attack. Be seated, all 
 of you." 
 
 There was a shout of approval. The landowners sat 
 down first; Guhlmann, his huge pink chin resting on his 
 mauve neck-tie; Krebs, whose liquid eye probed the 
 depths of the kitchen; Ammerberger, his hands devoutly 
 clasped over his stomach; and then Weiss, and Reymond, 
 and several others. After these, the vine-dressers hur- 
 ried to their places. There was a clatter of iron-shod 
 boots, and then an alignment of white beards, grey 
 beards, fair moustaches like rays of sunshine on the 
 ruddy faces. And all looked at the master without 
 servility, after the manner of men united in a vigorous 
 fraternity. 
 
 All bent silently over the menu with its border of naked 
 children at play. It ran as follows: Potage a la reine, 
 Asperges. Truites au bleu, sauce hollandaise. Pommes 
 nature. Vol au vent Toulouse. Choucroute garnie 
 a rAlsacienne, Gigot de chevreiul. Salade, Buis- 
 sons d'ecrevisses, Bombe. Biscuit. Fromages assortis. 
 Fruits. Dessert. Cafe. Liqueurs. Cigar es. And wines 
 too numerous to mention. Good appetites, gentlemen! 
 
 Before each plate stood seven glasses, ranging from the 
 tall, slim beaker and the shallow, cup-like goblet to the 
 sturdy tumbler, squatting democratically on its broad 
 base; for are there not the strong red wines, and those 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 135 
 
 which must spread and sparkle, and those which love 
 to cream and foam in a glass as narrow as a ring? 
 
 Suddenly there was a noise, discreet at the table of the 
 masters, unsparing at that of the vine-dressers: the soup 
 was served. And it was really fine to see these faces 
 baked by the sun, the napkins spread out like banners, 
 the rhythm of chests and elbows at work, the lips suck- 
 ing the moustaches. The guests looked at each other 
 peaceably, and said very little. They were waiting 
 calmly for the moment when the soul of the bottles, enter- 
 ing into them, should animate their hearts and loosen 
 their tongues. To be the guest of Joseph Klug of Reich- 
 burg is no sinecure, as is notorious. Those permitted 
 to reduce the mountains of asparagus at his table to 
 molehills have to be serious men and not those talk- 
 mills who do not know how to attack good victuals. 
 They looked at each other again, their lips delicately 
 greasy. 
 
 The wives of the vine-dressers, their sleeves rolled up, 
 brought out the dishes of sauer-kraut, garnished with 
 slices of bacon and voluptuously rounded sausages. 
 And with them was Lina, the belle of Reichburg, who 
 handed the sauces with modest downcast eyelids, perhaps 
 to show off the length of her lashes. When she deigned 
 to raise them, she revealed eyes of such a soft blue that it 
 melted one's heart. Weiss gallantly hummed a song 
 about cornflowers and summer skies. And Lina smiled 
 as she glided along the tables bending her plump neck 
 and fair plaits. 
 
136 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 "Do you see that tall young fellow over there? " said 
 Klug to Weiss, " the one with the black moustache, who 
 follows Lina about with his eyes? He is her betrothed, 
 Gustave Badwiller. They became engaged a week ago, 
 when the leaves were stripped. Ah! there was a good 
 deal of anger and jealousy among the Reichburg lads! 
 Lina hasn't a penny, but she knows her business. And 
 what a pair of eyes! " 
 
 The guests were cheerful. They sipped the wines. 
 Nostrils dilated as the bouquet reached them. Lips were 
 smacked, and eyes looked up ecstatically to the weather- 
 cock on the turret. 
 
 " This is Kitterle of 1900. . . ." 
 
 "This Riesling is good, but it wanted just another 
 touch of sun." 
 
 "As for me, I always come back to Riquewihr. It's 
 a treat for the nose as well as the palate." 
 
 And after the manner of men who spend the whole 
 year bending over the vine-stock, they distinguished be- 
 tween the " throat-wines " and the " tongue-wines," for 
 there are some which must be rolled on the tongue and 
 others which caress the uvula. 
 
 " You know a really civilized man by the way he 
 drinks wine," said Weiss. "Beer is just gulped; it 
 drowns thirst. But wine must be tasted. There is men- 
 tality in this, all the soul of a territory, all the colour of 
 a race." 
 
 They questioned Reymond concerning the brands of 
 his canton. From the manner in which he vaunted Deza- 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 137 
 
 ley, Villeneuve, La Cote, and Yvorne, they judged him 
 worthy to taste the wines of Alsace. Kruger held his 
 head high, and he listened to the compliments of his 
 guest with the expression of a playwright whose piece is 
 applauded. 
 
 What viands! And the walnut-oil salad, gathered that 
 morning, and the tarragon sauces! Every minute there 
 was a procession of women coming along by the covered 
 staircase bearing fresh dishes and new bottles. And 
 Lina's smile was fresher than a rose blooming on the top 
 of a wall. 
 
 Meanwhile the thermometer was visibly rising. Nap- 
 kins, pulled out from waistcoats, lay on the table between 
 bowls of fruit and decanters of kirsch. Jokes were ban- 
 died in patois. Sweeping gestures, hilarious faces, shin- 
 ing foreheads, beatitude in the eyes. ... A sign from 
 Gustave Badwiller to his sweetheart. He took her by 
 the waist, and there they were pirouetting on the pave- 
 ment of the old courtyard, beating out the time with their 
 heels, forehead to forehead, Lina's red apron flaming in 
 the sun and dying down in the shade. . . . Shoulders 
 shook with good-natured laughter. One of the vine- 
 dressers took a mouth-organ from his pocket and played 
 a pathetic air, ending in a burst of roguish notes. The 
 audience applauded lustily through rings of tobacco 
 smoke. And high above, in the arch of heaven, a flight 
 of pigeons flecked the blue with snow. 
 
 " It's beginning, it's beginning! " cried Weiss. " Long 
 live Alsace! All goes well, but es word noch besser wenn 
 
138 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 emol d'Schwobe zuem Land use geworfe senn; yes, yes, it 
 would be better still if the Schwobs were turned out of 
 the country! " 
 
 And he related one of those popular tales which in 
 Alsace have the faculty of spontaneous generation. 
 
 "Speaking of Schwobs, do you know this story? It 
 was in Paradise, at the beginning of the world. The 
 Almighty had so much to do that he commissioned Saint 
 Peter to finish the creation of humanity. Saint Peter 
 was quite a good hand at the work. He took the different 
 parts from a basket, fitted them together, and screwed 
 them fast. A tap under the chin and the man set out for 
 the country allotted to him. However, the work requires 
 great precision. Saint Peter became tired. And then 
 he made mistakes, giving one man two stomachs, and no 
 heart, and another two hearts and two stomachs. Such 
 things may happen. . . . Saint Peter noted the disaster. 
 What was to be done? He approached the Almighty. 
 He admitted his carelessness and said : ' Can we make 
 use of these two men? ' The Almighty considered; He 
 bowed His head. Then suddenly He decreed : ' The 
 man with two hearts you are to put in Alsace ; one of the 
 hearts will be for Alsace and the other for France; the 
 two stomachs shall be for himself. As to the man who 
 has no heart and two stomachs, you can put him on the 
 other side of the Rhine and call him a Schwob.' " 
 
 Such stories, born in the hearts of an oppressed people, 
 yet without bitterness, have a knack of diverting their 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 139 
 
 hearers. They laughed heartily, so heartily that they be- 
 came thirsty again, and had to empty another glass of 
 Kitterle. And the vine-dressers, too, had their stories, a 
 legacy from the old folks. They laughed again till they 
 cried, with that deep, healthy, mighty laughter known to 
 Rabelais' heroes, which breaks out like a torrent, dies 
 down, breaks out again, till the cheek-bones glisten, tears 
 stand in the eyes, the veins make an arabesque on the 
 forehead; and when it is over the laugher feels lighter, 
 fresher, and fitter, ready to return to his daily task. 
 
 Presently they were playing skittles under a vast per- 
 gola covered with climbing roses in King's garden. The 
 perfume of the roses mingled with the perfume of the 
 vine-blossom, the June heat quivered on the roofs of 
 Reichburg. The stork clapped his beak indefatigably on 
 the top of his gable; girls and boys passed along the 
 roads, holding each other by the little finger, and hum- 
 ming pensive airs; blue shadows accumulated in the 
 hollows of the valleys, and the bells beat their wings 
 in their stone nests. How pleasant it was that Sunday 
 afternoon in the old peasant's garden, with its roses, its 
 columbines, its huge cabbages, its strawberries, its red- 
 dening cherries! The whole garden was a burst of 
 laughter, from which a tom-cat, roused from his siesta, 
 prudently retired. 
 
 " Ah ! " said one of the notables of Reichburg, " one 
 is happy enough up here ... if it were not ... if it 
 were not for . . ." 
 
140 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 He left his sentence unfinished. 
 
 " If it were not for the phylloxera . . ." suggested 
 Weiss. 
 
 "Yes, if you like. . . . But one can sulphur-spray 
 that, whereas it would have no effect on those I have in 
 my mind." 
 
 Patois and French collided, while the ball rolled along 
 the plank, and the skittles collapsed with a clanking 
 sound. 
 
 Seven o'clock struck from the belfry. And the guests 
 were again seated in the court round the table, where pies 
 arched their brown backs, and bottles raised their slender 
 necks in line. There was singing and toasting. Each 
 one hastened to proclaim his joy to the evening sky, 
 for the company was about to break up. 
 
 And now a scene of amazing simplicity took place. 
 The door of the archway was closed. They were thor- 
 oughly at home, among safe men. Weiss whispered 
 something to Klug, and Klug called his son, a little boy 
 of ten. The child ran off. A minute later he was seen 
 opening the window in the turret; then he disappeared 
 again; suddenly, as at the elder Weiss's house, the flag 
 floated out, the flag that is kept in the secret cupboard. 
 At the sight of it all were silent, all rose, and all uncov- 
 ered, notables and vine-dressers alike. What a silence! 
 And all eyes were fixed on the swaying colours. At 
 the end of the courtyard the women, with the fair Lina 
 among them, also gazed at it. And during this silence 
 Gustave Badwiller proclaimed in his stentorian voice, in 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 141 
 
 patois, that he was about to address the flag in French. 
 In French? There was amazement among those who 
 knew the man, for he had no knowledge of France or of 
 her language ; he had served under the conqueror in some 
 distant province, where his alertness had won him his 
 sergeant's stripes. Every one looked at Badwiller, 
 anxious and agitated. But his keen eyes were turned on 
 the flag with magnificent intensity, as if an instinct were 
 rising from his heart, a mysterious impulse. His breast 
 heaved under the effort, the sweat stood out on his fore- 
 head. Twice the vine-dresser essayed to speak, seeking 
 words, holding out his hands, splendid in his mute dis- 
 tress. Then suddenly the cry escaped him: 
 
 " Long live France, Noun de Die! " 
 
 He sat down heavily, exhausted. 
 
 Never had Reymond heard a finer speech — and he 
 had listened to a great many in the inns of his native 
 land. 
 
 The guests pressed each other's hands. They took 
 leave. Weiss and Reymond left the roofs of Reichburg, 
 the vine-clad slopes, behind them. The Swiss and the 
 Alsatian walked arm in arm. And to give rhythm to 
 their march under the stars, they, too, exclaimed: 
 " Long live France, Noun de Die! " 
 
VIII 
 
 '/^ OOD-BYE, Monsieur, till the autumn. . . . You must 
 VT write to us." 
 
 Basle, Olten, Berne, and finally the radiant country 
 that is mirrored in Lake Leman. 
 
 On this August day Aunt Emma, and all the Reymonds, 
 father, mother, brothers, and sisters, were making holi- 
 day in honour of the absent one's return. They were on 
 their way to Le Bouveret. An Italian band was playing 
 on board the steamer, gay with innumerable parasols. 
 Every one was smiling, lulled by the sound of the wheels 
 churning the blue waters. The mountains were dream- 
 ing in the summer vapour. All was calm. The flags on 
 the roofs of the hotels seemed too inert to float. Only 
 those on the steamer shook out their colours, making 
 bright spots of colour that danced in reflections on the 
 waves. Yes, all was calm, all was lovely; it seemed as 
 if that azure lake could never have known a storm, could 
 never have drowned any one. And the band was play- 
 ing Funiculi-Funicula, 
 
 " It is splendid ! " said Aunt Emma, throwing back 
 her veil. " Look at the tourists, how pleased they are! " 
 
 Monsieur Reymond senior was keeping anxious watch 
 over his basket of provisions, round which an English- 
 woman's poodle had been sniffing. He replied : 
 
 "Yes, splendid! But this poodle is a nuisance!" 
 142 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 143 
 
 Setting the basket between his legs, he repeated: "It's 
 splendid! " 
 
 Reymond thrust out his chin towards a man who was 
 standing near the bell of the steamer and scrutinizing the 
 horizon. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " That is one of the police officers of Mulhouse Station. 
 I recognize him perfectly. He questioned me twice." 
 
 " He's having his holiday; it's natural enough," opined 
 Monsieur Reymond. 
 
 And Aunt Emma added: "You don't suppose he is 
 spying on people who are taking a rest on a steamer in 
 Switzerland? " 
 
 "I didn't say he was spying. I said that at Mul- 
 house . . ." 
 
 " Well, when they come to our country, we can't pre- 
 vent them from having a look round. It's their right. 
 They pay for their places in the train; they pay for their 
 meals in the hotels; they are well dressed. There is 
 nothing against them. As to war in the twentieth cen- 
 tury, what folly! " 
 
 " You will see ! Monsieur Weiss, of whom I have told 
 you, and Monsieur Bohler too, who is continually travel- 
 ling in Germany, who knows it well, and hears what is 
 being said, believe we shall have it sooner than we think." 
 These austere words distress Aunt Emma, whose hat, 
 with its wreath of white lilac, droops mournfully. 
 
 " We must not take too gloomy a view of things. 
 Anyhow, every one loves Switzerland; we need only look 
 
144 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 round the deck of this steamer to be sure of that." 
 
 Monsieur Reymond is fond of an argument. 
 
 "All those who come back from abroad are full of 
 these blood-curdling tales . . . spies, riots, and suchlike. 
 It is to startle quiet folks. Nations prepare for war now- 
 adays; they don't declare it. Bankers lend their money 
 to the whole world. One people visits another. No; 
 war is no longer possible." 
 
 "War is infamous! " sighed Aunt Emma. "I prefer 
 my lake." 
 
 " I once went through your Alsace by train," con- 
 tinued Monsieur Reymond. " Of course, it was wrong of 
 the Germans to take it. But, after all, there is a good 
 deal of exaggeration on the subject. Nobody is killed 
 there. Work goes on steadily, industry prospers." 
 
 "Yet Monsieur Weiss's eldest son died during his 
 term of military service. He was infamously treated. 
 And so you think it can be pleasant to leave one's country 
 for ever? In a year both my pupils will go." 
 
 Aunt Emma was touched. 
 
 " But they will come back for holidays? " 
 
 " Certainly not." 
 
 "Poor boys!" 
 
 Monsieur Reymond offered a solution: 
 
 "The Alsatians are to be pitied, undoubtedly. But 
 you will see that sooner or later, to quench this fire of 
 discontent, they will be given autonomy, or perhaps their 
 country will be made neutral. There are a hundred 
 alternatives to war." 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 145 
 
 The Englishwoman's dog returned slyly to the charge. 
 Monsieur Reymond kicked out valiantly in defence of his 
 basket. 
 
 There was a silence. They admired the gentle, smiling 
 shore, the rippling bays. Aunt Emma shuddered. 
 
 " Let us bless Providence who guards us from suffer- 
 ing. Let us cultivate peace. Let us strive to reconcile 
 these foreigners. We have a noble part to play." 
 
 Madame Reymond has seven children. She is a good 
 wife, a good mother. A cry comes from her heart: 
 
 "After all, they must be harsh to separate mothers 
 from their sons! " 
 
 Quivering under the kisses of the sun, the bays seem to 
 repeat incredulously: " They must indeed be harsh. . . ." 
 
 The police officer is standing near the bell. The Italian 
 shakes the pence in his tray. The band plays the Valse 
 bleue. 
 
IX 
 
 REYMOND returned. Nothing was changed. The 
 Rhine rolled its green waters; the factories poured 
 out their smoke. The Black Forest, the blue Vosges; be- 
 tween them, the garden of the plain; the little train 
 whistled, puffed, ran along the narrow valley on the 
 bank of the river with its rippling waters. On the sta- 
 tion platform stood the station-master in his red cap, the 
 policeman in his spiked helmet. A hill is turned, and 
 then another. The belfry of Friedensbach rises above 
 the trees. And here is the chubby coachman, and Jean 
 and Rene, hat in hand, very amiable, and a little shy. 
 "Have you had pleasant holidays. Monsieur? " 
 "Yes, thank you. And you? How are your pa- 
 rents? " 
 
 While the horses were trotting along, they exchanged 
 these dismal conventionalities. They had all looked 
 forward so much to meeting again, and now they were 
 separated by these two months of holidays during which 
 their eyes and minds had been turned on different land- 
 scapes and dissimilar preoccupations. Between tutor 
 and pupils there was all the distance that separates a 
 seaside resort in Normandy and the Swiss glaciers. 
 There was a disappointed silence. They felt that they 
 must leave the task of picking up the threads again to 
 
 146 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 147, 
 
 the days to come. When people live together, then 
 everything, sky, trees, men with their speech and ges- 
 tures, conspire to create anew the desired unity. 
 
 The same porter, the same court filled with the eternal 
 buzz of the machines, the same heads bowed behind the 
 same windows of the same office. Old Julie greets Rey- 
 mond from her kitchen. "We are glad to have you 
 back," says Madame Bohler. One thread is picked up. 
 In the schoolroom the map, the statue of Jeanne d'Arc, 
 the globe, the books; on the blackboard these words in 
 capital letters: "July 16. The holidays. Long live 
 France! " Reymond's chair is in the embrasure, whence 
 one can see the road leading to the forest, the glades 
 where the broom-bushes grow. And here objects come 
 to meet you. The eyes that observe you regain their look 
 of confidence. The valley takes you to its heart again. 
 
 "The joyous band of Wednesdays and Saturdays will 
 be much reduced," said Madame Bohler. " Andre Berger 
 and Emile Zumbach, who are very much tied to their 
 technical school, are only to come home on Sundays. 
 On the other hand, Charles Weiss will join our boys as 
 often as the college curriculum allows. In another year 
 we shall close this schoolroom. Rene might stay with 
 us a little longer, but we do not wish to separate the 
 brothers. Only another year! " 
 
 " We will come back," declared Rene; " we will come 
 back with the French army." 
 
 And here is Monsieur Bohler, with his faithful face and 
 his white hair, his upright figure, the shyness of a silent 
 
148 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 man of action, the brief gestures which seem to build up 
 a fence. With him Alsace, struggle, and hidden suffer- 
 ing, present themselves again. And he repeats: 
 
 " In a year ... in a year. . , . Meanwhile, work 
 hard, boys. . . . The books have come. Monsieur Rey- 
 mond. Tomorrow at eight o'clock you can open your 
 factory." 
 
 They parted. Reymond follows the road, strides over 
 the level crossing, passes the school, where he perceives 
 Kummel, who makes a profound bow. The geese are 
 cackling by the fountain where the pot-bellied god sits 
 enthroned. The boys pursue each other, dragging their 
 sabots along the pavement. 
 
 " Jacobine, here he is! " 
 
 Old Schmoler is on his threshold, holding out his hand. 
 Jacobine hurries out. And Reymond returns to the bed- 
 room with the closed shutters, the shells, the bed with 
 its cretonne tester and hangings. The dinner-bell. The 
 two tables. Mahlzeit! Good-day! Kraut, smug and 
 sanctimonious, his beard on his chest, contemplates the 
 plump widow. Silent and motionless, the ofl&cials eat 
 and drink. 
 
 "What news is there at Friedensbach? . . ." The 
 Alsatians raise their eyebrows by way of reply. Coquart 
 lights a cigarette with deliberation. 
 
 " I am leaving in a week, my dear fellow. This dull 
 hole will be the death of me. I am going back to my 
 seaport." 
 
 " How long shall you have been at Friedensbach? " 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 149 
 
 "Three years. Long enough to atone for all my sins, 
 past, present, and future." 
 
 He shrugs his shoulders. Three years of boredom. 
 Three years of recriminations, of disillusioned speeches. 
 The officials retire. Mahlzeit. 
 
 Coquart giggles. 
 
 " I shall make them laugh at La Rochelle with that 
 Mahlzeit! It is the only German word I shall carry 
 away. I will declare it at the Custom-house, for fear 
 they should take it from me . . ." 
 
 Night falls on the roofs. The policeman's step echoes 
 in the deserted street. The shoemaker's apprentice is 
 playing the concertina. The three generations of 
 Schmoler make remarks in patois. How far away is 
 Lake Leman, with its mountains and its meadows where 
 the cow-bells tinkle ! 
 
 Reymond asks himself whether he ever left Friedens- 
 bach. 
 
 The next morning, Reymond, pleased to find that the 
 knowledge acquired by his pupils had not evaporated 
 unduly, made a ministerial pronouncement: they were 
 going to set to work in earnest, and carry off a Bachelor's 
 degree at the point of the bayonet! 
 
 " I count upon you, boys. And now, before we begin 
 the attack, we must renew our acquaintance with the 
 Vosges. After which we shall be fit for real good 
 work." 
 
 A pale October sunshine played upon the slopes. In 
 the russet woods, where pheasants strutted and startled 
 
150 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 hares fled before them, the pedestrians trod on the first 
 leaves of autumn. Sometimes from the blue depths of a 
 glade rose a flock of migratory birds, and one heard the 
 rhythmic beat of hurrying wings and the thrust of 
 feathered breasts against the warm air. A supernatural 
 radiance shone in space. 
 
 They came out on a summit bristling with pink rocks, 
 barbed with furze-spines, and red with bilberry foliage. 
 Standing on the lofty peak by his trusty dog, a goatherd 
 was guarding the flocks of Friedensbach — a very old 
 goatherd, incredibly thin, with a short beard like the 
 lichen that grows on aged pines. This Seppi was an 
 original. As long as any one could remember he had 
 been living alone in his cottage at the mouth of the 
 ravine, cooking his soup, mending his clothes, sawing his 
 wood, stacking his faggots, smoking his pipe. In winter 
 he was never seen. Perhaps he hibernated like the mar- 
 mots. When spring came he blew his cow-horn and went 
 from stable to stable, collecting the goats and kids. He 
 greeted every one he met, even the policeman, with a 
 Bon jour (which he pronounced Bochour) and a French 
 military salute, placing his open hand against the brim of 
 his rust-coloured hat. 
 
 It was said that Seppi was eighty-one years old. Per- 
 haps he was a little more, perhaps a little less. He was 
 known to have wandered all over the world, to have 
 fought in the Crimea and in the Italian campaign, to have 
 enlisted at the age of forty when it had been announced 
 on the market-place that the troops were marching 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 151 
 
 against Germany. When the war was over he had re- 
 turned to his annexed valley, more original than ever, 
 talking to himself and smoking incessantly. And now 
 from early spring to late autumn, he was only to be seen 
 from below and from afar, standing on the point of a 
 rock where his thin silhouette was outlined against the 
 grey or the blue of the sky. Last witness of the days of 
 glory, he seemed to be guarding Alsace as well as his 
 goats, set upon the mountain-top like a prophet. 
 
 When the three approached him, Seppi made his mili- 
 tary salute and said Bochour, Reymond offered him a 
 cigar. The old man laughed. His nostrils quivered 
 with pleasure. The dog growled, his muzzle out- 
 stretched, snuffing the air, uneasy at the sight of the flocks 
 of birds passing overhead in the golden light, their heads 
 pointing to the west. 
 
 " Good-bye ! " cried the old man. " My greetings to 
 Marseilles." 
 
 "Do you know Marseilles well?" asked Reymond, 
 hoping for a story. 
 
 The old man shook his head. 
 
 " I know many, many countries — black men, red men, 
 white men. ... I know the Pas de Calais, principal 
 town Arras. I know Paris ... I know Algiers. ... I 
 know Bombay and Calcutta. I know ... ah! I know 
 all countries." 
 
 " And which do you like best? " 
 
 " This mountain. I have been standing on it all day 
 for forty years. I talk to my dog, my goats, the rocks, 
 
152 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 the trees. In the valley I hold my tongue. It's safer, 
 isn't it, Eugene? " 
 
 The dog, squatting upon the moss, barked his assent. 
 
 "And you believe, don't you, that Alsace will be 
 French again some day? " asked Rene. 
 
 Seppi was startled by the directness of this question. 
 To give himself time to answer, he sent Eugene after two 
 undisciplined goats, which the dog smartly brought back 
 to the flock. Then the goatherd answered in prudent 
 sibylline phrases, gazing dreamily into space: 
 
 "What will be, will be. . . . The weather is fair. 
 The wind rises and the storm is upon us. . . . The beaten 
 man hides. The conqueror draws himself up and holds 
 his head high. ... A stone, and he falls. Since Na- 
 poleon fell, why should not others? All one can do is to 
 smoke one's pipe and hold one's tongue, and wait, wait. 
 Nothing comes. Nothing. And yet it is coming. . . . 
 Some morning . . . some evening . . . sooner or later. 
 I am old. I cannot write. I cannot read. I know noth- 
 ing of what is going on on this side or on that (Seppi 
 jerked his thumb in the direction of the Vosges and the 
 Rhine). . . . But I say this: when I see this one or that 
 one treating poor folks harshly, I look about on the road 
 for the stone. ... I do not see it, because my sight is 
 bad, but I know very well that it is where it should be." 
 
 The old man laughed softly. Fearful of having said 
 too much, he again sent Eugene in pursuit of wandering 
 members of the flock. His toothless mouth closed. He 
 had said enough for one day. 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 153 
 
 The three went on, but several times they turned to 
 look again at the old goatherd, the tenacious shadow of a 
 tenacious past, standing in the radiance of the setting 
 sun, wrapped in his rough coat garnished with wallets 
 and flasks that protruded from his meagre form. 
 
 So they set to work again with a kind of fury during 
 the monotony of the autumn days. 
 
 The bark of the hooters, the gasp of the machines, the 
 clang of wooden shoes on the pavement, are sounds that 
 govern one's life. They seem necessary and eternal. 
 One exists in and by them. One passes from one to the 
 other morning and afternoon. They prescribe a strict 
 discipline. 
 
 And the Alsatian drama is forgotten, or rather it is 
 laid aside, shut up in the cupboard with the spinning- 
 wheel and the flag. One must live; and living means 
 getting up in the morning, working, eating, submitting 
 to the order established by force, forming habits, becom- 
 ing akin to the machines whose steel arms come and go 
 always in ore direction and never in another. . . . And 
 all this until the day when things one imagined were dead 
 and buried and mingled with the dust cut you to the heart, 
 and make you spring to your feet with a flame in your 
 eyes. . . . Yet only for a moment. Reality gets the bet- 
 ter of you. For one moment that one spends upon the 
 heights, how many weeks and months one crawls upon 
 the soft earth of the plains! Emotion wears one out 
 and kills one. . . . Habit preserves one. 
 
 The shuttle flashes, the thread is wound on the reel, th^ 
 
154 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 great frames on which the wool is drying swing, the belts 
 which carry power slip along — everything ascends and 
 descends. These belts seem to have laid hold of your 
 thought, your heart, your desires — everything seems to 
 slip away from you in this supple movement, leaving you 
 in the void, a slave to the familiar act. Weiss expresses 
 it very aptly in his picturesque language: "Heroics 
 twice a year. The rest of the time one turns the handle, 
 holds one's tongue, and carries on in the greyness." 
 
 One carries on in the greyness. It is just that. 
 
 The autumn draws to an end. White, then blue, now 
 a dirty yellow, the mountains are gathered round the 
 valley. The fog drops down from them like a great 
 bird with outspread wings; its dews are distilled even 
 upon the paunches of the pumpkins. There are baskets 
 under the apple-trees. The walnuts fall in showers, 
 harried by stout cudgels. Early in the morning the 
 woodman goes off, ax on shoulder, to the crimsoning 
 woods. Gee-up! The horses bow their heads and 
 stiffen their legs; another shining furrow lies beside the 
 shining furrows in which the magpies are disporting 
 themselves. Fires in the corners of the field, sending out 
 long streamers of smoke. Children pass along the hedge* 
 rows, gathering hazel-nuts and the coral hips and haws; 
 old men, seated on the doorsteps, fill the mattresses with 
 dry leaves, and grandmothers shell beans wrapped in 
 red or violet sheaths. • The potatoes are lifted. One 
 holds communion with the soft silence of evening. The 
 sheet of fog has rolled away; the sun, like a fine red fruit, 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 155 
 
 is swallowed by the valley behind the mountain. Six 
 o'clock. The peasant raises his head to watch for a 
 minute the black battalion of artisans which the factory 
 has suddenly ejected from all its gates on to the high 
 road. The policeman walks about. All is quiet. The 
 magistrate opens his window. He shuts it again. This 
 land is submissive. 
 
 And All Saints' Day is here again, with its bells, its 
 sermon, its procession, its chrysanthemums, its graves 
 which the banners have saluted, drooping over them. 
 
 The fog thickens, stretched over the valley like a wind- 
 ing-sheet. According to the hour, it lifts a little, then 
 drops again. One lives under or in it. The river laughs 
 discreetly, and flees from the white curtain which cannot 
 check its clear waters. 
 
 The goats are baaing in the stables. Seppi has closed 
 the door of his cottage. But for the smoke from his roof, 
 he might be dead. At eight o'clock and at two o'clock 
 the children come to school, but their wooden shoes make 
 no sound in the soft mud. Kummel stands behind his 
 desk, near the overheated stove. Dieser, diese, dieses, 
 echoes the class. Kummel speaks of the German rivers, 
 the German towns, German conquests. His switch comes 
 down. Bader is inattentive. He is turned out of the 
 room. The pedagogue casts a frigid glance at his audi- 
 tors. All backs are bowed under the Prussian discipline. 
 
 The three-twenty train whistles languidly. No one gets 
 out, and no one gets in. It goes off again, and for a 
 moment there is a rattle of iron in the opaque air. . . • 
 
156 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 A carriage? Window-curtains are drawn aside. Who 
 is in it? No one can say. This man who is passing with 
 the hood of his cloak pulled up till only the ends of a 
 moustache damp with fog are to be seen is the merchant 
 Maus. Since he "rallied" he has walked in military 
 fashion, with his shoulders high, and he holds his cane as 
 one holds the sheath of a sword. Couah ! Couah ! The 
 curtains are drawn back again. A motor-car dashes by. 
 There is a dog inside, and a gloved hand strokes its head. 
 
 And Coquart has gone. He pressed a few hands at 
 parting. And he said once more as he stood on the foot- 
 board of the carriage: "They're all half dead here." 
 This is all he can tell the inhabitants of La Rochelle 
 about Alsace. 
 
 The greyness that falls from the sky mingles with that 
 which rises from men's hearts. A gust of wind rends it. 
 It closes up again, thicker than ever. Nevertheless, old 
 Rouf has sharpened his knives. The pig which has just 
 been bound to a trestle weeps, protests, and wriggles his 
 pink belly. His feet fall away stupidly. He is dead. 
 What did his cries avail him? As we know, there is no 
 resisting superior force. They crowd round the defunct, 
 they scrape his carcase after watering it with boiling 
 water, they cut and carve, they compute his weight in 
 sausages and hams. A terror descends upon the world 
 of domestic animals, and on the geese, who make off, 
 stretching out their beaks, and uttering protesting cries. 
 Only the bronze cock screwed to the ball of the fountain 
 is indifferent to this murder! Is he not a permanent 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 157 
 
 institution? . . . Well, not so permanent, after all, per- 
 haps, for Kummel has thoughts of substituting for him 
 an eagle with a hooked beak and tense claws, like those 
 on the regimental colours. Meanwhile, there will be a 
 feast of pig's puddings at Rouf's this evening. 
 
 The fog refuses to lift from the valley. It drinks up 
 sounds, eifaces colours, covers everything with its melan- 
 choly. It turns the open space in front of the Mairie 
 into a white square bordered by shadowy houses; people 
 move about in it, talking loudly to prove that they still 
 exist. This old woman who has been washing linen in 
 the river is grotesque with her pail upon her shoulder; 
 so, too, are these other women coming out of the factory, 
 their hair heavy with moisture, their shoulders cowering 
 under their shawls. A man lurches against the old 
 woman. He says " Gottverdammi ! " and goes off, a 
 ghost among ghosts. 
 
 Reymond and his pupils, their foreheads against the 
 panes of the schoolroom window, watch the phantom 
 procession of workmen in the courtyard. Reymond re- 
 marks: 
 
 "Saturday, pay-day. There will be a fine drinking- 
 bout this evening! At midnight I shall hear Grumbach 
 kicking at his door. His wife never wakes up till he gets 
 to the fiftieth kick. As Grumbach gives one per minute, 
 the neighbours have time to enjoy the serenade." 
 
 Rene laughs loudly. He loves life and noise. He is 
 delighted at the thought of these kicks on a closed door 
 at midnight. Jean pleads extenuating circumstances. 
 
158 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 " They are bored, poor fellows! In other places there 
 are theatrical societies, choral unions, all sorts of things. 
 Here one may not declaim what one likes, or play what 
 one likes, or sing what one likes. The policeman pokes 
 his nose in everywhere. They hunt down bugles, and 
 white gaiters, and peaked caps. They forbid and forbid. 
 Only the Kriegervereine have free play. . . ." 
 
 " What about a library? " 
 
 "A library? . . . But, Monsieur, there is a library — 
 managed by Kummel! It contains a hundred books, 
 which all declare that France is rotten to the core." 
 
 The fog closes in over the last workman. Where are 
 we? ... In the misery of this eternal twilight only the 
 mud that clings to our shoes assures us that the earth 
 is still under our feet. 
 
 " On such a day as this," said Rene suddenly, "Alsace 
 should be taken back. The French army could slip along 
 to Strasburg. When the sun came out again the tricolour 
 would float on every steeple. The Statthalter would 
 make a fine face ! " 
 
 Jean, more philosophical, expressed his wonder at the 
 relativity of human things. 
 
 " Monsieur, don't you think it must be difficult to be 
 heroic in the fog? One's soul seems to be made of cot- 
 ton-wool! There is no distance, no substance, no sharp 
 edges. Everything is soft, moist, and viscous. Is there 
 really a country called France? A town called Berlin? 
 Men who walk about with swords slung to their belts? 
 What becomes of words, of principles, and of ideas. 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 159 
 
 After ten days of fog one is no longer oneself. One 
 gropes and talks low. If humanity had always lived in 
 a fog, what queer creatures we should be — pale, shiver- 
 ing, our arms always stretched out towards a possible 
 obstacle! " 
 
 " We should all have become mushrooms," interrupted 
 Rene. " I should put myself down as a delicious agaric. 
 And I could find a species for a great many others — 
 Kummel, Justice Doring, and the rest! " 
 
 Reymond laughed. 
 
 "How like the two of you! Rene, who translates 
 everything into images, robust and combative; and you, 
 Jean, fond of theorizing, sensitive. . . ." 
 
 Rene holds up his head. He has been described as 
 combative. Jean feels that his tutor has hit the nail on 
 the head. 
 
 " It's a nuisance to be sensitive, Monsieur. One is at 
 the mercy of fog and sunshine. Kummel cares nothing 
 about the fog. He rides his hobby faithfully from Janu- 
 ary to December. This may be stupid, but it's strong. 
 Over-impressionable people, those who have too many 
 scruples, are not made to rule." 
 
 " Well, I am off now, little dialectician. But please 
 keep your tact and your scruples; I like you better as 
 you are." 
 
 Near the level crossing there was a shadow which ges- 
 ticulated. 
 
 " Is that you, Monsieur Weiss? What about the 
 Vosges? When shall we have our next excursion? " 
 
160 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 " Don't tantalize me. A winter like this is the worst 
 of tortures! " 
 
 Then he took up Jean Bohler's parable: 
 
 " If we were ourselves, free, we should have a little 
 theatre, we should get a lecturer to come now and then. 
 But just try anything of the sort! Kummel, Doring, 
 and the policeman, are the Holy Trinity. Rather than 
 undergo remarks, sneers, and rebuffs, we give up every- 
 thing, and curl ourselves up like hedgehogs. And when 
 the fog comes down on us, it's about the limit! Brrr! " 
 
 Truly the journalist who should come to Friedensbach 
 at this juncture to collect heroic sentiments would depart 
 with a blank notebook. Others may play the matadore, 
 standing with arched hip, and hand on this hip. What 
 is the use of talking and declaiming? Does it advance 
 matters at all? 
 
 So old Herzog, one of the vanquished of Sedan, ham- 
 mers at his soles conscientiously. Old Schmoler, one of 
 the vanquished of Woerth, comes and goes in his loft, 
 separates the rotten apples from the sound ones, stops up 
 the hole where the rats get through, cuts up the dry 
 branches and binds them into faggots. One hears him 
 sucking at his pipe. And Jacobine trots from her iron- 
 ing-board to the saucepan in which the sausage is sim- 
 mering. 
 
 In the restaurant Madame Vogel continues to make 
 omelettes, to taste soups, to lay the table, to smile at 
 customers with a placidity which overcomes the languor 
 of Kraut. Poor Kraut! This fog depresses him more 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 161 
 
 than any one. Sometimes, after he has been at his figures 
 all the morning, his mind seems to stop dead, like a clock 
 that wants cleaning. During the clink of the forks, which 
 fatigues him, he thinks of retirement. Was a man of 
 his age meant to live alone? He ought to have a wife 
 to keep his wardrobe in order, wrap up his hot water- 
 bottle in flannel, and twine her arms round his con- 
 scientious neck. Kraut is not very sure if he made an 
 amicable sign to his hostess. He thinks that he did. 
 . . . The diners have departed. Kraut remains alone 
 under the crackling gas-jet. . . . Should he go into the 
 kitchen? Should he set forth in simple terms his lone- 
 liness, the needs of his heart, the amount of his retiring 
 pension? He does not dare. He will never dare. He 
 listens to the song that is rising with the steam from a 
 saucepan. And he goes off, his green hat pulled down 
 on the nape of his neck, his candid eyes full of sadness, 
 his beard moist with fog. 
 
 Here he is again. It was really too horrible out of 
 doors; too cold in his bedroom imder the tiles. Kraut 
 has made a resolution. He feels within him all the 
 strength of the old Germany which serves God, all the 
 strength of her ancient legends and her modern glory. 
 Bending over the saucepan where the water which is to 
 be used for washing up the dinner things is bubbling, 
 Madame Vogel looks round with her eternal smile of the 
 circumspect hostess. But she starts. For the worthy 
 man is alarming, with his flushed face, his stammering 
 confessions, his light eyes illumined by senile desire. 
 
162 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 The handsome widow holds her hands up to heaven, in- 
 voking it to witness her refusal. 
 
 "Madame Vogel," said old Kraut with sinister calm, 
 " you understand me, don't you? I have earned my 
 pension. ... If you like, I will keep the accounts of 
 your restaurant. ... I am used to such work. . . ." 
 
 The widow temporizes. With gentle pertinacity, she 
 suggests that Thuringia is full of worthy women. Kraut 
 smiles bitterly. 
 
 "Are you refusing me because I am a German? " 
 
 In the interests of the restaurant, it seems prudent 
 to evade this question. 
 
 " What are you thinking of. Monsieur Kraut? . . . 
 My husband has only been dead two years! If he could 
 hear you! " 
 
 Mademoiselle Schmoler comes in innocently. Kraut 
 can but withdraw. His world is crumbling about him: 
 God, the old legends, the young glory of his country. 
 What is the use of administering this country so con- 
 scientiously, when its widows refuse the love of veteran 
 officials? 
 
 Returning to his cold bedroom under the tiles, Kraut 
 contemplates in turn the bounding dogs in the rounds 
 of his wall-paper, the engravings on the walls showing 
 the Thuringian hills, the Scripture text which says: The 
 Good Shepherd gives His life for the sheep, and, above 
 all, it must be said, in a corner in a gilt-frame, the por- 
 trait of a lady with fat cheeks, a stupid expression, a 
 white forehead, and a bewildering mass of hair. How 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 163 
 
 did Kraut get hold of this advertisement for a hair-wash? 
 It is a mystery. How often he looks at it before he goes 
 to sleep! With a firm step, Kraut advances to the lady 
 with the flowing tresses who is so astonishingly like 
 Madame Vogel; he seizes the picture, throws it to the 
 ground, and plants his foot on the pink throat and the soft 
 eyes. The Good Shepherd looks at Kraut sadly. What 
 he is doing is wrong, very wrong. His conscience smites 
 him; he picks up the lady and hangs her on the wall 
 again. The other picture at the end of the room, which 
 shows the German fleet covering the ocean as far as the 
 eye can reach, does not console him in the least. . . . 
 Kraut sits upon his bed, unties his shoes slowly, takes 
 off" his coat and waistcoat and his thick flannel jacket; 
 but, as he has a dignity of his own, he does not look at 
 the lady with the generous bosom again. 
 
 From that day forth Kraut was embittered. Beer, 
 saveloys, mustard, sauer-kraut, all those divine foods, 
 had a taste of ashes. In the ofiGce, papers lay about and 
 accounts would not balance. Kraut was old. His mind 
 was going. Childish memories came back to him with 
 ecstatic violence. To all who inquired after his health 
 he replied: 
 
 " I want to go home." 
 
 He pronounced these words with tears in his voice, 
 a senile trembling of the lips. Home! ... It was not 
 in Alsace. It was on the other side of the Rhine. He 
 felt a longing to hide in his mother's skirts as of old. 
 . . . His mother? ... No; she was dead. Then, he 
 
164 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 would hide in the green skirt of the forests where as a 
 child he gathered strawberries with his schoolfellows. 
 " I want to go home. . . ." 
 
 Monsieur Bohler rushes out of the office, a telegram in 
 his hand. It is only eleven in the morning. What has 
 happened to this man, generally such a rigid observer of 
 rules? . . . The house-door slams behind him. 
 
 " What is the matter? " asks Madame Bohler in alarm. 
 
 " I don't understand it at all. A telegram from Leip- 
 zig telling me that Marthe is dead." 
 
 Marthe, the orphan niece who, against his strongly ex- 
 pressed wish, had married a banker of that city; Marthe, 
 the fair-haired, happy child who had so often run about 
 this little room and climbed upon the knee of the uncle 
 who had been her second father ; Marthe, dead at the age 
 of twenty-five, and about to be buried in foreign earth ! 
 
 "Marthe!" 
 
 "Well, she's had five children in five years! The 
 fifth has killed her. ... I won't go. In the first place, 
 it's too far. And then . . . No, I won't go." 
 
 "You must go, in memory of your brother. Believe 
 me . . . Poor Marthe! Who would have thought it? 
 In the presence of death one can only forgive and par- 
 don." 
 
 " Do you think I am angry with the poor child? Does 
 a girl know what she is doing at nineteen? We ought 
 never to have sent her to school in Germany. Were we 
 too hard on her? How could she marry a man who cut 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 165 
 
 down our soldiers in 1870, and did all he could to pro- 
 mote the theft of our country from us? . . . However, all 
 that belongs to the past, and now she is dead. No, I 
 won't go. I can't go. What sort of a face can I put on 
 before that tribe of Zinglers? It's impossible." 
 
 " Go, my dear; trust me." 
 
 "No!" 
 
 They looked at a photograph of a laughing little girl 
 on the writing table. 
 
 " You must go, my dear." 
 
 "No!" 
 
 Monsieur Bohler went away. His white head was seen 
 passing through the courtyard. 
 
 Of course, he started that very evening. He was 
 away two days. When he returned he had not much to 
 say. 
 
 "They behaved very well. The husband was quite 
 crushed. He was devoted to her. It was just as I 
 thought. She died at the birth of her fifth child, which 
 has survived. Poor little Marthe! They showed me a 
 portrait of her, a very good likeness, surrounded by the 
 portraits of four or five generations of Zinglers, nearly 
 all in uniform. It made me think of a picture stolen in 
 war-time. ... It rained incessantly. . . . Ah! don't let 
 us talk about this any more." 
 
 Monsieur Bohler became silent. And his wife, who 
 understood him, asked no more questions. WTiat he did 
 not tell her — for he was a man of action who would not 
 confess that he was sentimental — was that he had taken 
 
166 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 with him a handful of earth from Alsace, which he had 
 thrown upon the coflSn in the churchyard. 
 
 January. Rain and mud. The water overflowed from 
 the gutters. Such a winter had never heen known. The 
 smoke of the factories was heaten hack, and fell in 
 malediction on the earth. 
 
 Suzanne Weiss has gone to Paris to stay with a cousin, 
 and with her all the gaiety of Friedensbach has departed. 
 
 And the wool trade is depressed. Monsieur Bohler 
 is in a savage temper. In the schoolroom the work goes 
 on according to the prescribed program: translation of 
 Horace, Livy, Tacitus, Herodotus, and Plato, study of the 
 French Revolution, readings in Racine, Bossuet, and 
 Voltaire, after which Jean seizes his violoncello and 
 Rene his expanders. For Rene wants to be an officer, 
 and he is bent on developing his muscles. He is now at 
 the fourteenth exercise in his gymnastic treatise. For 
 an hour every evening he works at his torso, throws his 
 arms backward and his legs forward, lifts weights twenty 
 and thirty times in succession. The two brothers 
 wrangle, their nerves on edge: 
 
 "When will you stop that caterwauling with your 
 'cello? " 
 
 " When you stop making faces and squatting on your 
 heels." 
 
 " Anyhow, we shan't drive the Germans out of Alsace 
 by playing the 'cello." 
 
 "Little idiot!" 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 167 
 
 "Big idiot!" 
 
 The conversation continues on these lines till the 
 father's step is heard, and silence falls on the pair. 
 
 In the evening the family sit in the little drawing- 
 room. On one occasion the two boys had been told to 
 write a few lines on this subject: My First Literary Emo- 
 tion. They scanned the book-shelves feverishly, glanc- 
 ing at the childish books now despised, the books of ad- 
 venture, of science, and of sentiment. On the upper 
 shelf are the volumes the boys are forbidden to open, 
 whose titles they may not even read. . . . Madame Boh- 
 ler is writing letters. Her husband smokes behind his 
 newspaper. The intermittent smoke, the scratching of 
 the busy pen, the flutter of a page, the tick-tack of the 
 clock, accentuate the tranquillity of the warm room. 
 Jean and Rene in their turn sit down to write, groan- 
 ing, erasing, making fair copies. At last they have fin- 
 ished. 
 
 " Show me what you have written," says Monsieur 
 Bohler suddenly. 
 
 " Please don't read it aloud ! " the two boys implore. 
 
 " What nonsense ! Jean's first." 
 
 " * A few pages of my first history book will linger in 
 my mind as long as I live. The mission of Peter the 
 Hermit, the crowd, carried away by him, crying, " God 
 wills it! " all, careless of their lives, burning with aveng- 
 ing zeal, leaving family, home, and country to march 
 against the Infidel. The story filled me with enthusiasm, 
 gave me sublime ideas. I ^azed at the illustration in the 
 
168 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 text for minutes together; it showed a rocky path, an 
 arid land, an interminable procession of men going to 
 battle in a far-off country. At this time — I was eight 
 years old — I often went off with a little bread in a wal- 
 let. I went on the highroad, I walked, artlessly offering 
 the sacrifice of my life, until the moment when our 
 nurse overtook me and shook me vigorously. ... A 
 literary emotion was born of the association of ideas. At 
 eight years old I already expected the French every 
 day; I saw them on one of the peaks of the Vosges, 
 crying, " God wills it ! " and this was so glorious that 
 when I turned to my history again I put a beauty into 
 it which was absent from the dry text.' " 
 
 Monsieur Bohler was silent. It was Madame Bohler 
 who said: 
 
 " Bravo, Jean ! Now for Rene's effort." 
 
 " ' As long as I live I shall always maintain that 
 Jules Verne is wonderful. He is literary because he sug- 
 gests such masses of things. . . . Does he write well? 
 ... I don't know, but I do know that he ennobles one. 
 With him one travels to the moon, one journeys twenty 
 thousand leagues beneath the sea, one invents machines. 
 All modern inventions (submarines, motor-cars, wire- 
 less telegraphy) are in Jules Verne. These things are 
 literary, because to mount through space, to plunge under 
 the sea, to hover over worlds, excites emotion, makes 
 one dream, feeds the imagination. And, above all, they 
 are literary because with those contraptions we shall re- 
 cover Alsace-Lorraine.' " 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 169 
 
 There was a peal of laughter at the conclusion of this 
 essay. Rene reddened angrily. He thought he was 
 being ridiculed. 
 
 " He is wonderful. Mine is the best. . . . Besides, I 
 don't know what you mean by literary. ... I am scien- 
 tific." 
 
 Madame Bohler soothed his irritation with a word. 
 
 " Come, come ; we are not ridiculing you when we 
 laugh. Your composition is very good. Kiss me, my 
 sons, and go to bed." 
 
 The door closes. The parents look at each other with 
 emotion. Monsieur Bohler, by no means optimistic as 
 a rule, says: 
 
 " Our boys are splendid. . . . And when I say our 
 boys, I am speaking generally. I hear echoes of the 
 same sort everywhere. There is something in their 
 hearts. They have muscles. Yes, yes, Kummel and 
 Co. must look out for themselves! " 
 
 " I hope you are not very much bored here. Monsieur 
 Reymond? " Madame Bohler would say occasionally. 
 
 " Not in the least, Madame." 
 
 Reymond's reply is not strictly true. This winter has 
 seemed much longer to him than the first. Friedensbach 
 has given up all its secrets to him; the old people have 
 told him all their stories. Where is that heroic Alsace 
 he expected to discover? 
 
 Kummel undertakes to put a little spice into this 
 drowsy peace. He has a visitor, his brother, Walther 
 
170 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 Kummel, who lives at Nancy, Paris, Brussels, Cologne, 
 and Berlin, one month here and another there, for his 
 business makes it necessary that he should travel a good 
 deal. What is that business? . . . Strasburg and Metz 
 see him frequently, as do Belfort and Epinal, the frontier 
 towns for choice. This Walther Kummel speaks English, 
 Italian, and French as fluently as his mother-tongue. 
 Agreeable, insinuating, his cigar-case always well 
 stocked, he sees a great many people, and is an adept in 
 making them talk. People say of him: "He is a charm- 
 ing person." 
 
 So he has come to Friedensbach to visit his brother, 
 his seven nephews and nieces, his sister-in-law, Anna 
 Kummel, who always wears an embroidered apron over 
 her black skirt, and sings so sweetly in her kitchen: 
 Mein Herz ist ein Bienenhaus, . . . For a few days his 
 bony head, his keen, shifty eyes, and his flat cheeks, were 
 much in evidence. The magistrate greeted him with a 
 low bow, the policeman with one still lower. Then he 
 went off" to Paris, where business was waiting for him. 
 Schoolmaster Kummel, it may be presumed, refreshed 
 himself at this fountain, for after his brother's departure 
 his patriotism was exacerbated, as if in obedience to 
 orders. 
 
 One morning, when Reymond had been unable to 
 attend during his pupils' lesson with Kummel, he found 
 them furious, brandishing a paper and exclaiming both 
 at once: 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 171 
 
 " Just read that, Monsieur ! We are to translate it 
 into German. It's disgusting! " 
 Reymond took the paper and read: 
 
 "'Germany the Centre of Europe. 
 
 " ' Not only by her geographical situation, but also by 
 her moral importance, our dear country is the centre of 
 Europe. When we consider our neighbours, we find in 
 them faults so characteristic as to be undeniable. The 
 English are incapable of producing scientists, whereas 
 our country justly prides herself on a host of chemists, 
 physicists, and mathematicians of the highest talent. Do 
 not our Universities shed rays of light even in the re- 
 motest regions of the earth? It must be admitted that the 
 French and the Belgians have a certain spirit of invention. 
 But their frivolity and indifference prevent them from 
 following up their discoveries and profiting by them. 
 If they had our depth of character they would approxi- 
 mate somewhat to this German people to whom you be- 
 long. Whereas in Germany every official, from the high- 
 est to the lowest, does his duty, we see among our neigh- 
 bours the greatest disorder in the whole administration, 
 and an absolute lack of patriotism. The Italians are too 
 passionate to be able to judge calmly. Reason, the 
 supreme quality which governs all our enterprises, can- 
 not be the guide of our impetuous neighbours. 
 
 " ' We scarcely dare to dwell upon the ignorance and 
 idleness of the Russians, and of the negligence which 
 
172 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 reigns throughout their vast empire! These various de- 
 fects are so essential that the civilization of the nation 
 is totally arrested thereby, and that their moral level will 
 never come up to ours unless they seek inspiration in our 
 institutions. Then that new Europe of which Germany 
 will be more than ever the heart, the vital organ, will 
 march towards progress. And we shall sing once more: 
 Deutschland ilber AllesF " 
 
 Reymond only asked: 
 
 "Did you say anything?" 
 
 " No, indeed. Father has forbidden us to argue." 
 
 "He's quite right. But show him this paper all the 
 same." 
 
 That very evening, after his lesson, Reymond tackled 
 Kummel. 
 
 " Monsieur, I have read the paper you dictated to my 
 pupils. Don't you think it would be better to abstain 
 from these controversial ... or shall we say political 
 themes? Yours is the greatest nation on earth, we know. 
 Is it necessary . . ." 
 
 Kummel did not wait for the conclusion of the sen- 
 tence. His face was flushed. The hair bristled on his 
 pointed skull. His eyes gleamed with prophetic bril- 
 liance behind his spectacles. 
 
 " Pardon me, it is our duty to proclaim the truth urhi 
 et orbi, as you professors of Latin would say. Do not let 
 us confine ourselves to generalizations. I will deal with 
 facts. In Germany the yearly birth-rate is one million 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 173 
 
 eight hundred thousand. In France it falls annually at 
 the rate of one hundred thousand. What does this mean 
 but that the great nation, France, the boss (don't you 
 say?) of the Universe, is terribly afraid to live, as one 
 of our great writers has well said? . . . Well, travel, 
 open your eyes, cross our frontier. ... As soon as you 
 get to Belfort everything is dirty. Newspapers and 
 orange-peel on the ground, windows dim with dust. And 
 everywhere bare-headed women, ' creatures ' as you call 
 them. The industry is childish, the trade patriarchal. 
 On the whole, the conception of things is mediaeval. 
 
 "I saw the Alsace we delivered from the champions 
 of civilization. What neglect! What disorder! Yes, 
 we must tell the truth. England is the leech of the world. 
 She must be crushed. Italy plays the guitar, Spain 
 the mandoline. Russia? . . . She has a louse on every 
 hair ! Austria is something, thanks to us. And the poor 
 Alsatian standing on his ladder looks out beyond the 
 Vosges. He says: * Sister Anne, Sister Anne, do you 
 see anything coming? ' And I reply: ' Nothing but dis- 
 order, anarchy, sensuality, quarrels, alcohol, and the 
 like.' That is what they call Liberty. 
 
 " We Germans desire to regenerate the world, to intro- 
 duce civilization and happiness. For we have pity on the 
 world. This is the true Idealismus, Listen to what one 
 of our most cultured men has to say on this subject. I 
 cut it out of my newspaper. 'We Germans defend the 
 ideal of the fraternity of nations, of the world-State 
 which shall embrace all humanity, the super-German, 
 
174 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 the eternal-human, the cosmic, the infinite aspiration to- 
 wards the holy empire of living order in a free organi- 
 zation, the symphony of the forces of life in the heart of 
 nations. Now, this is no new ideal, but the most ancient 
 of all, universally human and cosmic, the Oriental, medi- 
 aeval, and Romanesque ideal of one in all, of unity in 
 number and number in unity. . . . Germany is the sole 
 faithful disciple of this Absolute, which we shall impose 
 by persuasion, if heads are not too hard, and by force if 
 persuasion fails.' 
 
 "There! Do you understand now?" 
 
 The hair still bristled on the pointed skull. 
 
 " Do you understand? " repeated the pedagogue, with 
 a sort of sacred fury. 
 
 What could Reymond reply? It is impossible to argue 
 against faith. He murmured: " It's magnificent." 
 
 The schoolmaster smiled. 
 
 " The time is at hand." 
 
 That evening they went no further. 
 
 Monsieur Bohler held the famous paper in his hand; 
 he settled his glasses on his nose, and began to read with 
 a severe, authoritative air. All of a sudden he broke into 
 a hearty laugh, very unusual with him. 
 
 " It's mystical delirium. ... I will give this paper 
 to my friends of France; it's worth while to read it. 
 Pride is turning their heads. A kind of intoxication. 
 . . . Well, let them eat, devour, digest nations; they 
 will die of it in the end." 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 175 
 
 Monsieur Bohler rubbed his hands. 
 
 Weiss's eldest son Frangois, who was studying law at 
 Strasburg, and was also attending a course at the Faculty 
 of Letters in an inquiring spirit, came home to spend 
 Sunday with his family. At dinner, between the tart 
 and the coffee, Kummel's theme was read aloud. The 
 only one of the guests — Reymond was present, also the 
 chemist Gangloff, and the engineer Ballenhofer — who 
 did not smile was Frangois Weiss. And he explained 
 why. 
 
 "You seem surprised? That's the sort of stuff they 
 feed us on at the University." 
 
 As they looked incredulous, he rose, and went to fetch 
 from his room a book called Gedanken und Wahrneh- 
 mungen, by the novelist G. Grober. He opened it and 
 read : " ' The Englishman is a prosaic boor, the Ameri- 
 can a vile commercialist, the Spaniard a degenerate, the 
 Italian a voluptuary and idler, the Frenchman a de- 
 bauchee, a frivolous and superficial trifler.' And he goes 
 on in this strain page after page, to prove that Germany 
 is the only strong nation, that there is no science but 
 German science, no philosophy and no religion save 
 German philosophy and German religion." 
 
 FranQois Weiss continued: 
 
 " I have heard our professors dozens of times engaged 
 on the ridiculous task of waging war upon French Chris- 
 tian names, and formally denying the existence of a 
 French literature and French poetry. Victor Hugo says 
 nothing in a great many words. Chateaubriand is a 
 
176 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 bombastic rhetorician. There is only one French writer 
 worthy of attention, and he, again, is a Swiss of German 
 affinities, J. J. Rousseau. They assert habitually that 
 the French don't know their own language and pronounce 
 it badly; that only the Germans speak French correctly, 
 because they know grammar and phonetics. . . . The 
 favourite pastime of these gentlemen, with only one or 
 two exceptions, is to rearrange the map of the world and 
 annex the territory of others. And they all grovel before 
 the State. The State is their God. It possesses every 
 right, that of life and death included. One of my Pro- 
 fessors of Law said the other day to one of my fellow- 
 students, whom he took for an Alsatian : ' Why do you 
 write the word State with a small letter? It is evident 
 that you are an Alsatian, and that, like all Frenchmen, 
 you have no conception at all of the State {Sie haben 
 keinen Begriff vom Staat.)' The amusing part of the 
 business was that the student to whom this reproof was 
 addressed was a Badener. I can tell you, we are pretty 
 well stifled in that atmosphere of pedants." 
 
 Weiss listened to his son with sparkling eyes. Sud- 
 denly, raising his glass, he cried: 
 
 " Gentlemen, let us drink to Kummel and his coadju- . 
 tors. . . . May their monomania increase and multiply! 
 It is they who will get Alsace back for us! " 
 
 "Meanwhile we must bow our backs and count the 
 blows," said Gangloff. 
 
 Weiss was not to be put off. 
 
 "Here's Kummel's health!" 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 177 
 
 And he emptied his glass, smacking his lips. 
 
 February. The winds contend with each other at the 
 crossways of the valleys. It snows, it freezes, and it 
 thaws. The peaks are white, the slopes grey, the 
 meadows by the river are green. 
 
 The Venetian blinds are down today. They are low- 
 ered when the helmeted regiments pass, the tourists with 
 thick calves, the Kreisdirektor going his rounds. Be- 
 hind these blinds, with their slanting slats — a hundred 
 little passages for the eye — there are looks alternately 
 mocking and merry, or mournful when the parish priest 
 advances under a canopy, bearing the Host, or. when 
 some old inhabitant is borne along in his black coffin. 
 Today behind the blinds eager eyes, and even the eyes 
 of the pious, contemplate sin. Old Schmoler and Jacob- 
 ine shake their heads, blame, condemn, and nevertheless 
 peep out at those who pass and flaunt themselves below. 
 
 After all the fog and rain, the Carnival is shaking its 
 bells. There are masks over faces, dresses made for 
 more generous contours float over flat hips, curling wings 
 hang over ill-shaven cheeks. Karcher, a libidinous old 
 sinner, is got up as a pregnant woman, the Badecker boys 
 are Moors, Minna of the mill is a Louis XV. page. They 
 gesticulate and grimace, and gambol, and dance; they go 
 into cafes whence the screams of romping girls ring out; 
 they form processions behind the big drum and the flute. 
 One beats a drum and another shakes a rattle. There 
 are confetti and coloured streamers, false noses and 
 false hair, false girls and false boys, false ogling in a 
 
178 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 false light. A bear passes, then a great lady — purple 
 stockings, Herculean shoulders, a red parasol, a hat the 
 shape of a glass shade — then a gorilla and his lady wife. 
 Mingling in the crowd with upturned moustaches and 
 watchful eyes are police ofl&cers, keeping a look-out for 
 forbidden colours and uniforms; they have arrested a 
 French Cuirassier. What a tumult in the darkness! 
 Straining on the bellrope, the forester keeps on ringing 
 the curfew. Now he is coming out of the schoolhouse; 
 he has a false nose adorned with three warts; stumbling 
 and zigzagging, seeking refuge in the ditches to avoid 
 imaginary vehicles, jovial and garrulous, he makes his 
 way home. Grumbach is at his own house; he has al- 
 ready given his fifty-second kick to the obstinately closed 
 door. . . . And now the moon, invisible for weeks, shows 
 her astonished face between the clouds. 
 
 "After all," says Weiss to Reymond, "we must have 
 a little frolic from time to time. Our boys blow whistles 
 for want of something better to do. We live meanly. 
 We languish." 
 
 On the mountains the white headgear of winter is dis- 
 appearing. Now it is merely a crown. But in the hol- 
 lows of the ravines there are still lines and streaks of 
 snow which trace open jaws, wriggling adders, clutching 
 claws. When one gets up there everything is gurgling 
 and rushing, and one cannot count all the little rivulets 
 which dash themselves madly against the foot of the rock. 
 Nature puts on an heroic and strenuous ugliness. There 
 is a warm breath between two cold blasts. The first 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 179 
 
 sap stirs in the alders. A tinge of life appears on the 
 rain-washed branches. 
 
 Seppi the octogenarian has opened his door. Another 
 spring? He turns his hairy ear to listen. No, he must 
 wait a little longer. He goes to bed again. 
 
 The next day, as the dog was whining behind the door, 
 a neighbour entered. Seppi was lying very still on his 
 bed. One arm was under his head, the other was laid 
 quietly on the counterpane. Noiselessly, and without 
 useless violence, Death came down the wide chimney; it 
 made but one bound from the hearth to the brow of Seppi, 
 who heaved a sigh. Two old cousins, heiresses to the 
 little house and garden, installed themselves in the room, 
 where they murmured litanies piously before falling to 
 sleep under the light of the wax taper, which can hardly 
 distinguish between the living and the dead. 
 
 As a child, Seppi sat upon the benches of that school 
 facing the church. As a young man, he had many loves. 
 One day he appeared in the square in a fine Grenadier 
 uniform. How he fought for his country! . . , When 
 vanquished, he retired to the mountain in company with 
 the goats, to the mountain with the roseate earth. To 
 this earth from which he sprang the shepherd re- 
 turns.- 
 
 This the bell explains to the echoes which wait for 
 every noise that passes. The rocks have heard it, those 
 rounded summits which Seppi loved. Never was the 
 voice of the bell more caressing. Is it because the sexton 
 is old, and is thinking of Seppi as he pulls the rope? 
 
180 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 The knell of the veteran is sad as exile, sweet as a lull- 
 aby, grand as a battle. A man is born, a man is dead, 
 the bell speaks; it is always the same bell, always the 
 same sound, and yet it is never the same thing. It does 
 not toll for a renegade as it tolls for Seppi, because an old 
 sexton is at the foot of the tower, because an emotion 
 passes from his heart to his arms, and from his arms 
 climbs up the rope, and runs in vibrations round the 
 brass, so that it is his own heart which the ringer sways 
 in the cage of the bell. 
 
 The blinds are drawn down in the houses. Those who 
 have stayed at home — women and children — watch the 
 long procession. What a number of old men ! All those 
 who fought. Right at the top of the burial-ground, in a 
 hollow of the rock, the coffin has been lowered. The sun 
 has come out of his cloud-prison in its honour, and 
 careers in bluish rays along the slopes; the mounds seem 
 to be kneeling in the pleasant light. Happy are the dead 
 whom the earth receives with joy! 
 
 The interval between winter and the real spring is 
 trying for the ailing. Kraut, too, has had enough of life. 
 It was not a long business. He was put into a double 
 lead coffin, where he seems bored. As he so often said 
 that he wanted to go home, he was taken to the station, 
 drawn by two horses. Must a man die, then, in order to 
 discover where his true country is? Those who watch 
 behind the Venetian blinds feel sorry. A worthy fellow, 
 that Kraut! If they were all like him, things would not 
 be so bad. 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 181 
 
 So he is borne away in his double envelope of lead. 
 Ofl5cials are ranged before the railway carriage. The 
 police officers salute. The magistrate repeats phrases 
 which he reads from a sheet of paper. The little train 
 goes off, and eyes follow it into the distance where the 
 Rhine flows, and beyond, beyond, where green Thu- 
 ringia stretches away. Each in his own home, it is bet- 
 ter thus. Kraut has gone. This evening he will be at 
 home. 
 
 During the night a fresh wind has dried up the roads, 
 rolled away the fog, and scattered the clouds. The real 
 sun shows himself at last. . . . Not merely between two 
 showers, as for old Seppi, but* a sun which lies upon the 
 Black Forest in the early morning, and from this vantage- 
 ground springs up high into the skies and falls into the 
 night, drunk with fatigue. 
 
 The hooter no longer howls dismally. As soon as they 
 have passed the iron gates of the factory, the workmen 
 throw their jackets over their shoulders and tuck up 
 their sleeves in readiness to dig the warm earth. The 
 children, dancing in a ring, sing: 
 
 " Storik ! Storik ! Langabein ! 
 Dra' mi uf'm Buckel heim. 
 Wohi? Wohi? 
 In's Elsass ni! " 
 
 (Stork! stork! so long of leg! 
 Carry me home on your back, I beg. 
 Whither, whither? where would you Be? 
 Ah! 'tis Alsace I would see.) 
 
182 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 From the lofty nest of twings sounds the " bla-bla-bla " 
 which is like the noise of spring-time. The male is al- 
 ready on the banks of the Thur, walking slowly and 
 sedately among the new blades of grass. The old men 
 and women are laughing at the windows. Alsace is her- 
 self again, Alsace is regaining confidence. . . . What 
 does it mean? The stork on her nest! . . . Joining 
 hands round the fountain, in the new rays of sunshine 
 that bathe the square, the children shout at the top of 
 their voices: 
 
 "... Storik! Storik! Langabein! " 
 
 Only the geese seem ill-pleased. Those storks disgust 
 them with their mania for throning it on the top of the 
 gables, and their disdainful fashion of lifting their feet 
 among the buttercups in the meadows. Gathering to- 
 gether below in noisy colloquy, they hurl vulgar abuse 
 at the nest above. ..." Bla-bla-bla," replies the stork, 
 contemplating the horizon. 
 
 The forests are veiled in a mist of green buds. How 
 fair is the old land of Alsace! Weiss has put on his 
 summer mood, the colour of fine weather. He has dim- 
 ples in the hollows of his cheeks, a gay laugh. He is 
 moved at the sight of sprouting lettuces and flowering 
 strawberries; he lifts up his eyes to the hills. 
 
 The lilacs are already crowning the walls with their 
 white or purple trusses. Heavy perfumes hover over 
 the soil. A draught of beer under the arbour of the 
 restaurant is a real satisfaction. So thinks Strocker, the 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 183 
 
 woodman with the fringe of brown beard, whose wife, a 
 red-haired jade with a squint, is playing him false with 
 the miller of Randach. Yes, it may be so. His friends 
 at the inn have told him the whole story. 
 
 Towards ten o'clock in the evening, the screams of a 
 woman and children and the crash of falling furniture 
 are heard; a vegetable-dish, a soup-tureen, a bottle, and 
 a variety of plates, hurtle from window to pavement. 
 It is odd that men who have to avenge their honour 
 always begin by wreaking vengeance on the crockery! 
 The police ofl&cers Sporrmann and Taubenspeck hurry 
 up, attracted by the noise. The sight of the green uni- 
 forms redoubles Strocker's fury. Alsace has been sleep- 
 ing all the winter. She is awaking! What screams! 
 
 " Use, Schwobe! Use, Gottverdammi! " Chairs are 
 shattered, heels grind on the boards. In face of the 
 hereditary foe the whole family offers a united front — 
 even the erring wife, who fights for the defence of the 
 hearth. The children hang on to the police officers' legs 
 in clusters! What a battle! 
 
 At last Strocker is marched off, his shirt torn open, 
 his head bare, his hair in wet strands on his forehead, 
 handcuffs on his wrists, between the huge, perspiring 
 Sporrmann and Taubenspeck. For he had, moreover, 
 shouted: " Viv' la France!" There is a good score 
 against him. There are sympathetic eyes behind the 
 blinds for him who is being carried off by the men in 
 spiked helmets. The sympathizers do not reason. It is 
 instinct. 
 
184 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 Dishevelled and battered, the red-haired wife with the 
 squint is leaning out of the window. She is grateful to 
 her husband for having thrashed her so soundly. She 
 admires him. And when she sees Strocker so grimly 
 fettered she bursts into sobs. 
 
 So things go on: as soon as the storks begin to say 
 " bla-bla-bla " on the edge of the nest, people feel them- 
 selves more pugnacious; the blood becomes hotter, the 
 brain more active, one is nearer to the past. One re- 
 members that one's uncle fell in 1870, that Cousin Joseph 
 is in the Foreign Legion. Then there are the lilacs, the 
 perfumes, the thirst one has to quench in the arbour. A 
 trifle will cause the varnish to crack, just as we have 
 seen. This Strocker was born since the annexation; he 
 was educated in the German school; he served the Em- 
 peror submissively and with discipline. One minute of 
 anger, of mad sincerity, and his lips cried : " Use, 
 Schwobe! " Then, as one always follows the other: 
 " Viv' la France! " And all this because of an unfaith- 
 ful wife. It must be admitted that it was rather in- 
 consequent. But in a rage the heart is poured out pell- 
 mell, and emptied of all that is in it. 
 
 The Kilhe, the Friedensbach festival, will be affected 
 by the four months of imprisonment awarded to Strocker. 
 If there is one festival above all others when the natives 
 like to feel themselves at home it is that. The old houses 
 about the square offer the same setting as ever. The 
 Kougelhopfs are baked with the flour of the country, the 
 wines drunk have the flavour of their brand, the dancing- 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 185 
 
 floor is laid with pinewood from the neighbouring forest. 
 The music is furnished by the firemen, who wear the caps 
 and white gaiters of former days, and have drum-majors 
 and buglers. . . . Trombones snort and petticoats 
 whirl. Yoo and yoo and yoo! 
 
 The magistrate passes, arm-in-arm with the fair-haired 
 wife he has brought from Frankfort. What a lesson for 
 Suzanne! Kummel instals his brood on the prancing 
 horses of the merry-go-round. The police officers prowl 
 about, with watchful eyes, and ears alert. And Tauben- 
 speck inspects the flags: red and white, red and white. 
 The devil take this red and white! . . . 
 
 Truly, if any official should be hovering round one of 
 the girls of Friedensbach, he will do well in future not to 
 wander alone at night in the sunk roads. This is not even 
 allowed in the case of lads from the neighbouring vil- 
 lages. Did not Bader last year bite off the end of a 
 Ranspach rival's nose? Each man has his rights and his 
 possessions. What sort of thing would one be if one did 
 not defend the bright-eyed girls from strangers? Nest- 
 ling in the depths of their valleys, these Vosgians have 
 preserved their antique freshness of soul. They are 
 sincere and brutal. They drink their wine; they eat their 
 Kougelhopf; the gun thunders; the petticoats whirl, yoo, 
 yoo! 
 
 Reymond and his pupils stroll to and fro in the square 
 brilliant with lime-light. 
 
 "It's late; we must go in. Your parents won't be 
 pleased if we stay out any longer," 
 
186 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 "Oh! just a few minutes more, Monsieur," pleads 
 Jean. " You know this is the last time I shall see the 
 Kilbe." 
 
 A self-respecting Kilbe lasts two days. At Friedens- 
 bach there is the Kilbe and the Nachkilbe, during which 
 the firemen march past. . 
 
 In front of the buglers who are playing a brisk march, 
 the tinsmith Flachsberger, the captain of the confrater- 
 nity, walks alone, a drawn sword in his hand, his apoplec- 
 tic face shining under a helmet with a horsehair tail. 
 Medals of various patterns jostle each other on his broad 
 breast. A poodle shaved in the semblance of a lion 
 and two spaniels bark sympathetically about him. The 
 fanfare rings out with an apocalyptic blare; the trom- 
 bones drive the panting buglers before them with a vigor- 
 ous movement. The Staff officers follow; the banner, 
 the sappers, ax on shoulder; then the hydrant-bearers, 
 their torsoes entwined with ropes and hose-pipes, ar- 
 ranged in quincunxes either by art or accident; the pas- 
 sive and honorary members bring up the rear. . . . 
 They dine at the inn, Zum weissen Lamm. It is a long 
 business. Hours pass. They come out at last. An en- 
 tirely new world seems to offer itself to the gaze of the 
 firemen; the street-lamps dance a measure in which the 
 houses try to take a part by dilating their fagades after 
 the manner of the bellows of a concertina. Although 
 he is buffeted by contrary winds, Flachsberger walks at 
 the head of his troops, draws his sword, and vociferates 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 187 
 
 a " March ! " which makes the window-panes of Friedens- 
 bach tremble. 
 
 White gaiters, French caps, buglers and drum-major, 
 disappear in a cloud of dust. A shred of glory descends 
 upon the roofs of Friedensbach. Were not those buglers 
 playing an air curiously like the famous 
 
 "II faut monter la-haut, soldat; 
 Soldat, monte vite a I'assaut." 
 
 (Up there must thou go, soldier; 
 Soldier, advance to the attack.) 
 
 The police officers follow at a distance. 
 
 Reymond listens to this song of the bugles. Above the 
 roofs, he sees the slopes all golden with blossoming 
 broom. He says to old Schmoler, who is sitting on the 
 bench by the door: 
 
 " Your Alsace is a beautiful country." 
 
 Schmoler looks up. 
 
 " Yes, too beautiful. . . . There is a price to pay for 
 beauty." 
 
KRAUT'S successor has just arrived at Friedensbach. 
 Kroner was born in a Wiirtemberg village. When? 
 It would be hard to say. He is tall and thin. He has 
 interminable arms, and hands like those of a mummy, 
 which flap against his thighs when he walks; a long neck 
 with a restless Adam's apple ; a head ugly but interesting, 
 with a scanty beard, melancholy eyes, a high arched fore- 
 head. Kroner is of no definite age. He has some- 
 thing of the boy entering upon adolescence and of the 
 old man who is losing his hold on life. 
 
 At the office Kraut receives persons who come to pay 
 taxes or receive certificates politely. As soon as the door 
 creaks on its hinges, he emerges from his papers and 
 looks up, not affably, but conscientiously, gravely 
 humane. With the old people he will even occasionally 
 speak French, which he does fluently. Any little serv- 
 ice he can render he renders, and when he notes the 
 name of a deceased person, he shakes his head as if to 
 share regret. 
 
 This Kroner leads a lonely life. On Sundays he is 
 often to be seen seated under the willows by the river. 
 He also walks about with his hands behind his back, 
 much in sympathy with the terraced gardens and the 
 roofs of the little town, the wings of which brush each 
 other. The moon knows him well, and amuses herself 
 by drawing his comical figure upon the walls, 
 
 18S 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 189 
 
 It is not unlikely that Kroner writes verses in the 
 evening. What is certain is that he spends hours shut 
 up in his room seated at his table, which is pushed close 
 to the window: the pen flies, and the meagre torso 
 rocks as if to mark the rhythm of syllables. Suddenly, 
 Kroner will throw out his arms and begin to declaim. 
 Schiller and Lenau are his men. He quotes them. 
 Their terra-cotta busts are enthroned over the piano. 
 For Kroner has more than one string to his bow. After 
 his bath of poetry he takes a bath of music. Holding his 
 head high in the powerful passages, and bringing his nose 
 down to the keys in the gentle melancholy ones, the man 
 is intoxicated by the sounds that float out on the silence 
 of slumbering Friedensbach. What is he playing? The 
 Sonata Pathetique, after which he mops his forehead, his 
 eyes dim, his whole soul outpoured. A mask of Bee- 
 thoven contemplates Kroner sympathetically. And now 
 his fingers race over the keys again ; the notes rush along, 
 pressing one upon the other with the force of a torrent; 
 an invisible choir raises the song of Freude! Freude! 
 (joy! joy!). Kroner throws himself into the perform- 
 ance with feet and hands and head and shoulders; the 
 shadow with its abrupt movements crouches in a corner 
 of the room, increases grotesquely, invades the ceiling. 
 Freude! Freude! The flood spreads out, and becomes 
 calmer; it is as if the storm were dying away behind 
 the mountains, and after it the swallows were dancing on 
 the azure of a clear sky in the freshened air. 
 
 The officials do not like this Kroner with the pale 
 
190 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 blue eyes. Everything he suggests irritates them, and 
 everything they say shocks him. Kummel is sarcastically 
 eloquent with regard to him. 
 
 " Ah ! he is a flower of Wiirtemberg, a piece of that old 
 German porcelain which was broken while it reflected the 
 moon. He's quite out of date, poor Kroner! His per- 
 sonality is all made up of memories and theories of uni- 
 versal brotherhood. A musician, yes, I am bound to 
 admit; but no representative of our German Fatherland! 
 He ought to be sent back to his Wiirtemberg village to 
 listen to the swaying of the pine-trees in the evening. He 
 is a man of the stars and not of German earth. Kroner? 
 an evangelical old maid! " 
 
 Kroner no longer talked much at the table of the 
 missionaries of the Idea. He ate noiselessly, a sign of 
 degeneracy; he used his tooth -pick discreetly, a sign of 
 neurasthenia; he did not thump the table with his 
 clenched fist to support his arguments, a sign of con- 
 genital weakness. One evening, nevertheless, when he 
 had pronounced the word " kindness," a murmur rose 
 around him, a murmur very much like a shout of execra- 
 tion. Thrusting a congested face forward, his neighbour 
 cried: "Kindness, kindness? Non, Monsieur" (in 
 French). "Kindness! We are strong enough to dis- 
 pense with this medicine." 
 
 Once or twice Kroner had exchanged a few words with 
 Reymond, when they had been left alone in the dining- 
 room of the restaurant. 
 
 One evening the two men met on the river-bank. They 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 191 
 
 walked along side by side. The softness of the air in- 
 vited confidences, and Kroner, true " flower of Wiirtem- 
 berg," did not fail to respond. 
 
 " I like those two old Schmolers, especially Madame 
 Jacobine, with her cap so neatly tied, her well-washed 
 cheeks, and her kind grandmotherly eyes. She reminds 
 me so much of my mother, who is just as simple, just as 
 pure of conscience. . . . My father is a postillion. He 
 blows his horn in the forests of Wiirtemberg. I am his 
 true son. . . . Ah! if you could see our house at the 
 corner of the forest near the river (it is because of that 
 that I am so fond of this place where we are). Some- 
 thing lies on the roof, something even better than a 
 stork's nest: it is peace and kindness, the wish to do the 
 will of Heaven. My mother sits at the door, mending, 
 peeling vegetables, saying good-day to the passers-by. . . . 
 All of a sudden the horn sounds, and the father appears 
 on the seat of the carriage. He stops for a moment. 
 He says: ' Good-day, mother.' She replies: ' Good-day, 
 father.' They look at each other- The whip cracks and 
 the bells sound again in the wood. I love my Wiirtem- 
 berg. And I love Alsace too; its frankness, its pride. 
 Poor Alsace! How hard we are to her! . . . Poor 
 Alsace! I am a good patriot. Monsieur Reymond, you 
 may be sure. And therefore I say also in my distress: 
 *Poor Germany! '" 
 
 "Why so?" 
 
 Kroner made no reply. 
 
 Old Schmoler would often say: 
 
192 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 "Monsieur Kroner? . . . He's the sort of German 
 they used to make in the time of my father." 
 
 Hammer, the greengrocer, who heard a customer de- 
 claiming against the Schwobs the other day, held his 
 tongue prudently. Finally he said: 
 
 " As for me, as long as I sell my vegetables, it's all one 
 to me! . . . Let the bigwigs quarrel; it's their business. 
 We shall always be the victims." 
 
 Weiss, to whom Reymond repeated these words, re- 
 plied : 
 
 " In Alsace, we men, like others, are men with stomachs 
 and purses. Some are discouraged. We have been 
 waiting so long. But we must react, react. On Sunday, 
 the 14th of July, I will take you to Belfort. There we 
 will forget Hammer and his vegetables." 
 
 In the faint light that precedes the dawn, they were 
 standing in a crowded railway-carriage with sleepy eyes 
 and grey complexions. The immensely long train was 
 running through the deserted fields. Occasionally they 
 passed a station, dark groups of waiting people, the 
 confused noise one hears when half awake, lamps still 
 burning in the waiting-rooms; there is a shrill whistle. 
 . . . The train creaks, the joltings become regular; they 
 roll on, on. . . . And suddenly the sun breaks through. 
 The travellers raise their heads, resuscitated, and look 
 out at the gold of the flowers, the silver of the dewdrops, 
 the oblique scarf of sunbeams under the orchards, a spire 
 soaring into the light. Alsace displays herself fully, 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 193 
 
 that the eyes which behold her may bear away her liv- 
 ing image and lay it in the folds of the lost flag. 
 
 Weiss looks with respect at all the unknown folks 
 packed into the carriage; and behind this carriage there 
 are dozens of others, equally crowded; after this train 
 there will be other trains; on the roads leading from 
 country towns, villages, hamlets, and isolated farms, 
 there are carts in which people are standing, holding 
 each other round the waist so as not to fall, and where 
 the black bows dance on the fair heads of the women; 
 there are lads bending over the handle-bars of tinkling 
 bicycles; there are whole families on foot, old men, par- 
 ents, children holding each other by the hand, their round 
 cheeks on a level with the ears of corn; an emigrant 
 tribe, a whole race, obeying some mysterious call. And 
 Weiss says to Reymond: 
 
 "We slept through the winter. Look at this awaken- 
 ing." 
 
 A wag calls out suddenly: "Long live . . . long live 
 rice soup! " A laugh runs through the carriage. Fired 
 by success, the wag continues to work the vein. " Long 
 live , . . banana! Long live . . . raspberry! " The 
 same huge laugh greets each sally. The company lays 
 aside its reserve. Not entirely, however, for there are 
 in this train persons only too well known to them, who 
 have notebooks and pencils and good memories into the 
 bargain. Visitors know they will be watched, and lis- 
 tened to, and followed step by step till the end of the 
 pilgrimage. ' Chins are thrust out furtively at the fat 
 
194 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 man in the grey suit, and the gentlemen with scars on 
 their faces who speak French, and are officers in mufti 
 from the garrison at Mulhouse. Even the wag refrains 
 from further demonstrations. 
 
 Alt-Miinsterol ! ... A bearded police officer, flanked 
 by a police inspector, passes from compartment to com- 
 partment, scrutinizes, questions, and makes notes. It 
 seems as if the authorities were determined to prove 
 themselves intrusive, harassing, and hostile to liberty to 
 the last moment. 
 
 "Where are you going? . . . Why? . . . Have you 
 friends at Belfort? " 
 
 " Fertig! " (Finished.) The train starts again. The 
 human cattle has been checked. 
 
 " It was here," explained Weiss to Reymond, " that 
 a compatriot of yours, a young doctor from Lausanne, 
 who thought he was already on the right side, called out, 
 ' Long live France ! ' A spy pulled the cord of the 
 alarm-signal, and the train stopped fifty yards from the 
 frontier. . . . Six months' imprisonment! However, 
 he only did three, thanks to the intervention of old 
 Pastor Ort of Mulhouse. . . . Now we are safe! " 
 
 They hurried to the doors. France! They were al- 
 most surprised to see trees like any other trees, a river 
 with dirty waters, white mile-stones, a dusty road. 
 France! There were no shouts, no songs. But there 
 was a sense of having laid aside the yoke. There was no 
 one to ask: "Where are you going? Why? For how 
 long? " Every one felt relieved, breathed more freely. 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 195 
 
 There was an inclination to shake hands, to talk in order 
 to hear if the voice had not changed its tone. And, in 
 fact, every one began to talk and to laugh. Strangers 
 who had been staring at each other mutely, like china 
 dogs, winked, became animated, offered each other a 
 cigarette. 
 
 The Customs officers of Petit-Croix had been notified 
 that they were not to inspect Alsatian baskets too rigor- 
 ously, and everybody passed through without interroga- 
 tion or frowns, the fat man in the grey suit and the 
 scarred officer included. In the waiting-room, where the 
 stream spread out, a lad presented the French flag, a 
 band played the Marseillaise. Every hat was removed, 
 even those of the fat man and the scarred officers and 
 the crowd filed past the colours which were dipped to 
 salute Alsace, past the wind instruments which blared 
 forth a call to arms. The visitors felt happy. Hearts 
 were singing. Old people pressed each other's hands. 
 
 Here are the first French soldiers: laughing eyes, sup- 
 ple gestures; none of that stiffness, those clicking heels, 
 that haughtiness, that harsh invective . . . these soldiers 
 are men. An Adjutant returns their salute in friendly 
 fashion; they look at each other confidingly. . . . No 
 doubt there are reprehensible things to be seen. Yes, 
 papers are lying about, the windows are dirty, there is 
 grass between the rails, a certain go-as-you-please atmos- 
 phere, a democratic unceremoniousness — things the Al- 
 satians are no longer accustomed to see and which the 
 scarred officers note with sniggering compassion. Yes, 
 
196 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 and something more — the worship of words, the wor- 
 ship of colours, of heroic display. No end of defects! 
 But, nevertheless, these people are cheerful; they possess 
 gaiety, that treasure of life. They talk to you on the 
 smallest provocation ; they have perception, tact, antennae 
 — in a word, they are human. When one comes from 
 the other side of the barricade, this is what one notices, 
 and not the dirty window-panes. Perhaps, if one were 
 to live among them, one would regret the order, the 
 strict regulations to which one has become accustomed, 
 but today all one sees is the welcoming smile, the Adju- 
 tant's wave of the hand, amenity, the sweetest flower in 
 the garden of humanity, the charm that conquers and 
 wins hearts. 
 
 This Alsatian crowd cannot exactly explain what it 
 feels so well. An old man gets near it, however, when he 
 says: 
 
 "As soon as I come into France, I, Seppi Schubetzer, 
 want to begin telling stories." 
 
 " Well, Hort," asks Weiss, " do you feel yourself a bit 
 French? " 
 
 Hort makes no reply. What should he say? It is 
 less than a year ago that he finished his term of military 
 service; this is the first time he has crossed the frontier 
 and he is bewildered. This Hort is a subordinate in 
 Weiss's office, a surly, obstinate fellow, on a massive 
 scale, who can understand French, but can hardly be said 
 to speak it. In heels and back and shoulders, as in 
 the carriage of the head, he still has the rigidity acquired 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 197 
 
 in German barracks. Whenever he is addressed, he in- 
 stinctively readjusts his attitude. Weiss is treating him 
 to this little expedition. There will be one more who 
 will have seen! One more who will be able to compare. 
 Belfort! And suddenly there is a flutter of flags, an 
 orgy of red, white, and blue, a crowd that flows hither 
 and thither like water : schoolboys, peasants, street Arabs 
 with their peaked caps, laughing women, smart little 
 gentlemen explaining the program of the day, a hundred 
 children of a school kept by nuns, hurrying after the 
 white starched coifs. Everywhere the roll of drums, the 
 eager call of bugles, the blare of trumpets. The whole 
 atmosphere is sonorous. The sky is like a huge cymbal. 
 Here they come! Here they come! . . . How gallant 
 they look! The bayonets stab the light with their mobile 
 points. Couples link arms. All advance, keeping time 
 with the bugles — even Hort, who stares with gaping 
 mouth. What is it which animates all these men? 
 What is it which flushes their faces, lights such a flame 
 in their eyes, and such enthusiasm on their brows? 
 What is the victory of which they feel so sure? . . . 
 Weiss has ceased to exist as Weiss. He carries his stick 
 over his shoulder, like a rifle; his chest expands with 
 martial hopes; and when the buglers cast their golden 
 lightnings skyward with a supple gesture, his cheeks are 
 inflated, he blows with them, he is this whole crowd, he 
 is this infantryman whose eyes sparkle under his kepi, 
 he is this artilleryman with the heavy jaw, he is this 
 dragoon who is spurring his horse, he is all France, 
 
198 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 he soars in space like the banner that floats above the 
 bayonets. 
 
 " A decadent nation," said Kummel. " A decadent na- 
 tion ! " repeats Weiss. " Come and see, my good fel- 
 low ! " Ardour and earnestness pour from the throats of 
 the bugles. They sing the plains of France, her hills, 
 her rivers, her blue which is the joy of the horizon; they 
 send a promise across the Vosges. All these faces under- 
 lined by the black chin-strap offer the gift of themselves; 
 for the frontier is near, and every one knows that they 
 are on the other side, crouching, ready to spring. . . . 
 
 Little blue-and-red-soldiers, do you know what courage 
 your ardour pours into the hearts of the faithful exiles? 
 Can you feel the tenderness of the many eyes that rest 
 on you? 
 
 On the Champ-de-Mars the crowd is seething, dotted 
 by the black Alsatian bows. And in the vast open space 
 batteries roll by; one notes the supple lines of the horses, 
 the clink of swords drawn from the scabbard, the formid- 
 able squares of the regiments, the thousands of white- 
 gaitered feet which are set down and lifted, the glitter 
 of bayonets, the proudly borne banners, and still the 
 bugles, and the brazen blast that sweeps over the as- 
 sembled heads. When the squadrons which rush for- 
 ward in the wild frenzy of the charge disappear, a cloud 
 of dust rises into the air like the smoke of a conflagra- 
 tion. 
 
 Hort still says nothing. He looks. He listens to this 
 commanding officer addressing his men as " My friends." 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 199 
 
 Once more there is the rampart of bayonets, the quick 
 tramp of men returning to barracks. There is a grand- 
 mother there in the foremost of the crowd, a rustic grand- 
 mother in a gauffered cap. A whole brood of youngsters 
 is sheltering in the wide folds of her skirt. Suddenly one 
 of the smallest of the band slips across between the ranks 
 of the soldiers. Finding himself alone on the further 
 side he howls at the top of his voice, terrified at his own 
 boldness. And it is a comical sight when the grand- 
 mother calls her lost chick. A mounted Major has 
 observed the drama. He half turns in his saddle; with 
 his sword, he signs to his men to mark time, and opens 
 a space in the interminable column. Then, smiling un- 
 der his long moustache and saluting with his sword, he 
 says: " Pass, Madame." The old woman gathers up 
 her skirts, and, driving her brood before her, she re- 
 joins the brat who is still howling open-mouthed- 
 
 Hort remembers how once in the streets of Mulhouse 
 a Lieutenant ran his sword through the body of an ap- 
 prentice in a hurry who had slipped across between two 
 companies. And he utters this cry, a cry of deliverance 
 wrung from him by an act of humane courtesy : " Yes, 
 indeed, now I'm a Frenchman! " 
 
 Was it really Hort who said this? ... He is aston- 
 ished at it himself. 
 
 Weiss slips his hand under the Alsatian's arm. He 
 carries him along. They dine behind the laurestinus- 
 bushes of a terrace. Hort's face has regained its harsh 
 military expression. He is silent, engrossed by the duty 
 
200 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 of the moment, which is to eat. In the square below, 
 the merry-go-rounds are revolving to the whine of their 
 barrel-organ. A negro, under his green parasol, contorts 
 himself before his ices and sweetmeats. There are red 
 balloons, blind beggars, shooting-galleries, the crash of 
 broken pipes, the laughter of the full-breasted wench 
 who reloads the carabine and hands it to a rollicking 
 soldier. Heat, dust, sweat, all the joyous vulgarity of 
 the fair which the Savoureuse seems to drag along in its 
 dirty waters, spread out in pools among the rubbish and 
 the broken crockery. . . . 
 
 All this the visitors are determined to think very fine, 
 very grand. They came to admire, to give colour to the 
 fair legend on which they live. 
 
 The train rolls homeward in the sunset glow. Its 
 passengers are dead tired. Their heads are buzzing with 
 a confused noise of rhythmic steps, bugle-calls, red 
 patches, blue patches, the murmur that rises towards the 
 quivering flags. All this they are carrying back with 
 them towards the wall of the approaching Vosges. The 
 gay highways of the morning are covered with shadows. 
 At the last French station all is quiet under the faded 
 garlands. 
 
 " Long live France ! " cries a Mulhouse workman more 
 than half seas over. 
 
 His wife, a little tub-like woman, dressed in purple, 
 glances anxiously at him. 
 
 " Come, Joseph ! you must hold your tongue now." 
 
 She says this in an Alsatian patois the acerbity of 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 201 
 
 which no translation can convey. Joseph repeats his 
 cry, and lapses into silence. Prudence reasserts itself 
 in all these souls. And now the masters of the day, the 
 police officer, the police inspector, the Customs officials 
 reappear. They make a stir. They turn over the con- 
 tents of bags and baskets. They take names. They 
 question. They confiscate cockades and ribbons. It is 
 a typical Alsatian 14th of July evening. Dreading some 
 outburst, the fat woman in purple keeps close to her 
 drunken husband, ready to clap her broad hand over 
 his open mouth. But Joseph confines himself to hiccup- 
 ing laughter. After which he affirms very simply: " Yoo, 
 yoo, Gottverdammi." 
 
 Backs are bowed again. All day long they have been 
 living in the open. They have said the things that were 
 in their minds. They have rubbed up against Liberty. 
 They have marched to the rhythm of bugles. And now 
 they have come back to greyness and silence and fear. 
 
 The drunkard repeats, shaking his head : " Yoo, yoo, 
 yoo, Gottverdammi! " 
 
 It is the next evening. The days are long, the evenings 
 warm. Reymond is walking on the bank of the river. 
 Near the bridge in the penumbra, a man bows to him. It 
 is Kroner, alone as usual. Reymond feels sorry for him. 
 
 " What a fine evening! " 
 
 "Beautiful! And how did you enjoy the four- 
 teenth? " 
 
 " The French troops looked magnificent." 
 
 Kroner evades this issue. 
 
202 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 " There are, it seems, on the other side of the Vosges 
 thousands of men in uniforms of a certain colour, armed 
 with rifles and bayonets, and on this side of the Vosges 
 there are also thousands of men in uniforms of another 
 colour, also armed with rifles and bayonets. . . . Tomor- 
 row, perhaps, or certainly in a year or two, the trumpet 
 will sound for war, and these men will murder each other. 
 There will be masses of dead bodies in this pretty path 
 on which we are walking. Poor valley! " 
 
 " Then, you think there will be war? " 
 
 "Yes, I think so. I think so because we are strong, 
 too strong. We have too many men, too many guns. 
 It is a terrible thing to be too strong, because strength, 
 pride, and harshness always go together. That is a law 
 of psychology. In barracks, at school, in church, noth- 
 ing is talked of but force, the power of the fist. Poor 
 discipline! poor pedagogy! poor religion! . . . Believe 
 me. Monsieur, I am a good German patriot; I love my 
 country with all my heart, and it is because I love it 
 that I suff'er when I hear this eternal cry of ' Strength, 
 strength, strength ! ' and never ' Kindness, kindness, kind- 
 ness! ' . . ." 
 
 After a silence Kroner went on : 
 
 "We are hated, we are hated everywhere. Monsieur, 
 I know; I have felt it during my travels. Jealousy? I 
 don't think so. People do not hate the Germany of 
 Schiller, but this Germany which puts German justice 
 above the justice of God. I think of many things every 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 203 
 
 day, when I read our newspapers and our reviews, when 
 I listen to the talk of our officials and our officers, and I 
 am afraid, afraid of what must come." 
 
 Reymond listens without interrupting. He feels the 
 heart of an honest man beating. 
 
 " Truly, I believe that we are destined to make others 
 suffer and to suffer ourselves terribly. What a struggle 
 is being prepared! Every day, in my native Wiirtem- 
 berg, my mother prays to God that kindness, pity, and 
 justice may prevail. But how many millions of men 
 are praying to the Devil that cannon may prevail! . . . 
 And I, too, pray for Germany. In the evening, when I 
 play my piano, that too is a prayer, a little star which 
 the clouds devour. Round me the others are always cry- 
 ing: ' We are strong! we ought to dominate the world! ' 
 . . . And they strike their breasts, which resound, be- 
 cause there is no heart within them. ... I tried to 
 show the Alsatians that I love them, and I think they are 
 fond of me. So, of course. Monsieur Kummel has writ- 
 ten to Strasburg, Monsieur Doring, too, has written, and 
 I am dismissed. I am going back to Wiirtemberg, with 
 my piano. Good-bye, Monsieur Reymond." 
 
 Before Reymond could detain him. Kroner, like some 
 huge bat with his thin bowed back and long arms, 
 mystical, romantic, a lunatic, some would say, a clear- 
 sighted prophet according to others, had disappeared 
 into the darkness. 
 
 And the next day Kummel remarked: 
 
204 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 "Kroner? He is a pious Socialist, one of the worst 
 specimens of humanity. He is being sent back to Mora- 
 via. We want men in Alsace, not star-gazers. That's 
 what you call them, isn't it? " 
 
XI 
 
 MADAME BOHLER accompanied her son to Besangon 
 when he went up for his degree of Bachelor of 
 Arts. Jean started pale, feverish, his nose in his books. 
 And he was plucked in his written examination. One of 
 the professors explained the reason of this set-back to 
 Madame Bohler. 
 
 " Your son must not be discouraged, Madame. The 
 young Alsatians are often victims of their extreme con- 
 scientiousness. They never cease correcting, erasing, be- 
 ginning over again, hesitating between two meanings. 
 The result is that the Latin translation, the Greek trans- 
 lation, the French composition, were good, even very 
 good, but almost half of the work was still to be done. 
 We feel that your son is really ready. All he lacks is 
 a certain facility, a certain vivacity of execution. I con- 
 sider his success assured in the autumn." 
 
 " Poor Jean is really much to be pitied," wrote Rey- 
 mond to his family shortly afterwards. " His failure has 
 depressed him terribly, and wounded him in his pride 
 as an Alsatian. Going to extremes, he declares himself 
 incapable, a perfect donkey, or the victim of circum- 
 stances which cause the Alsatian to be a kind of hybrid 
 everywhere. He says cruel things. 'When I saw my 
 comrades at Bensangon so keen and intelligent — and I 
 
 205 
 
206 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 hear they are twice as brilliant in Paris, so what a figure 
 I should cut there! — I felt so out of it, so horribly alien. 
 It's enough to make one cry with rage. It's a wretched 
 thing to be an Alsatian! ' It is very difficult to cheer 
 him up. Work is almost impossible in these days of 
 torrid heat. So Monsieur Bohler has decided on two 
 things: Rene, who is troublesome at home, where he can 
 talk of nothing but expanders and of jumping with the 
 feet together, is to be sent to an aunt at Rouen for the 
 holidays. To give Jean a rest, and a change of ideas 
 before returning to work he has already gone over hun- 
 dreds of times, we are to make a fortnight's tour in 
 Alsace, to see museums, relics, cathedrals, old inns, cas- 
 tles, ruins, and abbeys. It will be splendid. Monsieur 
 Weiss and his two sons, Charles, of whom I have often 
 spoken to you, and the eldest, Frangois, who goes into 
 German barracks this autumn, are also to be of the party. 
 I am looking forward to it immensely. And it will en- 
 able me to become more intimate with Jean, who is cer- 
 tainly a noble fellow, frank, loyal, and sensitive." 
 
 The travellers have returned. 
 
 The memories, which were somewhat confused at first, 
 are co-ordinating themselves. Ruins everywhere. What 
 ruins! Perched on the summit, leaning over the preci- 
 pice, a tower with shattered walls; on this neighbouring 
 peak, which has at its feet the plain, and villages nestling 
 among the vines, is another tower, showing savage 
 breaches; down there is yet another. Doors open over 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 207 
 
 a chasm. They saw the hearth where quarters of oxen 
 were roasted, the watch-tower of the keep; they shivered 
 at the chill of dungeons. Elsewhere there are stony frag- 
 ments, crumbled heaps of masonry, a spiral staircase 
 which winds upward under the open sky, clinging shrubs, 
 brambles and mosses, all the sinister intimacy of Nature 
 with the remnants of a perished humanity. Where are 
 they who carved those blocks, polished those balustrades, 
 poured the boiling pitch through the gaping machicola- 
 tions? How haughty are those forsaken ramparts which 
 defied the centuries, which witnessed the drunken orgies 
 of the marauding barons, heard the laughter of loose 
 women, and one day the shout of boors advancing to the 
 assault of the stronghold! Down there in the grass — 
 one treads upon it in passing — there is a stone with a 
 coat of arms and a half-efi'aced date. 
 
 You who pass this way in tourist costume would like, 
 perhaps, to know the history of this eagle's nest perched 
 in the azure and the wind. What does it matter to you? 
 Live your lives in the plain. And if you want marble 
 plaques with graven explanations, pointing forefingers, 
 names, a cicerone, a printed notice, climb up to the 
 Hohkonigsburg. 
 
 Seated on a boulder where a lizard is darting about, 
 the traveller gazes at the blue slopes of the hills descend- 
 ing like flocks to the plain, the sparkling ponds, the 
 canals, the rivers, the carpet of cultivated land, the uncut 
 jewel of harvests set in light, the brown scales which are 
 the roofs of the little town, that smoke which proclaims 
 
208 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 a city, that other smoke, in patches, which rises from a 
 wood, runs through the fields, and means a train like a 
 child's toy, in which men, seated on cushions, show a 
 little piece of cardboard to a man in a cap, and then read 
 the telegrams in the paper with serious eyes. 
 
 The travellers go down towards this plain. Barefooted 
 children with roguish looks, their baskets slung round 
 their necks, are gathering raspberries. They cry " Greet- 
 ing! Greeting! " to the strangers who pass. Then they 
 say something in patois, and laugh merrily. It does one 
 good to hear this laughter. It rings out like silver bells 
 in the sunshine. It does not rise from the heart of a 
 disingenuous race. Standing on ladders, the daughters 
 of Alsace gather plums, displaying their solid calves. 
 They are quite aware of this, and not at all ashamed. 
 Their bare arms plunge into the cool green of the 
 branches. There are footsteps. They look. These 
 travellers are the right sort. Three plums fall on the 
 grey hat. " Thank you ! Thank you ! " 
 
 And every village in the heart of its orchard, in the 
 heart of its vineyard, has its patent of nobility to show: 
 its castle, its roofs with three rows of dormer windows, 
 its flight of steps at the entrance, its carved doors, and, 
 looking out upon its manure-heaps, its mullioned win- 
 dows, its windows with small panes set in lead. The visi- 
 tors question the man with the pitchfork. The date of 
 this house with the gargoyles? He answers, "Oh! it's 
 very old," as he goes off. 
 
 In the evening the travellers rest at a rustic inn, where 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 209 
 
 the table is enlivened with pink slices of ham, and bowls 
 in which the newly gathered apples glow. Succulent 
 smells issue from the kitchen. There is not much talk. 
 Enframed in the window are the shoulders of the ancient 
 abbey. The whole country is a page from the book of 
 history. If one listens, there is a murmur like that one 
 hears in a sea-shell, the memory of tempests. Emperors, 
 Kings, Popes, men of war, what great names! How 
 many tombstones there are on which a Bishop lies at full 
 length, showing the passers-by his bald forehead and a 
 nose eaten away by time. Their virtues are set forth in 
 Latin. The word " honour " recurs everywhere. " What 
 is death," says one inscription, " if one carries honour 
 to the grave? " 
 
 The travellers cross the square as night begins to fall. 
 For a while they follow the road that runs along the river. 
 Unforgettable evening, when the little town, flooded by 
 moonlight, looks as if it were sketched on the margin 
 of some heroic legend. ... A man is leading back the 
 last cart heaped with sheaves from the field. And the 
 ears are so golden pale that it might be the moon herself 
 he is carrying off to the barn. The white-waistcoated 
 lawyer is on his doorstep, and so, too, is the grocer in em- 
 broidered slippers. And the watchman passes, striking 
 his cane upon the pavement, which means that the chil- 
 dren who are dancing in a ring round the plane-trees must 
 be called in. So they are called. As long as one can 
 remember, things have gone on like this. Beloved tradi- 
 tion! 
 
210 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 The travellers sit down on the hillside. One of them 
 says: 
 
 " What a fate to be this lawyer, this grocer, to live in 
 a scutcheoned house, under a roof where the same weath- 
 ercock has creaked since the days of fable! To live in 
 close intimacy with these turrets, these arched windows, 
 these doors where one still sees the furrows made by the 
 chains of the drawbridge; then to die, to go and join 
 one's brethren round the cross which has been stretching 
 out its arms over the graves since 1422." 
 
 They are silent. They look at the valley as it falls 
 asleep. 
 
 Drei Schlosser auf einem Berge, 
 
 Drei Kirchen auf einem Kirchhofe, 
 
 Drei Stadt' in einem Thai, 
 
 Drei Ofen in einem Saal 
 
 1st das ganz Elsass iiberall, 
 
 says the proverb. "Three castles on one mountain, 
 three churches in one churchyard, three towns in one 
 valley, three stoves in one room — that is Alsace every- 
 where." 
 
 The moonlight makes Weiss sentimental. 
 
 " I remember a story my father used to tell me long 
 ago. I have never forgotten it. Here it is: Once upon 
 a time there were a giant, a fairy, and a little girl. The 
 little girl was very much like the fairy, and a little bit 
 like the giant. To please them, she used to call them 
 Papa and Mama. It would not have been possible to 
 have had parents more dissimilar. The giant was so 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 211 
 
 jealous and so brutal, he shouted such a string of abuse 
 to the fairy across the mountains, that the little girl used 
 to hide in the forest. The giant was continually sum- 
 moning his counsellors. He would say to them: 'Tell 
 me, for my memory is failing a little . . . wine and to- 
 bacco, you know ... to whom does this little girl be- 
 long? She has not my eyes, nor my stomach. Shall I 
 give her up? But she is pretty; she pleases me.' The 
 counsellors answered : ' Sire, shut her up in a court, 
 have her educated on your own principles, fatten her up 
 that she may grow like you. There is nothing like force. 
 Give your orders. We will obey.' 
 
 "The giant gave his orders. The little girl was shut 
 up; men in spectacles taught her the principles of the 
 giant (the first of which is that might is divine), and 
 fattened her up. 
 
 " But at night, when the spectacled men were asleep, 
 the fairy came secretly to the court, and opened its walls 
 with a touch of her wand. She said : ' Now, my child, 
 live as you choose, play, dance, skip. Learn to em- 
 broider and to play the harp. Work, too, but without 
 wrinkling your forehead as the spectacled men teach you 
 to do, for there is no good work without cheerfulness. 
 I don't like the severe manner in which you are treated. 
 God is not hard. He loves laughing folks.' 
 
 "The child was gradually humanized; she learned to 
 laugh, to embroider, to play the harp. . . . Then the 
 fairy called her confidante, and said to her: 'Do you 
 think she is becoming civilized? I love this child. She 
 
212 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 learns very quickly. And she has beautiful eyes. I 
 believe her to be well gifted ; she has feeling, intelligence. 
 Perhaps she is a trifle heavy. . . . Do I deceive myself? 
 Honestly, whom do you think this child takes after? 
 Really, if she has nothing of mine, neither tastes nor as- 
 pirations, I will leave her in the hands of the giant. I 
 will not do violence to her nature at any price.' 
 
 " The confidante considered : ' Madame, I think she 
 has taken the good qualities of both sides, for the giant 
 is not altogether evil. It is from him that the child 
 inherits her taste for music and a certain gravity. But 
 from you she has taken something more than her eyes; 
 she has your entire soul, your hatred of injustice, your 
 love of liberty. Appeal to her heart and she will remain 
 faithful to you, even if the giant were to shut her up in 
 the court for over a hundred years with the men in 
 spectacles.' 
 
 " And my father used to add in conclusion : ' That is 
 the story of Alsace.' " 
 
 They slept between the rough sheets of the inn, and 
 then they took the pilgrim's staff once more. Strasburg. 
 They strolled round the cathedral, whose shadow makes 
 another monument in the narrow square, where cabs roll 
 along, and street-boys chase each other. They saw Cain 
 and Abel, Abraham's Sacrifice, Jacob's Ladder, Jonah 
 emerging from the whale's belly, Judas, the Wise and the 
 Foolish Virgins, the Virtues and the Vices, the Magi be- 
 fore the Infant Jesus, Clovis, Dagobert, Charlemagne, 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 213 
 
 Louis the Debonair, Charles the Bald, and Lothair, and 
 Conrad and Henry of Germany, and the Last Judgment. 
 Silence. A forest of columns. The glory of the painted 
 windows, from which the many-coloured rays fell in a 
 gorgeous rain. The Four Ages pass before Death, who 
 strikes the hours. Tombs. Si roges quis sim; pulvis et 
 umbra. The old roofs of the city clustering round the 
 sanctuary look like so many sturdy pointed caps. . . . 
 Further on, the palace of the conqueror, a place of glit- 
 tering gold and curving domes. Helmeted men stand on 
 guard before the sentry-boxes. They are relieved. Gut- 
 tural cries, the stamping of boots. Two nations, two 
 spirits. The street-boys imitate these soldiers and 
 laugh. , . . 
 
 The travellers turn back quickly to the older quarters 
 — to the slumbering waters. In spite of all these guns, 
 these helmets — the old pleasures, the old liberties, the 
 old traditions, twine their garlands about the balconies. 
 The figures carved by the chisel of ancestors smile at the 
 scornful glance of the officer's eyeglass. . . . Can a 
 treaty loaded with seals and signatures change hearts? 
 . . . The benches, the beds, the cradles, the tables carved 
 as they have always been carved, speak as they have 
 always spoken. How dull the palaces with golden domes 
 are in the midst of the deserted gardens where the sym- 
 metrical jets of water are playing! 
 
 In his own room in the evening, lulled by the sounds 
 that rise from Friedensbach — it is nine o'clock, the bell 
 
214 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 rings, the boats dance in the twilight — Reymond con- 
 templates the vision of the Alsace he has just discovered. 
 What images! what colours! what picturesqueness ! 
 From the plain to the summits of the Vosges, how many 
 monuments there are which tell of the strong yet gentle 
 soul of the old country! From century to century its 
 traditions have been written on the walls of its country 
 towns, on the painted windows of its churches, on the 
 gables of the houses. The country lies between river 
 and mountain, so simple of line, so clearly traced. The 
 wind sweeps it with wide wings, bending the tops of the 
 poplars, teasing the weathercocks, swooping into squares, 
 gliding into courtyards. And the men have the frank- 
 ness, the roughness, the harsh flavour, of this wind. 
 
 And it is this proud country, whence rose the cry of 
 Rouget de ITsle; these towns, so often ravaged and 
 destroyed, so often rebuilt, always ready to suffer for 
 their liberties, that the heavy parvenus of glory think to 
 seduce by the display of their might! . . . One has 
 only to look about one to know whence one comes, who 
 one is. The stick may fall, the voice may scold, eyes 
 may dart lightnings, boots may hammer the pavement, 
 but one knows what gives value to life. This people 
 has seen at close quarters the hordes of Ariovistus, the 
 Huns, the Alemanni, the Ecorcheurs, the Swedish troops, 
 the Kaiserlicks, and many more, and with them the smoke 
 of conflagrations, desolation, death. . . . Yet when did 
 they despair? They have not changed. They are the 
 stronger for their many memories, more attached than 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 215 
 
 ever to their rights and dignity. Rapp, Kleber, Keller- 
 mann, Lefevre, are their witnesses. Everywhere there are 
 too many stones to allow them to forget, too many ruins 
 on the hills, too many dead on the battlefields! 
 They drink their wine and sing: 
 
 On changerait plutot le coeur de place 
 Que de changer la vieille Alsace! 
 
 (Would they change our Alsatian race? 
 Sooner shall they our hearts displace ! ) 
 
 In spite of the heat, Jean works from morning till 
 night. 
 
 " Imagine that you are appearing before the jury," 
 said Reymond one day; "construct an audience, and 
 take the plunge boldly! Classify your ideas; express 
 them simply. I am listening. Romanticism . . ." 
 
 Jean meditates. He knows his subject, but how shall 
 he attack it? 
 
 "Monsieur, I can manage the writing, but speak- 
 ing . . ." 
 
 " What are you afraid of? " 
 
 " How could I have learnt to speak? Father hardly 
 ever talks." 
 
 " Well, I won't insist on it today. This evening before 
 you go to sleep, think of your subject, arrange it." 
 
 Jean asks his friend Charles Weiss: 
 
 " Do you think the Alsatians are less intelligent than 
 the French? " 
 
 " Certainly not. We are splendid stuff. It's the Ger- 
 
216 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 man schools that turn us into machines. You left at the 
 right moment. You should see the higher classes. 
 There is never a spark of originality. They prepare a 
 canvas for us. We may not go outside it. The forty 
 pupils have to repeat the same things, if possible in the 
 same words. In history, if you venture to argue or to 
 raise an objection, you are treated as a babbler, a Franz- 
 osenkopf, , , , Roughly speaking, we are soldiers even 
 in the schools. The professor is the colonel. He speaks. 
 We click our heels together. Zam Befehl! " 
 
 " It will stick to us all our lives," sighed Jean. 
 
 " Some people say it gives method and discipline," 
 continued Charles. "/ say that it paralyses one. One 
 accepts everything. One becomes a machine." 
 
 Shut up in the schoolroom, Jean spent the whole even- 
 ing debating with himself, gesticulating, making objec- 
 tions, which he answered to the best of his ability, furi- 
 ous with his own timidity and awkwardness. Still agi- 
 tated by these efforts, he looked out at the valley, and 
 understood its abandonment better than ever. 
 
 " One can't be wholly anything here. It would disgust 
 us to be German; they won't let us be French. Alsa- 
 tians? . . . Then they hunt us down." 
 
 The next day, Jean, embittered and discouraged, de- 
 fined Romanticism without ardour and with no attempt 
 at precision. 
 
 " That's better," said his tutor, " but you still seem 
 to be suffering. It is evident that you are distrustful of 
 yourself and of your tongue. Try to have some confi- 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 217 
 
 dence in yourself. Tomorrow we will take Le Cid. The 
 Cid! Sapristi! That's a work which demands fire, col- 
 our, concentration, vigour ! " 
 
 In the evenings of these hot days, the three went for 
 a walk, always the same, at the foot of the hills, for that 
 was more restful. On some of these occasions they saw 
 Kummel's bowler hat bobbing above the bushes. In the 
 miraculous serenity of the evening, the schoolmaster's 
 hat — with the schoolmaster beneath it, no doubt, though 
 he was not seen — was a spectacle worthy of admiration. 
 But this was not Jean's opinion. 
 
 " Pray, Monsieur, let us be off." 
 
 " Don't be so nervous." 
 
 " He is madder than ever, you know. In all the last 
 lessons he has given us, he has done nothing but abuse 
 France. 'All your French culture is superficial. . . . 
 The Alsatians are bastards, who must be humiliated.' " 
 
 " What nonsense ! ... As a fact, it is very comical 
 and quite unimportant! " 
 
 Ceremonious bows are exchanged. 
 
 " Delightful weather, is it not? " said Kummel, mop- 
 ping his face. " May I continue my walk in this agree- 
 able company? " 
 
 He described his holiday program. 
 
 " There must be method in all things. Fancy destroys 
 both nations and individuals. I get up at seven, and 
 say: Now I will perform my daily ablutions, and then 
 my methodical respirations. . . . Then I breakfast. . . . 
 At nine o'clock I say: Now a short walk, a little obi 
 
218 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 servation of plants and of the manners of insects. . . . 
 After that, grammar and syntax, history and geography, 
 not with a view to tuition, but with a view to personal 
 perfection. Dinner. A pipe. Now, I say, I will medi- 
 tate; I allow myself a nap. . . . When I have had my 
 nap, I work in the garden, give a lesson in vegetable cul- 
 ture to the children, have some familiar conversation 
 with them. When the temperature cools, we have some 
 vigorous exercise. A meal. A walk. I count my steps 
 on a given distance. I compare the number with the 
 number taken on previous occasions. In this way, the 
 mind is always alertly fixed on an object, and thus one 
 may advance courageously to the battle of life. . . . 
 Nine o'clock. Then I say: I and my wife will now go 
 to bed, and enjoy slumber." 
 
 This breviary of activity is set forth with a tone of mag- 
 nificent conviction. The word " now " in particular is 
 pronounced with a sort of nasal finality. 
 
 "Does not all this tire you very much? " asked Rey- 
 mond sympathetically. 
 
 " Fatigue is the mother of energy, and energy is the 
 father of life." 
 
 " Then what becomes of the poetry of the holidays? " 
 
 " Poetry ! Poetry ! There is no poetry save in strict 
 method. We understand this in Germany." 
 
 There was a silence. Then Kummel said suddenly: 
 
 "And so you are leaving our valley. Monsieur Jean 
 Bohler? ... for good, I hear. . . . You are going to 
 rejoin the Great Nation? " 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 219 
 
 Jean trembled. He was white with anger. 
 
 "Just so. I am going to rejoin the Great Nation. 
 Perhaps you will not always sneer when you call her 
 this." 
 
 " I never sneer, Monsieur Bohler. I am only grieved 
 when a young man does not know the true path. . . . 
 The German eagle is full of vigour. It must expand — 
 that is inevitable. The nations which have become effem- 
 inate must give way. This, again, is inevitable. To 
 obey a sentiment, to go towards declivity (do you say 
 decline or declivity?), to go towards decline, is a fruit- 
 less operation." 
 
 Jean's eyes sparkled. He threw prudence to the 
 winds. 
 
 " Monsieur Kummel, when you find yourself before 
 the bayonet of one of our Chasseurs Alpins, on which 
 side will decline be? " 
 
 The schoolmaster turned pale. This hypothesis was 
 disturbing. He recovered his calm presently. 
 
 " Utopia ! The old conception of the struggle between 
 nations! With our modern engines of destruction, 
 battles will be fought at a distance of fifteen kilometres. 
 Bayonets may be left at home with the umbrellas ! " 
 
 Kummel laughed loudly. He bowed and went off. 
 
 "Good heavens!" said Reymond. "It was time to 
 part. He did not like that idea of the bayonet. A 
 little shiver ran down his spine." 
 
 "You won't tell father, will you, Monsieur? It 
 would do no good." 
 
220 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 " No, no, my dear fellow ! " 
 
 Besangon. This time the candidate proved freer and 
 more versatile. He passed with honours. 
 
 What a good little dinner they had after sending off 
 the telegram to Friedensbach ! Everything was good, 
 everything was beautiful. They walked on the banks of 
 the Doubs; they wandered about in the old quarters, ad- 
 miring the sober elegance of the low houses, the shady 
 courtyards, the barred windows, the door with a knocker, 
 the quiet harmony of the whole. They went into a shop 
 that displayed fruit gathered that very morning, ripe 
 grapes. A cat was asleep on the counter, a canary sang 
 near the ceiling. The grandame who seryed them was 
 amiable. She had pretty manners, pretty phrases. . . . 
 Then there was the long journey back to Friedensbach. 
 
 " Here's our Bachelor of Arts ! " 
 
 They embrace. Rene, who had returned in the 
 morning, presses his brother's hand. Men don't kiss 
 each other! There are flowers everywhere. 
 
 " Turn round ! " says Rene. " Let's see how a Bachelor 
 of Arts is made." 
 
 "And we congratulate you. Monsieur Reymond. We 
 owe a good part of this success to you." 
 
 Reymond protests. 
 
 " Father is quite right," says Jean. " But for you I 
 should have been plucked again." 
 
 Every one is pleased. Before night falls, they walk 
 round the garden. The evening train passes with 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 221 
 
 a whistle. The goats come down from the heights. 
 
 Madame Bohler takes her son's arm. 
 
 " It is good to be together again a little longer." 
 
 " A week more, mother." 
 
 Monsieur Bohler is walking slowly. They look at 
 each other. They repeat: "A week more." 
 
 Rene is gesticulating under a fir-tree with his ex- 
 panders. 
 
 " What? Are you at it again already? " 
 
 " Certainly. I want to gain two centimetres in the 
 thorax before we leave. A quarter of a centimetre a day." 
 
 " There's one who knows how to take life," said Mon- 
 sieur Bohler. 
 
 Madame Bohler pressed her elder son's arm closer. 
 
 " Well, mother? " says Jean simply. 
 
 " My dear, good boy ! " replies his mother. 
 
 They add nothing more. So much can be said when 
 the mouth is silent, leaving the heart to speak. 
 
 Weiss never entered the burial-ground of Friedensbach 
 without feeling a bitter contempt for human barriers, 
 an emotion of pity, a softening of his angry feelings. 
 These dead who were at strife as long as they lived, 
 who excommunicated each other, all silent now, all rest- 
 ing tranquilly side by side. The plant rooted in one 
 mound throws its branches • over the neighbouring 
 mound; the flower that blossoms on the body of an 
 Alsatian has the same perfume as the flower that opens 
 over the body of a German. 
 
222 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 Weiss came to the grave of his son Jacques. Now it 
 was Frangois' turn to put on the hated uniform. At 
 the age when a young man emerges into freedom, pride, 
 and dignity, at the age when the heart feels the slightest 
 pin-prick so acutely, to have to bow his neck to the yoke, 
 to stifle the cry that rends the throat, to accept, at least 
 apparently, the atrocious lie, because his country has 
 been stolen from him! 
 
 Has one any right to exact such a sacrifice from a son? 
 Is it worth while to struggle so? And why, since these 
 dead are sleeping so peacefully under the same earth? 
 What madness drives men to crucify each other before 
 entering into the eternal silence? . . . Weiss felt all 
 the ties that bound him to his people relaxing. He 
 closed his eyes. On just such an October day as this he 
 had gone with Jacques to Mulhouse; they were about 
 to be parted for many long months. " Do you feel 
 strong enough to bear it all? " Jacques had answered 
 very simply: "Do you doubt me?" 
 
 Later at Munich, standing by the body of his son, 
 so thin, with such drawn features, Weiss thought he 
 should go mad. A doctor explained : " We did our 
 best for him. When he reported sick it was already too 
 late. A slow wasting. ... A pleurisy. . . ." In his let- 
 ters Jacques had said nothing of the refinements of hu- 
 miliation inflicted on him by a gambling Lieutenant, 
 furious at feeling himself condemned by this silent youth. 
 
 The face of the dead is an eternal marble. Their 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 223 
 
 words have the force of words of command : " Do you 
 doubt me? " 
 
 Weiss turned his head. Clouds were drifting across 
 the sky. Here and there a blue rift, the slanting ladder 
 of a sunbeam stretching down to an invisible point of the 
 valley. 
 
 Footsteps. Frangois approached his father timidly. 
 
 " I knew where I should find you, father." 
 
 They were silent, standing side by side. Frangois 
 coughed to clear his voice. 
 
 " What are you thinking of, father? No, don't say. 
 I know quite well. ... I have considered. . . . 
 Alsatians must stay in Alsace. To stay one must 
 deserve to stay — that is to say, one must suffer. Don't 
 be afraid. They will not corrupt me. They will not 
 humiliate me. The more they treat me as a Wackes, 
 the prouder I shall be. So many others have held out! 
 And there will be six of us to struggle; for you, mother, 
 Suzanne, Charles, and Jacques especially, will all be 
 with me." 
 
 They went home arm-in-arm. And Weiss said: 
 
 "We are trying to do what is right. May God help 
 us! I want you to take away something grand with you, 
 a memory which will keep you erect. On Sunday we 
 will go with Bohler and his sons to Wissembourg, where 
 the monument to those who fell in 1870 is to be in- 
 augurated. And now let us be cheerful, in spite of 
 everything. Men were bom for battle, but mothers have 
 
224 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 hearts of honey. We must cheer yours up. For the 
 last few days the tears have been coming into her eyes 
 very readily. So this evening we must sing the thirty- 
 two verses of the Bismarck song with grandfather." 
 
 On eventful days, the grandfather joined the family 
 party. He did not need to speak. He was there, with 
 his shining forehead, smooth as a pebble in the brook. 
 That was enough. Before he is laid to rest, he ties the 
 threads that the conqueror will seek in vain to break, 
 with a look, a gesture of his trembling hand. 
 
 The grandfather was in the garden with Suzanne, 
 who ran to meet the newcomers. 
 
 " Look, father, what grandfather has brought you ! A 
 tricoloured cockade! " 
 
 " I took it from the souvenir cupboard. It belonged 
 to my uncle who fought at Wagram. Victor, you must 
 take it and lay it upon the tomb of our dead at Wissem- 
 bourg. My uncle, I, you, your son — four generations." 
 
 There was a moment of emotion. But the grandfather 
 added : 
 
 " And when is Suzanne going to oflFer us the fifth? " 
 
 " Grandfather, at your age one ought to be serious." 
 
 " I am, my dear. A dozen children would not be too 
 many to carry on our good race of Weisses." 
 
 Once upon a time there was a little town set between 
 the North, where it is always raining, and the fair land 
 of sunshine. Its roofs gleamed red amidst the gold of 
 harvest. All around it were pleasant hills. 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 225 
 
 But the men of the North, yawning beneath their fogs, 
 were waiting for the spring to march towards joy, pike- 
 men in front, chariots behind. When assailed, the little 
 town defended herself as best she could. . . . Ramparts 
 were thrown up, thick ramparts flanked by square towers. 
 The peasants, reassured, returned to their fields. The 
 seed was sown. 
 
 " They will not come back," said the hermit. They 
 came back in greater numbers, with more deadly 
 weapons, and shattered a high wall. There were many 
 dead. Reinforcements. The town was victorious. 
 The breach in the wall was filled up. 
 
 Twenty wax tapers were burnt. " They will not come 
 back," said the old priest. The grapes were gathered. 
 The wine-shops winked invitingly under the pointed 
 roofs. The wine was good. Youths and maidens danced 
 under the trellis. And next year, it is said, many chil- 
 dren were born. 
 
 Round the little town, living its life and living it well, 
 great empires arose, expanded, and picked quarrels with 
 one another. What are old ramparts that have been 
 patched a hundred times, and are cracked all over for 
 the delight of the maidenhair fern, against a covetous 
 horde? A thrust, a rush. The walls fell, the defenders 
 died bravely under the shafts of the whirlwind swarms. 
 In the paved streets the charge swept on with a thunder 
 of horses' hoofs. There were fires and rapine, the shrieks 
 of women, the yells of drunkards in the darkness. . . . 
 A supreme effort. The town was free at last, but in- 
 
226 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 fested with blackened corpses, and hearts were full of 
 phantoms. 
 
 "They will not come back; we have killed too many," 
 said the Burgomaster with the harsh beard. 
 
 During these repeated ordeals, the little town had 
 acquired a cheerful serenity. Familiarity with suffer- 
 ing had taught it to fear nothing; the old people knew 
 the rattle of pikes against a closed door so well that they 
 ceased to tremble. And when the tocsin of war sounded, 
 the citizens embraced their wives laughingly. 
 
 This little town was called Wissembourg. 
 
 Once again, Abel Douay had five thousand men to 
 defend it. The pink roofs and their dormer windows 
 looked down on women leaning out of casements, the 
 confidence of all France shining in their eyes. The Tur- 
 cos were watching. The hour struck from the steeples 
 which stretched their necks upwards among the trees. 
 And the cock, his beak pointing heavenward like the 
 steeples, vigilant as they, enlivened the night with his 
 vibrant trumpet-call. On the morning of August the 4th 
 the chief addressed his men : " There is warm work be- 
 fore us. I know you. You keep the gates of France. . ." 
 There was not time to say more. An army of dark 
 men emerged from the woods. On all the roads, across 
 all the fields these ants swarmed. They were felt to be 
 under every tree, behind every bush. There was an 
 atrocious battle. A fountain in an invaded park sobbed 
 despairingly. It is terrible to see twenty men slaugh- 
 tered by three hundred. Livid brows leaned against 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 227 
 
 doors. Soldiers bit each other as they rolled on the 
 ground. Hairy hands were pressed upon throats. For- 
 ward! France! Deutschland! . . . On the Geisberg 
 behind a wall were Zouaves with their triumphant red 
 breeches, on which great stains of blood are hardly seen, 
 the black demons with such white teeth and eyeballs and 
 cries so hoarse that they strike terror to the heart of the 
 enemy. . . . The cannon finishes them. , . . The birds 
 begin to sing again. August the 4th ! It is evening, and 
 so fine! 
 
 At nightfall Prince Henry of Prussia desired to see 
 Abel Douay, that great dead man, stretched on the bed 
 of an obscure room. He looked long at the dead. What 
 were his thoughts? He saluted and withdrew. Glory 
 is sometimes heavy to bear. In the gardens were flowers 
 and perfumes; in the sky were stars. Lying round the 
 garden fences, on the steps, in the streets, on the road- 
 sides, on the banks of the river, which reflects the stars, 
 what masses of dead! The thirsty earth drank in the 
 fresh blood. And the dying wounded said to this 
 earth : " Our hearts are giving thee our blood, drop 
 by drop; corn of tomorrow, we shall be in thee; the 
 bread made of thy flour will have a taste of mem- 
 ory." 
 
 Always the waves of Time cover up what is, and it 
 becomes that which was. But the might of memory 
 lurks in the depths of this Time and shakes its torch. 
 No blast can extinguish it. August 4th, 1870 — October 
 17th, 1909. 
 
228 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 Gentlemen in tall hats and frock-coats, cockades, 
 braided uniforms, breasts on which so many decorations 
 gleam that one wonders if there is still room left for the 
 heart, police ofiicers who look round and take notes, flags 
 and garlands. The little town blooms into colour and 
 surveys the scene. Above are the stands where work- 
 men are still busy with their hammers, and the monument, 
 mysterious under its grey covers. ... In the gardens, 
 the pale heads of chrysanthemums, in the meadows the 
 innumerable mauve cups of colchicums; on the flank of 
 the hills, oxen drawing the plough. Sweetness in the air, 
 sweetness on the horizon, the melancholy of things about 
 to die. The sun sets in a sea of blood. " Mama," 
 says a little girl to her mother, " you always say that the 
 dead are in heaven. So they will not be there tomor- 
 row? " 
 
 " Yes, yes. They come back on one day in every year 
 to see that they are not forgotten." 
 
 More gentlemen in tall hats and frock-coats, spiked 
 helmets, armlets, and cockades. . . . Will those the dead 
 are waiting for not come? 
 
 They come. These old men who walk slowly, dragging 
 their legs a little — one has lost an arm, another an eye 
 — are the survivors of the fierce struggle. To prove that 
 they are not phantoms they have been the first to come 
 and raise a trumphal arch. They feel a bit dizzy on the 
 top of a ladder, and their hammers do not always hit the 
 nail on the head. The town hears with emotion of the 
 project of those who defended it so well, one of whom, 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 229 
 
 a cripple, who has been brought to the spot in a wheel- 
 barrow, is seated on the strange vehicle, and thence di- 
 rects the work, winks, advises, and encourages. The 
 garden-gates open. Women bring armfuls of chrysan- 
 themums, immortals, and the blood-red foliage of Vir- 
 ginian creeper. Madame Abette, the mistress of the gro- 
 cer's shop at the corner, supplies the balls of string. She 
 explains : 
 
 " I saw them myself, defiling before my shop on the 
 morning of August the 3rd. How well they marched! 
 The next day one of them came to die on the bench under 
 my window." 
 
 "Then, you will remember me," said the old man in 
 the wheelbarrow. " In those days I was on horseback." 
 
 "And I hadn't a round back in those days." 
 
 They come. Before they started, the old women went 
 round the gardens, gathering the autumn flowers, those 
 queens of a day, so fair that they should only be offered 
 to the dead. They have bound them into bouquets, these 
 smiles of the soil. . . . Now there is a circle of faith- 
 ful faces round the tombs, so bare before. The cockade 
 of the uncle who fought at Wagram is hidden under roses. 
 The berries and foliage of Alsace lie warm upon the 
 stone, bearing with them something of her sunshine and 
 perfume. 
 
 She comes, the Alsace of instincts and of toil, the 
 brooding Alsace of week-days and of the years of silence. 
 . . . She comes by all the roads that wind round the 
 foot of the mountains. There are moving dots on their 
 
230 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 grey network. The big farm-horses with their jangling 
 bells draw the grandfather, the little ones, the woman, 
 the man. Coming from villages lost in the blue distance, 
 their breasts contract with an emotion they cannot ex- 
 plain (for one cannot explain the thing that comes from 
 the depths) when they see the black crowd swelling, and 
 the veiled monument looming larger before them. They 
 come, the parish priests in their cassocks, the factory fore- 
 men, the workmen pedalling along, grey with dust. She 
 comes, the woman with toil-worn hands, her children 
 hanging to her skirts, and follows her husband, the man 
 with the pipe. They come, the tanned vine-dressers; 
 yesterday the grapes were in the vats; they were tasting 
 the sweet must and kissing laughing girls; today they 
 answer to the call, the old who saw and who keep their 
 eyelids half closed over their dream, and the young who 
 have served the conqueror. 
 
 How many are there? . . . Fifty thousand? A hun- 
 dred thousand? Living souls bending over the dry 
 bones. 
 
 Already, the brasses of the German bands, gilded and 
 resplendent, are playing grave airs, the fifes rend the air. 
 But it is for the dead the crowd has come, those dead 
 who sleep on the hill surrounded by many other hills 
 scattered as far as the eye can reach under the sober 
 light of an October Sunday. 
 
 The crowd waits, bristling with the standards of ban- 
 ners, spreading out into space. Behind it are forty years 
 of silence. Before it is this unique day. A man appears 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 231 
 
 at the back, resting his two hands on the edge of the 
 tribune. What is he saying? . . . Under its wrappings 
 the monument looks like an enormous coffin about to be 
 lowered into the grave. . . . "He's too far off! " say 
 the voices. " We can't hear." Suddenly dominating the 
 crowd, another man built like a woodman, with epic 
 shoulders, appears; his face is like a roughly cast medal; 
 there is a certain austerity in his emotion. The colossus 
 measures the extent of these heads; he drinks in all their 
 uneasy thoughts with a deep breath; now he is looking 
 further and higher, at the hills, the horizon, the soft blue 
 of the distance. Then, feeling that the country is with 
 him and near him, his voice rings out like a clarion. The 
 eleven hundred veterans who wear the medals of Mexico, 
 Italy, the Crimea, trembled, and Alexandre Baudot, who 
 sounded the charge at Malakoff, straightens the back 
 bowed by his eighty-three years. 
 
 " Noble sons of Alsace ! I salute those who persisted 
 in a hopeless resistance. I salute them in the name of 
 their comrades, in the name of the French officers, in 
 the name of the Republic. Suffering unites men more 
 closely than glory, for we love in proportion to the suf- 
 fering we have endured in common. . . . Soldiers who 
 died for France, immortality is yours, and memory is 
 ours. I press the kiss of France upon the stone of your 
 tombs! " 
 
 At this moment the speaker, his right arm raised to 
 heaven, his breast swelling, his forehead bathed in light, 
 accumulates in himself all the anguish, all the hopes of 
 
232 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 the crowd, suddenly united by an invisible bond. . . . 
 "Look! " said Weiss to those near him. They turned 
 round. At the sight of these thousands and thousands 
 of men whose serried ranks cover the hill, of all the 
 upturned eyes flashing strange fire, they trembled. 
 
 " Alsatians, when you stop before this monument, bare 
 your heads, bow low, listen to the passing of the souls of 
 your ancestors." 
 
 There was an ardent bugle-call, and then the solemn 
 sounds of a chorale: Behold! how sweetly do they sleep. 
 The drapery that was drawn aside reveals the bare stone, 
 the genius of the Fatherland ready to take flight, the 
 cock uttering his morning greeting to the sun. The 
 heart of the crowd ceases to beat. Foreheads are pale, 
 people grasp a neighbour's arm, look at each other. Is 
 it possible? Is it credible? These red, white, and blue 
 flags, these flags of the veterans who have come from 
 France, which flutter and float, this blare of trumpets 
 rising, muttering, rolling down the hills to the little town 
 seated behind the yellowing orchards. The Marseillaise 
 , . . The Prussian officers are standing, motionless as 
 statues, leaning on the hilts of their swords, with im- 
 passible faces and strongly marked jaws. . . . Allans 
 en f ants de la patrie! . . . Hearts contract with a spasm 
 of surprise. Heads are bared. The will had nothing to 
 do with this movement of the hands. It was commanded 
 by the heart, which begins to beat again impetuously. 
 Men look at each other again. Is it true? For forty 
 years they have held their peace. For forty years 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 233 
 
 prudence and fear have been their companions, trampling 
 down sentiment and chilling generous impulses. For 
 forty years the phantom of defeat has followed them as 
 faithfully as their shadows! . . . And suddenly this flag, 
 this hymn of a resuscitated people! 
 
 There are, no doubt, in the crowd some who have come 
 from idle curiosity, some sceptics, some indifferent souls, 
 perhaps even some who have rallied to the master who 
 pays well. At this moment these have no time to weigh 
 the pros and the cons, to let the head master the heart. 
 It is too beautiful! Too great! Too real! All they 
 thought was dead warms their blood till it boils. . . . 
 Prodigious introspective moment, when the soul of a peo- 
 ple, surprised in its instinctive truth, is laid bare ! . . . 
 
 Tears roll from the eyes of veterans into their white 
 moustaches; they beat time; Baudot, who sounded the 
 charge at Malakoff, is the first to accompany the fanfare 
 with his broken voice, then another takes it up, and an- 
 other. . . . Oh! it is something not to be forgotten, not 
 to have suffered in vain! . . . After the long nightmare 
 to find a house where one is happy. There is the short, 
 hurried breathing of exiles who press against the warm 
 heart of their recovered country, the formidable respira- 
 tion of a crowd dominated by a common thought. And 
 suddenly this cry, which drowns the voice of the 
 trumpets: 
 
 " Aux armes, citoyens, formez vos bataillons! " 
 
 Who would have expected such a cry? It gushes out 
 as springs gush after an earthquake, in a wild, splendid 
 
234 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 rush. It is the seething, frenzied aspiration of all souls 
 towards liberty. 
 
 Magnificent old men, already bending down towards 
 the earth that calls you; young men with quivering nos- 
 trils, if your eyes are full of tears, it is because the dead 
 of Wissembourg live again in you! 
 
 They possess you, these uneasy dead, whom only Jus- 
 tice will appease! 
 
 Talking low, warmed by the fire of sympathy kindled 
 on the hill, Alsace takes her departure. Peasants, vine- 
 dressers, workmen, and middle-class citizens, they are 
 now but minute specks on the roads that lead to the habi- 
 tations of men. From them all the others will hear the 
 story: the old woman who gathered flowers in the morn- 
 ing, the old man who cannot leave his arm-chair, the chil- 
 dren sitting round the table in the lamplight. They will 
 tell it to the best of their ability. Their eyes will tell 
 the rest, the things for which there are no words. Once 
 again, swift and mysterious, passing over hedges and 
 fences, walls and gratings, the word of command will run 
 through the country: "Stand fast!" All know what 
 this will cost, what persecutions are in store. They read 
 on the faces of the officers leaning on their swords, when 
 the Marseillaise rang out, a cold determination to crush 
 this people, guilty of the crime of fidelity. (It would 
 mean Saverne, war.) But they know, too, that the crime 
 brings about its own punishment, that contempt of human 
 dignity entails defeat, and brutal pride ends in abasement. 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 235 
 
 They have only to wait. Well, they will wait. . . . 
 
 "Don't let us talk; it was too splendid," said Jean 
 Bohler. 
 
 " Father, after that we may well suffer a little," said 
 Frangois Weiss. 
 
 The parents made no answer. Reymond, too, was 
 silent, overwhelmed by the hour he had just lived 
 through. 
 
 They had sat down away from the crowd. From min- 
 ute to minute Weiss would repeat: "I am drunk — 
 drunk with pride, pride in my Alsace. That hour was 
 really worth forty years of suffering. Yes, I am proud 
 of my Alsace ! . . . Boys, be thankful that you can begin 
 life with this memory in your hearts." 
 
 "Do you remember our return home after the war, 
 Weiss? " said Monsieur Bohler. " We had fought as 
 well as we could, we poor Mobiles of the Upper Rhine: 
 badly armed, badly shod, shoved this way one day, and 
 that another. And then suddenly to have to look this 
 thing in the face: Alsace German! Alsace, the most 
 French of all the provinces of France! What a return! 
 To hear those butts of rifles falling on the pavements of 
 our little towns, where joy had reigned. To hear the 
 laughter of the intruders, their heavy, sinister laughter! 
 It was enough to drive one mad ! And every day, every 
 hour for months and years, to witness their robberies 
 from the past, their suborning of hearts. . . . We could 
 close our shutters, lock and bolt ourselves in. But their 
 songs of triumph rose to us from the streets. 
 
236 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 "And then those two processions in opposite direc- 
 tions! From the depths of Lorraine to the extreme point 
 of Alsace, those who were on their way to rejoin France: 
 carts carrying the bed, the walnut-wood cupboard, the 
 table on which one's elbows have rested as long as one 
 can remember . . . ; two hundred thousand human beings 
 leaving everything that had been their life behind them! 
 And that other procession from the other side: on the 
 bridges of the Rhine the army of immigrants, all the 
 starvelings of Germany, a whole horde dressed in green, 
 with a feather in their hats and spectacles on their noses, 
 ten brats clinging to the skirts of their mother, who was 
 expecting her eleventh. . . . And very soon all the brood 
 installed in gardens still gay with the flowers planted by 
 those we had known. . . . How did we live through those 
 times? Ten years, twenty years, thirty years, nearly 
 forty years! Forty years! And you have just heard 
 the answer of Alsace! Ah! my boys, my boys! " 
 
 No one had ever seen Monsieur Bohler in such a state 
 before. 
 
 " Bohler, my friend," said Weiss, " give me your hand. 
 Let us all shake hands, fathers and sons! " 
 
 They pressed each other's hands, Frangois, Charles, 
 Jean, Rene, the two fathers, and all had tears in their 
 eyes. 
 
 "You will see, father," repeated the boys in a sort of 
 exaltation. 
 
 Night came down upon the plain. . . . On the top of 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 237 
 
 the hill, the genius of the Fatherland, the cock, the sand- 
 stone pyramid hewn from the Vosges, visible things; on 
 the hillside, the dead, those invisible witnesses, those great 
 living forces which hold the men who are making their 
 way along the roads of Alsace more closely captive than 
 ever. 
 
 It is the hour of good-byes and departures. 
 
 Madame Weiss and Suzanne have packed the box, 
 folded the linen, slipped the surprise that is to remind 
 the absent one of home under the waistcoat. Now they 
 are grouped in the dining-room, which is sunnier than 
 the drawing-room, and little Marie is astride on her 
 grandfather's knee. The portrait of the dead boy looks 
 down upon them all from the wall. It was in this room 
 that they had gathered to bid him farewell. Hearts are 
 deeply moved. 
 
 There was a ring at the door. It was Reymond. 
 
 " When do you start, Frangois? " 
 
 " Tomorrow morning. I shall be at Breslau tomorrow 
 night. And you? " 
 
 "Tomorrow evening." 
 
 "But you will come back to see us," said Madame 
 Weiss. " You must often think of your friends in Alsace 
 when you are in your beautiful canton of Vaud. They 
 will need sympathy, unless . . ." 
 
 " Unless . . ." repeated the grandfather. 
 
 " Unless . . ." echoed Weiss. 
 
238 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 They passed round the brown-paper album which 
 Charles had given to his brother. Silvery petals starred 
 the pages, all the flora of the valley. 
 
 " The scent of the country," says the grandfather. 
 
 Reymond got up. 
 
 " I thank you for all the kindness and affection you 
 have shown me throughout these two years, which have 
 passed so quickly. ... I carry away memories I shall 
 never evoke without pride and sadness also, for I know 
 now on what a family in Alsace lives, and how much 
 resignation and courage they need to carry on. ... I 
 will not say ' Courage ! ' to him who is leaving you, for 
 he has so much. May God bring him back to you! " 
 
 They were all assembled on the doorstep. Suzanne 
 was smiling rather sadly. Why was this Reymond not 
 an Alsatian? Little Marie waved her handkerchief, 
 Weiss his hand, and Charles called out: 
 
 " You must write to me. Monsieur." 
 
 Reymond looks back. Dear people, good friends! 
 
 And now the tutor is taking a last walk round the 
 park with his pupils. With two bounds, Rene is at the 
 foot of a pine-tree, climbs to the top, and slips from 
 branch to branch. 
 
 "This will be useful to me when I am a Chasseur 
 Alpin." 
 
 "What! Yesterday you wanted to go into the air- 
 service! " 
 
 "No; I will be an Alpin. It's a fine calling." 
 
 They left the Alpin to his own devices. 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 239 
 
 "And you have quite made up your mind, Jean? 
 Literature is what attracts you? " 
 
 " I am so fond of history." 
 
 " Of course we shall find each other again in life. 
 From this time forth you are my friend Jean." 
 
 They look at each other, and this look is a compact. 
 
 " If you only knew, Monsieur, how strange it seems 
 to me to go! I can't realize it. To think that we shall 
 never live in Alsace again; that all this is over . . ." 
 
 His voice trembles. Reymond speaks of other things. 
 
 "Who is going to Paris with you? " 
 
 "Father. Mother is too tired. She will come later, 
 when we are settled at Professor Paget's." 
 
 Julie was at her kitchen-window. 
 
 "And you are going to stay, Julie. You are lucky." 
 
 "What can we do. Monsieur Jean?" says the old 
 Champenoise; " some go and some stay. Such is life! " 
 
 " I leave mother in your charge. You must write to 
 me every week to tell me how she is, and if she looks 
 sad. And this evening you are to give her this letter." 
 
 "Never fear; I will take good care of her. I have 
 been doing nothing else for twenty-nine years." 
 
 Rapid footsteps crunch the gravel. 
 
 " It's father," said Jean. " I think he is looking for 
 you. I still have half an hour. I will go to mother." 
 
 The two men strolled along the paths. 
 
 " You are more fortunate than my sons. Monsieur 
 Reymond. You will come back to us. We shall always 
 receive you as a friend. And we shall no doubt go and 
 
240 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 spend a little of the holiday-time in your country. I 
 am anxious that you should keep in touch with my boys. 
 They are very fond of you. You will remind them of the 
 pleasant years in Alsace." 
 
 They went back to the house. Although no one had 
 spoken of departure, the dog understood. Seated under 
 the table he moaned dismally, and came occasionally to 
 sniif at the legs of his young masters. 
 
 In the hall the luggage was piled up for the coachman 
 to take. Madame Bohler busied herself with prosaic de- 
 tails, wrapped in a silence which betrayed a maternal 
 tenderness ready to melt into tears. 
 
 " The carriage is at the door." 
 
 "My beloved boys! " said Madame Bohler, biting her 
 lips. 
 
 Her two sons were in her arms. They clasped each 
 other close. 
 
 Reymond disappeared discreetly. He said to Jean: 
 
 " I will wait for you near the road-keeper's cottage." 
 
 One page is turned, the page of youth, of long evenings 
 in the sheltered nest, of the melody of piano and violon- 
 cello, of intimate talk. If they sob, in spite of their 
 resolution, it is because they know well what they are 
 leaving behind them. The page is written. It is turned. 
 
 In the house the travellers have just left, there are 
 the empty hall, the palms, the stag's horns, the coat of 
 mail, the glass which reflects all these familiar things. 
 Old Julie knocks at the door of the little drawing-room. 
 It is some time before there is any answer. 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 241 
 
 " Does Madame want anything? " 
 
 " No, thank you, Julie." 
 
 "There is a letter for Madame from Monsieur 
 Jean." 
 
 Reymond waits near the level crossing. Here is the 
 little panting train, and for a moment he sees the profiles 
 of the two boys, Rene already consoled, already looking 
 forward to the new life, and Jean pale, with knitted 
 brows. A last signal. Once again, once more, the little 
 train bears off some of the sorrow of Alsace. 
 
 The hour of departure and farewells has come for 
 Reymond. He lingers in the Schmolers' garden. Above 
 the russet foliage he sees the roofs of Friedensbach, the 
 dormer windows, the weathercocks and the gables play- 
 ing hide-and-seek, roofs set on the houses like caps. , . . 
 On one of them is the stork's nest. And down below is 
 the river, whose waters look like dancing beams in the 
 sunlight; a streamlet winds its silver thread under the 
 privet-bushes covered with fruit; kneeling on a plank, an 
 apron folded under their knees, women wring out the 
 hempen sheets, laughing and dipping their red arms into 
 the rippling water. Up higher are the flaming woods 
 and the bushes with their purple berries. Once more he 
 hears the clatter of the workmen's sabots on the pavement. 
 Once more the geese pass along in single file, limping and 
 gabbling. Once more it is noon, and the ofi&cials pro- 
 nounce their Mahlzeit! They dine. And then Reymond 
 shakes hands and says farewell. 
 
242 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 Old Jacobine is on the threshold, so neat in her white 
 cap. 
 
 " We shall miss you very much. If you want to see 
 us again in this world, you must come back soon. My 
 husband will be at the station. He will bring you a few 
 apples and pears to eat on the journey. Here, Jacob, 
 say good-bye to Monsieur Reymond." 
 
 The shoemaker is hammering at his soles. The little 
 life goes on. The fountain murmurs Ein . , . zwei , . . 
 drei. In the square in front of the school the boys, 
 marching stiffly in pairs, stamp on the ground as they 
 will do later in their regiments. Kummel is in command. 
 He comes forward. 
 
 " Good-bye, Monsieur Reymond. A pleasant journey. 
 And mind you tell them in French Switzerland, where 
 they are rather inclined to make fun of everything, what 
 order reigns in Alsace, what discipline, what prosperity! 
 Good-bye. We shall certainly meet again. One never 
 can tell what may happen. Yes, we shall meet again! 
 Good-bye." 
 
 Old Schmoler hands over his parcel. 
 
 " They are ripe, they smell good. Good-bye, Monsieur 
 Reymond. Come back to us." 
 
 The police officer has approached, for it is always well 
 to know what people are saying. And it is a kind of 
 allegory of Alsace on this station platform: the bent old 
 man with his kindly face and stiff back, and this upturned 
 moustache. 
 
 Once more Friedensbach at the foot of its hills, Fried- 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 243 
 
 ensbach with its smoking roofs, the familiar paths, the 
 scattered goats on the slopes — but no Seppi ! — the 
 Weisses' house, the Bohlers' house. 
 Good-bye, little valley! 
 
XII 
 
 THEY met again in the plain, in Valais: the pupils 
 now young men, tall and broad, with brown or fair 
 moustaches; Monsieur and Madame Bohler; Monsieur 
 and Madame Weiss; Suzanne. The meeting was all the 
 more enjoyable in that it could hardly have been hoped 
 for. Jean and Charles, both in barracks; one in France, 
 the other in Germany, had had some difficulty in making 
 their respective ten days' leave coincide. And Rene, a 
 dashing Second Lieutenant, just through his training! 
 What a red-letter day it was! And how joyously Rey- 
 mond's proposal of an excursion to the mountains to see 
 the sunrise was received! 
 
 The boys waved their hats, wild with delight. The 
 parents and Suzanne, seated on the hotel terrace, smiled 
 indulgently at this display of high spirits. 
 
 They went up in the twilight, in the darkness, by a 
 rocky path. . . . Valleys, rugged peaks, trees bending 
 over the abyss, were soon blotted out. They recognized 
 each other by their voices. Sometimes the flash of an 
 electric torch showed them a swift vision of a great tree- 
 trunk, like a crouching monster, or of a lichen hanging 
 to a gnarled branch like a beard on the chin of a gnome. 
 
 These former playfellows and fellow-students came 
 together again more readily after their long separation 
 in this clamber among shadows than they had done the 
 
 244 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 245 
 
 evening before, seated on wicker chairs in the hotel 
 verandah. Yesterday even the two brothers had felt 
 almost like strangers to each other. Now the one no 
 longer thinks that he is taller than the other and has 
 more moustache; they find their natural souls again, not 
 those improvised by the fever of cities, the mechanism 
 of the barracks, but the good simple souls that ripened 
 on the slopes of a green valley in the Vosges. Domi- 
 nated by the unknown things around them, by the jagged 
 peaks they know to be above them, though they cannot 
 see them, they no longer swagger; under this starry sky, 
 a true garden of mystery, they are artless as they used 
 to be. ... A question. . . . Another. . . . They cap 
 each other's stories. 
 
 "Where are you teaching now. Monsieur? " 
 
 " At Montreux." 
 
 "And are your pupils nice? " 
 
 " Very nice." 
 
 A silence. 
 
 " Charles, what is your brother Frangois doing? " 
 
 " He is finishing his legal studies at Strasburg. They 
 are expecting him shortly at Friedensbach. He is to 
 remain there several months to prepare his thesis." 
 
 "What is the subject?" 
 
 "Oh! some very technical affair! ... I have for- 
 gotten." 
 
 "AndEmileZumbach?" 
 
 "He is at the school of chemistry at Mulhouse. He 
 begins his military service this autumn." 
 
246 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 " Oh ! with the Schwobs. . . . He's a true Alsatian, 
 that fellow. He doesn't say much, but he's the right 
 sort. A regiment of Zumbachs would give a good 
 account of themselves . . ." 
 
 "Against us, perhaps? " interrupted Rene. 
 
 " Don't worry about him. ... If ever it comes to that 
 he will manage to be on the right side, like a good many 
 others I know." 
 
 "And Andre Berger?" 
 
 Rene answers this time: 
 
 " He makes me sick. He has become such a lump of 
 affectation. When he speaks you would think his mouth 
 was full of powdered sugar. . . . And then, he always 
 knows everything. . . . He, too, is in barracks, at Au- 
 gers, I believe. Normally, he is working at literature. 
 It seems that he is already writing for the reviews. . . . 
 He disgusts me." 
 
 " And you, Jean : you are not talking." 
 
 " I am listening to you. . . . And then, it's all I can 
 do to find my way. You must have pity on those who 
 wear glasses." 
 
 " Service for three years, isn't it? " 
 
 " Yes. I have two years more now." 
 
 "He's just been made a sergeant," said Rene, rather 
 patronizingly. 
 
 "Yes, Lieutenant." 
 
 They laughed. 
 
 " And what about your historical studies? " 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 247 
 
 "Ah! I mustn't think of them now." 
 
 There was a sound of footsteps on the stones. 
 
 " It's a queer business ! " exclaimed Charles suddenly. 
 " Odd that a fellow called Princip should have murdered 
 an Arch-Duke. Who knows, perhaps all the nations of 
 Europe will be slaughtering each other presently because 
 of this Princip . . ." 
 
 "Bah!" rejoined Reymond; "they'll calm down. 
 They will squeeze the Serbians. They'll exact compensa- 
 tion. They're too prosperous to want to put a match to 
 the powder. It would be absurd." 
 
 " Don't be too sure of that," answered Charles. " The 
 water in the Pan-German boiler is bubbling. ... It is 
 boiling over. . . . There is enough steam to blow every- 
 thing sky-high. All the talk is of armaments, equipment, 
 victualling, fleet, dry powder, sharp swords, colonies, big 
 guns, machine-guns, and submarines. They dream only 
 of Zeppelins. They are building super-Zeppelins. The 
 more these collapse, the more they build. They wear 
 Zeppelin caps, they eat Zeppelin sausages, they smoke 
 Zeppelin cigars, they write with Zeppelin pens. . . . 
 Krupp, Flottenverein, and Zeppelin — Zeppelin, Krupp, 
 and Flottenverein. It must mean one or the other of two 
 things: either they have gone out of their minds or they 
 are preparing a colossal war. . . . What is it? " 
 
 " Just listen to that stone rolling." 
 
 It falls with a muffled sound, crumbles and bounds 
 against the rocks, whistles and sinks into the abyss. 
 
 "Aha! That comes of talking of war! " 
 
248 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 " It frightened me . . . those leaps . . . those silences 
 . . . that explosion . . . and that ' plop ' into the void 
 with the vague echo that came up to us. . . . Walk in the 
 middle of the path." 
 
 " I liked it. . . . It was like a shell. Capital ! I feel 
 like a little boy again this evening. It's splendid for us 
 four to be together again. No cares . . . the stars . . . 
 on we go in the darkness! . . . And Monsieur Rey- 
 mond's voice from time to time, just as when we were at 
 Friedensbach. It's fine! . . . Again! . . . What's that? 
 . . . Who whistled? 
 
 "A marmot, no doubt, watching at the entrance of 
 the burrow where her young are nestling. She is saying 
 in her language : ' Halt, who goes there ! Advance and 
 give the countersign ! ' " 
 
 "Poor little devil of a marmot! It's a queer world, 
 I must say. That marmot who has hurried into her hole 
 to tell a story of robbers to the captain of her band, who 
 has wakened with a start. And in our world, those 
 diplomatists who are playing heads and tails with the 
 lives of several millions of human beings." 
 
 " If there should be war, imagine the entry into Fried- 
 ensbach! Bugles, flags, Sambre-et-Meuse. . . . Father 
 and Mother throwing flowers . . . Kummel crouching in 
 a cage. War is splendid fun! . . . We would greet the 
 dead of Wissembourg as we pass. . . . After Alsace is 
 retaken, peace shall be declared, and the first one who ob- 
 jects, off with his head! " 
 
 A falling star, then another, detach themselves from the 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 249 
 
 garden of the planets, slip along the sky, shoot out their 
 trail, and die. 
 
 " The thing that disturbs me," said Reymond, " is this 
 phrase in the newspapers: * There is still a glimmer of 
 hope.' That is what we say of the dying." 
 
 The laugh of a night-bird is heard in the silence. 
 
 " Horrid creature ! " 
 
 "Do you still keep up your gymnastics, Rene? " 
 
 " Yes, indeed ! . . . I can carry twenty-one kilos with 
 my arm extended. But what I like best is the attack: to 
 run up and thrust a bayonet into the belly of a dummy. 
 Chook! " 
 
 "Be quiet; you're disgusting! " 
 
 " It's our business. We shan't get Alsace back by 
 gathering plums. Of course it's disgusting, but as long 
 as there are people who steal countries, we shall have to 
 do ' chook ! ' Unless we prefer to bow our necks to the 
 yoke. There's no getting out of this. And so, Charles, 
 you are going back there? ... If the crash comes, won't 
 it be easy to make tracks." 
 
 " When I asked for leave, the first I have had since 
 I went to the barracks, I said to myself: ' If they refuse 
 it will be because there's something brewing, and I shall 
 slip away quietly (I am only fifteen kilometres from the 
 Russian frontier) .... If they grant it, I shall know that 
 I have time to finish my year of voluntary service with- 
 out any accidents. . . .' They gave ten days' leave to 
 ever so many people." 
 
 **You said just now that you believed there would 
 
250 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 be war, that they want it. You contradict yourself." 
 
 "Not at all. A great many people think that it will 
 be declared next spring. A campaign is never begun in 
 the middle of the summer. . . . Krupp has not yet de- 
 livered the very big guns. . . . Father has had some 
 private information. ... I tell you, it will be next 
 spring. I shall have time to get away. Don't be afraid. 
 I shall be there for the great encounter." 
 
 " Capital ! I will take you in my section. If you 
 march well, I will make you a corporal the second week, 
 when we enter Germany. . . . Do they treat you badly 
 in your regiment? " 
 
 " Not so very badly. My Lieutenant behaves very 
 decently. On the other hand, the non-commissioned 
 officers are brutes. On the whole, one can get along by 
 dint of clenching one's fist in one's pocket a hundred 
 times a day." 
 
 " You are lucky . . . there are some Alsatians who 
 lose their heads." 
 
 " If you would hold your tongues for a moment . . . 
 one could listen." 
 
 "Listen to what? " 
 
 " The night." 
 
 "Ah! that's Jean all over. His heart craves for sen- 
 timent . . . stars, moon, dark caves . . ." 
 
 "You little donkey!" 
 
 "Lucky for you I'm not in uniform: court-martial." 
 
 They come to the deserted chalet, the key of which 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 251 
 
 had been given to Reymond. They enter, and sup by a 
 fire rapidly kindled on the stone hearth. 
 
 "And now try to go to sleep. It is eleven o'clock. 
 We must be up at three if we want to surprise the sun 
 at his rising. Soldiers ought to be able to obey. Unroll 
 the rugs, lie down on the hay, and shut your eyes! " 
 
 There was a smothered laugh. 
 
 " Oh ! . . . Monsieur, he's pinching me ! " 
 
 "Really, you are greater babies than you were at 
 Friedensbach ! " 
 
 Silence. Before lying down himself, Reymond sat on 
 the bench outside the chalet for a moment. How the 
 stars twinkled! 
 
 " Who's there? " 
 
 " It's I." 
 
 " My friend Jean ! I am glad to have you alone for a 
 few minutes." 
 
 Around them was a bluish glimmer, a sprinkling of 
 stars — below as well as above, because of the little lake 
 — the breath of space. 
 
 " We might be going to behold the spectacle of crea- 
 tion. I think we could gather stars if we stretched out 
 our hands! What a change from our barrack dormi- 
 tory! " 
 
 " What are your companions like? " 
 
 "That depends on the moment. . . . Abject . . . 
 magnificent." 
 
 They talk eagerly. They evoke memories. What is 
 
252 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 happening at Friedensbach? . . . The little familiar 
 life goes on there as usual. Day after day, in the calm 
 of winter, in the gladness of spring, in the heat of sum- 
 mer, in the melancholy of autumn, each one weaves the 
 web of his fate. Jacobine is dead and old Schmoler is 
 failing. Kummel seems to have lost balance entirely. 
 He raves. His pupils live in perpetual terror of him. 
 
 "Do you think there will be war, Jean? " asks Rey- 
 mond abruptly. 
 
 Jean meditates. 
 
 "Who shall say? . . . Certainly, we are doing noth- 
 ing to provoke it. K it breaks out, it will be because 
 it was forced upon us. In that case, our duty will be 
 clear. There can be but two solutions: slavery or vic- 
 tory. War is mad, ignoble; but it becomes sublime 
 when it is a question of breaking one's chains. . . . Sup- 
 pose this night were the vigil before battle? In any 
 case, I am ready; I may say so without boasting. The 
 thought of fighting in order to put an end to war and to 
 deliver Alsace would enable one to pass through a fur- 
 nace. . . . Unless my will should fail me. . . . One 
 never knows. . . ." 
 
 " It will not fail you, my friend Jean." 
 
 Reymond laid his hand on his young friend's shoulder. 
 They sat facing the solitude of the night, listening to 
 the lament of cascades hanging on the sides of the rocks. 
 
 " What is finer. Monsieur, than to live for a great idea? 
 . . . And when the hour comes, what is finer than to 
 die for it? " 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 253 
 
 " Nevertheless, war means killing, killing men." 
 
 " To me, war means rather the offering of oneself to 
 death." 
 
 " In that case, you force others to kill you." 
 
 " Monsieur, don't say that, please. Don't upset my 
 convictions. . . . There is Alsace. If they attack us and 
 we are beaten, all France, all Europe, would be an 
 Alsace. . . . Switzerland, too. If I fight, it will be for 
 you . . . for . . ." 
 
 " My friend Jean, say no more. I know you. I know 
 you are incapable of any baseness. ... If you go, you 
 will be a brave soldier of the Right. It is not our fault 
 if there are men who force a painful duty on us. . . . It 
 is still a duty." 
 
 " It is still a duty," repeated Jean. 
 
 An icy air rose from the hollow of the valley. They 
 shivered. 
 
 " Let us go in." 
 
 What are the diplomatists doing at this moment? 
 What are the spies doing? What voices are counselling? 
 What hands are signing? Where are the men who, bend- 
 ing over maps, are dividing and partitioning? 
 
 Three o'clock. Reymond rises. He listens to the reg- 
 ular breathing of his companions. How well they are 
 sleeping! The herdsmen are already stirring in the 
 neighbouring chalet, built so close against the rock to 
 escape the wind that it is hardly distinguishable there- 
 from. He sees the light of a swinging lantern; voices 
 speak to the lowing cattle; there is one voice shriller than 
 
254 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 the rest, that of the herd-boy, the bovairon, which is like 
 the little bell on a calf. Whistling a cheerful air, Rey- 
 mond approaches this chalet. Outside the cowshed is a 
 black-bearded giant whose eyes are very gentle, clear as 
 space, a sailor's eyes. They are plainly to be seen, for 
 he raises his lantern at the sound of footsteps. 
 
 " Good-morning. Shall we be troubling you . . ." 
 
 " It depends. . . . Where have you come from at this 
 hour? " 
 
 "We are at the Boitsy chalet; we slept there last 
 night." 
 
 " Ah ! . . . yes, we saw the light. I even went and 
 peeped in at the window. . . . One never can tell. . . . 
 But one soon knows when it's all right." 
 
 " That's well! Now, have you new milk for four? " 
 
 " At your service." 
 
 " And a piece of cheese? " 
 
 "At your service." 
 
 Reymond walks carefully, carrying his jug of milk in 
 both hands. How cold it is on these peaks! The air 
 whips one's face. One breathes ice. 
 
 It is a difficult business to wake people who are sleeping 
 on hay in the middle of the night. If you shake them, 
 they roll over. If you call them, they groan. If you 
 pull them by the feet, they kick. If you tickle them, 
 they laugh and go to sleep again. Reymond has an idea. 
 He will play them the reveille of the mountains as a 
 change from that of the barracks. He intones the Ranz 
 des Vaches in a loud voice. Old, plaintive, and artless 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 255 
 
 song of the shepherds, with something eternal as the 
 mountains in it. The sleepers open their eyes, stretch 
 and yawn. 
 
 "What? What? Ah! yes!" 
 
 " I dreamt of my Colonel." 
 
 " I dreamt I was dancing with shooting stars." 
 
 " I dreamt I was flying round the sun in an aeroplane." 
 
 " Come, boys, get up, get up ! Here are milk and 
 bread and cheese. Set to work." 
 
 " Monsieur, when did you get all this ready? " 
 
 " That's my secret. Fall to! " 
 
 They eat and drink. 
 
 " It's not milk, it's cream," 
 
 "How good this bread is! . . . And this cheese ! . . ." 
 
 "After this, those who love me will follow me to the 
 spring, three minutes from here." 
 
 " Splendid ! Ice-cold water. . . . We'll bathe to our 
 waists. It is so refreshing." 
 
 The hovairon, a boy of fourteen, has had the same idea; 
 in the grey light of early morning he shows his square 
 torso, his muscular arms, his broad hands, whereas the 
 gentlemen from the town reveal fine skins and slender 
 torsoes. 
 
 " Come along! The pool is big enough for us all. 
 Soap yourselves well." 
 
 The little herd is lathering his head and hands method- 
 ically. They imitate him. The water is not clouded. 
 It is so clear. There is so much of it. It bubbles and 
 ripples, reflecting the vigorous young figures, the laugh- 
 
256 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 ing mouths, and the little herd whom it knows well. An 
 eddy: Jean's refined face; an eddy: Charles's resolute 
 face; an eddy: Rene's grimace; an eddy: Professor Rey- 
 mond. And the water runs on, carrying away these 
 images. 
 
 Charles and Rene eye each other. 
 
 " Show me your biceps." 
 
 "Let us wrestle." 
 
 Their youth makes them radiant and provocative. 
 They touch each other, grasp each other, waltz on the 
 short grass, roll on the ground, growling and slapping. 
 
 The cow-shed opens. The cows and calves come out, 
 slowly and doubtfully, blowing through their nostrils. 
 The bearded giant stands on the threshold of the low 
 door, his cap on the back of his head. 
 
 " Are you satisfied with your bovairon? " asked Rey- 
 mond. 
 
 "Oh, he is my own boy! It's his first season in the 
 mountains. Yes, he's shaping well, only that he's afraid 
 of the bull ever since he was tossed over a wall." 
 
 " I don't wonder. . . . Do you belong to these parts? 
 
 " Yes, to the village just below us." 
 
 "And what do you think of the assassination of the 
 heir to the Austrian throne? " 
 
 " The assassination of the heir to the Austrian 
 throne?" replied the man calmly. "What! have they 
 killed another of them? No; we don't know anything 
 about it. We live with the cows. No doubt they will 
 be able to find another heir. It's a good job." 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 257 
 
 " There is even some talk of war." 
 
 " Of war ? " The man shrugged his shoulders. 
 "Bah!" 
 
 "And why not? " asked Jean. 
 
 " The Germans are all eager for it," said Rene. 
 
 "And where do you gentlemen come from? " 
 
 " From Alsace." 
 
 " From Alsace? . . . They say the Germans grip them 
 pretty close down there. . . . War, war! It may be so, 
 after all. I judge all these things after the animals. 
 When they have enough to eat in their mangers, they 
 don't attack the others. But when one of them is hun- 
 gry! . . . Still, the Germans have enough to eat. So 
 they have killed a Prince? ... A relation of William's? 
 ... A rich man then? Yes, it may turn out badly. As 
 far as general tranquillity is concerned, it's better to kill 
 a poor man than a rich one. The poor man is forgot- 
 ten. The rich man has to be avenged. . . . War! . . . 
 However, it will take some time to climb up here." 
 
 Turning his back, the herd went to his boiler. 
 
 A green sky. . . . Below, night is still struggling with 
 dawn. A mortal cold lays hold of one. Everything is 
 livid, everything is wet. Set in a gash in a gloomy gorge, 
 there is a piece of plain barred with a yellow streak, the 
 Rhone. The grasses are quivering. A shudder of sus- 
 pense. The peaks loom corpse-like and sinister in their 
 winding sheets of snow. The highest is suddenly 
 crowned by a diamond that increases in size; presently it 
 becomes a tiara of light. Dawn. A red streak on the 
 
258 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 horizon. The sinister peaks take on the colour of blood, 
 the livid ones warm themselves and laugh gaily. Some 
 jagged crests which remain in the shade sulk, in ugly 
 greyness, with battlements that look like open claws. 
 Night takes refuge in the hollows of the precipices, slips 
 along the flanks of the rocks, glides into the crevices of 
 the gorges, where it crouches like an evil beast. And up 
 above there is a jubilation of resuscitated colours, peaks 
 seated in a circle to adore the sun, fleeting rays, arrows 
 which pierce the slopes, fly from a stone spire to a tower 
 of snow, and fall into the void, where the death-agony 
 of night comes to an end. . . . The grasses raise them- 
 selves, and become inviting; innumerable eyes open 
 among them: the hot eyes of arnica, the blue eyes of gen- 
 tian, drops from the sky, flowers whose name one does 
 not know, but which have the perfume of Paradise. 
 Hunted and pursued, the shadows seek shelter under an 
 overhanging wall, where the water which is oozing out 
 forms little lakes, black as the devil. 
 
 Everywhere now through space the rays of light are 
 thrown in ladders. Why cannot one glide from peak to 
 peak on these slender threads? Intoxicated by the joy of 
 the morning, by the rejuvenescence of the mountain, the 
 boys run hither and thither, giving free rein to their 
 wonder; they dabble in the spring that gushes out between 
 two stones. Created by the sun, this spring sets to work 
 at its task, which is to caress white and blue pebbles. 
 They bend down, they gather colours and perfumes; they 
 pursue insects which come out, they know not whence, 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 259 
 
 and dance like mad creatures, scattering the tense notes 
 of their wings on every side. The travellers enter into 
 the rhythm of things. They are no longer men, the in- 
 habitants of a house, the citizens of a country; they are 
 a nameless parcel of life mirroring itself in the joy of 
 existence; they are eternal and benevolent like the sky, 
 like the sunbeams, like the laughter of the stream; they 
 stretch out their hands and touch the goodness of God. 
 
 " I should like to live a thousand years," says a voice. 
 
 Says another: "Suppose we never go down again to 
 the plain? " 
 
 Detached from an abrupt declivity, an avalanche sud- 
 denly rolls its dusty waves past them. It grinds the firs 
 which bar its passage, carries trunks and boulders along 
 pell-mell, kneads them in its mass, bounds, leaps to the 
 bottom of the abyss, whence there rises a formidable 
 roar, the echo of which, reverberating for a long time, 
 dominates all sounds, and prolongs itself in the lament 
 of the torrent. 
 
 Gay quips are bandied on the sanded tennis-courts. 
 Peace has endured so long! . . . People yawn, and back- 
 bite, and speculate. There are more foolish virgins than 
 wise ones. Gathered round the hotel tables, what 
 swarms of people from every part of the world — people 
 with white skins, yellow skins, grey skins, all Europe, all 
 America! The dust of motor-cars rises in clouds on the 
 roads. The smoke of factories lies over the towns. . . . 
 People work and amuse themselves. They make a great 
 
260 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 deal of money. In the midst of lassitude and luxury, the 
 beast sometimes shows his claws. He draws them in 
 again. . . . Timid people say behind their closed shutters 
 that the world is living too fast, that it makes one giddy to 
 see it. Here and there, under attic roofs, philosophers 
 write terrible things, at which others laugh. Is not the 
 word modern a remedy for all evils? Can there be any- 
 thing wrong with what is modern? So wis say: modern 
 style, modern women, modern religion, modern ideas, 
 modern smartness, modern comfort. 
 
 Masses of doctors are attending masses of neurasthen- 
 ics. Clinics and nursing homes flourish. Hair-dressers 
 buy castles. Washerwomen to whom Countesses say 
 "Pardon me, Madame," reply: "What do you want? " 
 And advertisements show red devils brandishing bottles 
 on a black background. 
 
 Meanwhile the spiders are spinning their webs on the 
 European ceiling. The excited flies dance wildly. These 
 spiders are bloated. Their affairs are prospering. They 
 have devoured a good number of giddy insects; they 
 would like to devour more. New threads are woven 
 round the dance of the flies, round that gay dance in the 
 sunshine. 
 
 War! 
 
 War let loose upon countries but yesterday buzzing 
 with song and music. Drums, tocsins, bugles. Men are 
 hastening. Women are weeping. A deadly suspense 
 hangs on the horizon. . . . And guns are rolling, rifles 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 261 
 
 clatter, bayonets gleam, trains bear their load of young 
 flesh to the frontiers. And the women linger long on the 
 platforms of the stations, holding children in their arms. 
 
 They have gone. Flags float over the deserted gardens. 
 The clouds have black wings. The nights are silent. 
 But no, it is not possible; they will not kill each other! 
 They want to try their strength, to frighten their oppo- 
 nents. Words, phrases, nothing irrevocable. There are 
 the Socialists, the Pacifists, those who pray to God, and 
 God Himself. 
 
 An August morning: blood everywhere. Millions of 
 men are advancing to avenge the dead. The Prussian 
 eagle has planted his claws in the heart of Belgium. 
 Conflagrations, the shrieks of those who are being shot. 
 And the crows are flying in flocks from the woods where 
 they nest. Of what are the dead of Wissembourg think- 
 ing? 
 
 When, in common with many thousands of his country- 
 men, Reymond keeps guard over his little country, whose 
 hillsides are white with the ripening corn, he asks himself 
 anxiously what is happening to his friends in Alsace. 
 Once more blood is being poured out like water on this 
 soil of suffering. During the long night-watches, only a 
 few paces from the frontiers of Alsace, the sentry seems 
 to hear again the quiet breathing of the young men sleep- 
 ing in the hay on the mountain. Where are they at 
 this moment? Are they lying wounded, crying out their 
 agony to the stars? Is the drama of war complicated for 
 
262 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 some of them by a terrible drama of conscience? . . . 
 The lament which Suzanne Weiss used to sing sometimes 
 to her piano assails Reymond's memory: 
 
 " Tree, what seest thou from the peak^ of the Vosges? 
 ... I see horsemen on the blue plain. The sun rises all 
 stained with blood; it sinks all stained with blood. 
 
 "Tree, what seest thou from the peaks of the Vosges? 
 ... I see the dark armies coming to battle under a 
 heavy cloud. They come from the east and from the 
 west. . . . 
 
 " Tree, what seest thou from the peaks of the Vosges? 
 The enemy is dragging my children along with him. . . . 
 Hamlets, spires, and harvests are no more, and my last 
 son is dying against my trunk." 
 
XIII 
 
 From Rene Bohler to Reymond 
 
 X 
 
 August 25. 
 
 OH! that advance! The dream come true at last! I 
 had explained the meaning of Alsace to my men. I 
 felt them thrilling in response. One of them said: 
 "We've got to deliver the Lieutenant's home from the 
 Boches ; it's simple enough. On we go ! " On they went, 
 and how gallantly! Under the fiery sky, marching in 
 the open country through the corn where the grasshoppers 
 were chirping, war seemed a magnificent adventure. 
 Flowers everywhere! Our flag blossoming in every field! 
 We went along singing, white with dust, our tunics 
 unbuttoned, our caps on the backs of our heads. And 
 when I looked round I saw the eyes of my men, brilliant 
 eyes, shining with joy. . . . War! We did not want it, 
 we did not seek it. Not content with stealing Alsace- 
 Lorraine from us, they have been harassing us for forty- 
 four years! A dozen times we gave in, we abased our- 
 selves to keep the peace. Half of the Congo has just 
 been given up to them. What then? Now they want 
 Belgium, Luxemburg, Nancy, and Paris. Good! We 
 have clear consciences. The man who is warned is worth 
 a dozen taken by surprise: we must beat them or be 
 
 263 
 
264 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 crushed ourselves. 'Tis well. They wanted war. We 
 are going gladly to meet them. 
 
 A halt. The soup is cooked. The smoke of bivouac 
 fires rises behind the hedges. Stretched out on the grass, 
 the soldier forgets hunger, thirst, and aching feet. War ! 
 There is a glitter of helmets. Our dragoon-patrols. Not 
 an enemy in sight! Where are they, then? This cloud- 
 less sky, these ears of waving corn irritate us. It is all 
 too calm. Then our hearts beat with a sudden anxiety. 
 No doubt they are waiting for us on the edge of that 
 wood we see at the foot of the hill yonder ... in Alsace, 
 . . . The men light cigarette after cigarette. They joke. 
 They tickle each other with blades of grass. One of them 
 has fallen asleep, his head on his pack, his mouth open, 
 his eyes glassy. A voice cries: " I say, Lardemont is 
 dead! . . ." 
 
 They laugh. They soon wake Lardemont by throwing 
 clods of earth at him. They don't like to see him sleep- 
 ing like that. 
 
 "All who have photographs of their young 'uns had 
 better have a look at them now ! " says a wag. " We 
 can't be sure that the hinges of our eyes will be in work- 
 ing order tomorrow." 
 
 They look at each other. The wag chants in a cafe 
 concert voice: " Melanie . . . when I see thee, bending 
 over the periwinkle flower. . . ." 
 
 Up! We are off! The packs are a bit heavy. And 
 always in front of us we see those helmets passing along 
 the houses, disappearing, gleaming like stars on the hil- 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 265 
 
 lock where we watch them. We are going to make war 
 gallantly. We show ourselves. 
 
 The frontier is only five hundred metres ahead. I see 
 the boundary-stone, the post. That village, the smoke 
 which rises in spirals above the roofs as if nothing were 
 happening, are in Alsace. The dragoons are there al- 
 ready. The lucky dogs! One of them — I see him 
 through my field-glasses — has dismounted. A peasant 
 is standing near him, an Alsatian, evidently, who is 
 explaining, stretching his arm out always in the same 
 direction; he is pointing, no doubt, because the dragoon 
 cannot understand a word of his patois. 
 
 Alsace! I cannot describe my emotion. You would 
 think me a mystic, a visionary : I thought my heart would 
 burst! At every step I repeated: "Alsace! Alsace! " 
 The blood surged to my head. I saw the landscape red. 
 I wanted to speak to my men. But there are moments 
 when this is impossible. . . . Two hundred metres more. 
 . . . A ditch! I took a run, meaning to jump and land 
 beyond the boundary-stone. Ugh! ... I picked myself 
 up and limped three paces . . . then I fell. The men 
 hurried up. "You are wounded. Lieutenant. But no 
 one fired." It was a severe sprain. My ankle was as 
 big as my knee in ten minutes. It was too stupid. I 
 cried with rage; I tore up the grass near me; I spat upon 
 the clods. But no more. I should break my pen. 
 
 So now I have been in hospital at C for three 
 
 weeks, stretched on a chaise-longue, bored to death, swear- 
 ing in Alsatian and in French, and snarling at my orderly. 
 
266 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 There are such numbers of wounded. ... I devour the 
 newspapers. But we are getting on. Or, rather, we 
 shall get on. Just at present it's awful. They have 
 ten machine-guns to our one, and they mow us down like 
 grass. Those who have escaped from the German army 
 tell us fearful things. I will not repeat them. I do not 
 want to be too much moved. What is happening in 
 Lorraine is particularly awful. Jean is there with his 
 regiment. I know nothing of him. May God keep him! 
 
 Where are the Weisses? . . . Have they been able 
 to pass through the lines? ... In Alsace, just as in 
 France, no one believed in war. The Germans told them 
 just what they liked. So they were taken by surprise. 
 What tragedies there have been! How many are at this 
 moment hiding in the woods, hunted down by German 
 patrols! Dozens of them come over to us every day. 
 Brave Alsace! Charles Weiss must be somewhere in 
 Poland. You remember how he used to say to us: " War 
 will be declared in the spring. I shall have time to make 
 tracks." Poor fellow ! What he must be enduring if he 
 is still alive! Can it be true that not two months ago 
 Weiss, my brother, and I were with you on the moun- 
 tains? It was a beautiful time! But wasn't it an hallu- 
 cination? 
 
 And Friedensbach is French again — the whole valley 
 as far as Thann. Friedensbach French! My parents, 
 who are still there, tell me that it was delirious, indescrib- 
 able. . . . Doring and Kummel made off like hares. 
 They were seen clambering with all their belongings into 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 267 
 
 the train which carried off the officials, and which, for 
 once, hehaved like an express, and looking out of the 
 window with white, scared faces, scrutinizing the hushes 
 and the farmyards. . . . Friedensbach without Kummel! 
 I have hopes of seeing it again in the course of the war. 
 It would be vastly amusing. 
 
 How can I joke? . . . What is left of my poor 
 regiment? How many of my friends, and of my men, 
 who are my friends too, will come back? However, 
 what consoles me a little is that I shall be with them in a 
 week, ready to make up for lost time. We shall win. 
 We must! There can be no shadow of a doubt. If the 
 individual perishes, what does it matter ! If only France 
 is victorious! If only our little country becomes French 
 again ! 
 
 As I have some time on my hands now, and as you will 
 hear nothing of me when once I am in the thick of it 
 again, I am going to copy out a description of the entry 
 of the French into Mulhouse from the field-diary of one 
 of my comrades, who was brought into hospital here 
 three days ago, only slightly wounded. What I would 
 have given to see it myself! It makes me furious again 
 to think of it! Steady! This fellow, a Second-Lieu- 
 tenant like myself, is a calm, thoughtful, critical chap. 
 So his notes have a real documentary value. If they 
 were written by an Alsatian, one might distrust them — 
 enthusiasm plays tricks with the eye and the judgment — 
 but this Parisian is above suspicion. I am prouder of 
 my Alsace than ever! 
 
268 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 What is happening with you in Switzerland? ... Be 
 on your guard. . . . Belgium, Luxemburg. . . . What 
 next? 
 
 Your old friend and pupil greets you cordially. 
 When shall I write to you again? . . . When shall we 
 meet again? . . . One must not think. One must act at 
 present. I long to begin. 
 
 Your Affectionate 
 Rene Bohler. 
 
 Extract from a Field-Diary. 
 
 August 7. — Sudden orders to leave X . 1.30. 
 
 Fine starry night. We are to advance. There is some 
 excitement. We march silently along the frontier. We 
 arrive at the entrance to a forest. " Go and reconnoitre," 
 says the captain to me; he presses my hand. I set off 
 at the head of a patrol. 
 
 The frontier. Glorious moment! I order arms to be 
 presented at 5.30 a.m. We advance cautiously. Not a 
 shot. Only one of the men calls my attention to a rider- 
 less horse galloping through the wood. 
 
 The first Alsatian village: Y . Cheerful houses, 
 
 flowers, an open road. Two devout old ladies come out 
 of the church, and make off hastily, keeping close to the 
 walls, without looking at us. The priest arrives on the 
 scene. He comes towards me, holding out his hand. 
 He asks for help. A German dragoon is dying in the 
 church, shot in the stomach. I send word to the doctor 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 269 
 
 in the rear. At the end of the village, I call a halt. The 
 men pile arms and wait. 
 
 The peasants show themselves, gaining confidence. 
 The first who comes to us cannot speak French, but he 
 brings two baskets of plums and distributes them. When 
 I offer to pay he laughs and refuses the money. Then 
 comes an entire family, with bread, wine, and butter. 
 They are delighted to talk French. The young daughters 
 pour out wine for the men. The father, a well-to-do 
 farmer, offers us information concerning the local topog- 
 raphy and what he knows of the German movements. 
 
 We set off again. This time every one is out on the 
 doorsteps. They salute us, but without speaking. A 
 peasant woman crosses herself and says to me, as I pass: 
 " Take care ; they are so cruel ! " A group of men in the 
 market-place applaud. An old man with a white im- 
 perial comes and stands before me with his son, gives 
 a military salute, and cries : " Long live France ! " The 
 women at the windows clap their hands. 
 
 Another village. Confidence is gaining ground. We 
 feel that there is joy in the hearts of all those who come 
 to meet us. A large group of men, young and old, 
 await us at the entrance of the village. They all want 
 to shake hands with me. "Only think! " says one of 
 them. " You are the first French officer to enter Alsace." 
 Another, a huge fellow wearing a blacksmith's apron, 
 cries: "Bring us Forstner! " All join in the laugh. 
 They want to give the men more wine. I have to stop 
 them. 
 
270 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 All of a sudden there are shots. At last; it is almost a 
 relief to come upon them. There they are, crouching in 
 
 their trenches, in front of Z . The first whistle of 
 
 the bullets. Then an attack, sudden and violent. One 
 does not know. One does not see. And presently we 
 find ourselves mixed up with them in their trenches. 
 They make off, leaving four dead, the first I have seen. 
 
 We enter the village. The Colonel orders a duly 
 impressive march past. The inhabitants show themselves 
 freely, their faces beaming. They cannot get over having 
 seen the precipitate flight of the Prussians. The colours 
 pass. All salute them. It is warm, clear, and fine. I 
 am dead tired and full of glee. It is truly a festival here. 
 I am billeted on a worthy fellow who fought in 1870. 
 " It's all right this time," he says. He wants to tell me 
 about his campaigns. But I cannot listen. I am half- 
 asleep as I stand. 
 
 A night of alarms. Firing goes on unusually. Is it 
 an illusion? . . . Are they returning? Anyhow, I can- 
 not sleep. My host is greatly distressed that I should not 
 have benefited by his bed. 
 
 August 8. — A calm morning. A German aeroplane 
 pays us a visit. We fire at it. Where are our machines? 
 Are we not the masters of the air? ... I visit my 
 outposts. What a beautiful country! 
 
 Luncheon with the Captain at a private house. The 
 host serves us with enthusiasm. His eyes are fixed upon 
 us with a sort of adoration. But he can only speak 
 German. His wife, a pretty and well-educated Alsatian, 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 271 
 
 knows French, fortunately. She has been to a boarding- 
 school at Montelibeard, and is proud of it. " Then, it's 
 all over now," she says; "we shan't see them again? 
 We shall meet at Mulhouse next 14th of July." She 
 brings us dainty dishes which the whole family has been 
 preparing for us. " It will be better this evening. We 
 shall have had more time." They refuse payment of 
 any kind. 
 
 A sudden order to attack. The inhabitants distribute 
 fruit to the men. In the wood the troops are in fighting 
 formation. Hares are frolicking about, and the men are 
 amused. I cannot perceive any emotion among them. 
 The country is beautiful, the inhabitants are amiable, 
 it's a fine adventure. A few shots. Silence. When we 
 
 debouch at , the Prussians have decamped again. 
 
 We begin to think this strange. We learn that they have 
 evacuated Alsace, and are entrenched behind the Rhine. 
 Four dragoons come in. The road to Mulhouse is clear. 
 One of the dragoons is so excited by the news he brings 
 that he shouts it aloud to all comers. 
 
 We advance column by column, quick march. It is 
 difficult to believe we are marching to battle. The men 
 are singing gaily. Outside all the houses women offer 
 wine and children give or scatter flowers. What an 
 extraordinary progress ! 
 
 We enter , one of the working-class quarters of 
 
 Mulhouse. It was deeply impressive. An enormous 
 crowd, ardent and enthusiastic, was ranged upon the 
 
272 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 pavements. All the workmen stood bare-headed. Many 
 press forward to shake hands with me. Cries of " Long 
 live France!" and "Bravo!" resound. The children 
 sing or whistle the Marseillaise. The Captain, hitherto 
 so impassible, has tears in his eyes. My sergeant says 
 to me : " To think we are in the enemy's country ! " And 
 one of my men, deeply moved, declares: "All the same. 
 Lieutenant, it's worth while to have one's head broken 
 for such people! " Now the band plays and the flag is 
 unfurled. It is the great march past so often dreamt of! 
 I think of many famous entries: Milan, the triumphant 
 returns, and the dreams of the vanquished of 1870. To 
 be present at such a realization at the first blow is too 
 magnificent, too overwhelming! We halt in the suburb, 
 in front of a shop. The tradesman, a big jovial fellow, 
 calls my men, distributes ham and sausages among them, 
 and refuses all payment. But he demands order in a 
 stentorian voice: "Every man in his turn! . . . They 
 shall all have some." And he cries again : " This is to 
 avenge my son, who is with the Schwobs." A woman 
 arrives, her arms full of boxes of cigars and cigarettes, 
 and distributes them among the delighted and astonished 
 men. 
 
 We were billeted in a working-class quarter. All the 
 inhabitants rushed out, offering wine and all sorts of 
 things. It was becoming rather too strong. I had to 
 restrain them. But a young, bright-eyed girl came to me, 
 saying: "You must let us give things to your men, 
 Lieutenant. We have been waiting for you for so long." 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 273 
 
 Every one was eager to put us up. Our hosts said with 
 tears in their eyes: "It's too beautiful! It's like a 
 dream! " And again, in the course of the meal, the 
 warning was repeated : " Take care. They are so cruel ! " 
 There is a holiday fever in the billets, in spite of the 
 silence prescribed. 
 
 August 9. — Another sudden departure. Two o'clock 
 in the morning. We pass through the wakeful town, and 
 find the houses open and brightly lighted. We are going 
 to occupy the heights overlooking the 111. The artillery 
 is being massed behind us. The General assembles the 
 ofl&cers and explains that we shall probably force the 
 forest of La Hardt and march on the Rhine. What a 
 beginning ! 
 
 It is Sunday. The bells are ringing. The Mulhousians 
 in their holiday dress come to see us. We talk and 
 laugh. It is like a fine Sunday in the provinces, or 
 Longchamp before the review. And bells on every side, 
 joy in every heart. 
 
 Five o'clock. Departure. The whole brigade is to 
 march towards the north. The Germans are coming 
 back. We are to move rapidly. One division is already 
 engaged. It must be supported. The roar of cannon 
 is heard. This time it is really battle. We pass through 
 a village, and then through Mulhouse, faster and faster. 
 The inhabitants are greatly agitated. There are people 
 on every doorstep, and all are anxious to give wine to the 
 soldiers. Young girls run along beside the columns to 
 empty the bottles they have in their hands. There are 
 
274 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 many anxious faces, especially among the women. And 
 the same words are repeated on every hand : " Courage ! 
 Confidence! Take care! Bravo! " and there is the same 
 eagerness to press the hands of the officers. 
 
 A house near the station is already riddled with frag- 
 ments of shell. We are going through Mulhouse. In 
 the Rue de Colmar people are hurrying into their houses. 
 The artillery cuts across us, galloping towards the east. 
 All of a sudden a good fellow, running up to me, pushes 
 me on to the pavement: " Look out! Take care! There 
 they are! " I have scarcely had time to understand 
 when, as I emerge upon a bridge, I am greeted by bullets. 
 The Captain, cold and elegant, advances firmly. We 
 follow him. The fire becomes hotter. The Captain, 
 calm as ever, crosses the street without bending his head, 
 looking for an opening. At last he finds a court, and 
 signs to us. We hurry into it, and breathe for a moment. 
 But the Captain sends me with my section to meet the 
 enemy. I find myself in front of a wide expanse of 
 waste ground, between two houses. I see the Germans; 
 I hear their words of command. My men, full of self- 
 confidence, fire steadily, with no trace of panic. 
 
 Day is dying, and night is upon us. It is very fine. 
 The sky is thickly sprinkled with stars. The melancholy 
 bugles of the Prussians are sounding signals, the mystery 
 of which weighs on our hearts, in spite of ourselves. Are 
 they going to charge? It is already very dark, when a 
 good woman comes down from the neighbouring house. 
 Lying on the ground, she calls one of the men, and hands 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 275 
 
 him a bucket of coffee. Then the fire slackens. But on 
 the east the cannonade and rifle-fire are terrific. Great 
 flames shoot up in the distance; one hears a tremendous 
 clamour. Poor creatures, loaded with packages, come 
 running towards us. They have been driven out of their 
 houses by the Germans. They weep. We try to comfort 
 them. We have almost ceased firing. The men are 
 joking to pass the time. 
 
 Two o'clock in the morning. I am going to make a 
 reconnaissance towards the railway-station, whence they 
 were firing on us. I arrive at the gates without hearing 
 a shot. I climb over them. Nothing, absolute silence. 
 Behind, the road stretches away, white and empty. Is 
 it all over? 
 
 August 10. — Noise on the road, carts and voices. Are 
 they reinforcements? I go towards the road to find out, 
 and am fired at. I hurry back to my men. We wait 
 anxiously. 
 
 Day is breaking. Suddenly there is a shout: "Who 
 goes there? " The reply is a terrific volley from ma- 
 chine-guns, in front of us, to the right, to the left. Bul- 
 lets scream and twist over our heads. The plaster of the 
 surrounding houses crumbles, the windows are shattered. 
 It is impossible to fire. We do not know where the 
 volley comes from. I do not know where my company 
 is. Suddenly a brisk fire breaks out on our left. Have 
 we been turned? I order the men to fall back. By 
 leaps and bounds, under the bullets, we reach the canal. 
 It is impossible to pass. We are under fire from every 
 
276 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 side. At last I find an opening, a narrow alley, and 
 discover my battalion huddled in a network of streets. 
 The people in the houses are looking at us. They bring 
 out hot wine to us. Ah! the good creatures! 
 
 The Major sees me and comes towards me. " It's 
 all up with us! " he says. The Captain adds: " I believe 
 we are surrounded, but we must wait till it is lighter." 
 Shells are now sweeping the street into which the narrow 
 alley where we are crouching debouches. How are we 
 to get out? Creeping against the walls, we defile in 
 good order. From time to time a shell whirls over our 
 heads, doing no damage. 
 
 Now we are out on the banks of the 111. It is an 
 exquisite morning. We see no one. We climb the 
 slopes of the 111 and march, famished and exhausted, 
 but not in disorder. At last we halt in a village, after 
 marching for miles. . . . How blessed to rest! We 
 go into billets. The inhabitants welcome us as before. 
 Have they heard the news or not? They see, of course, 
 that we are retreating, but they show no sign of distrust 
 or fear. We can breathe quietly, and the night passes 
 without any alarms. 
 
 " We're still at home in Alsace, sir," says my sergeant. 
 
 From Victor Weiss, 
 
 Friedensbach, 
 
 October 30, 1914. 
 
 Dear Friend, 
 
 How many things have happened in three months ! 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 277 
 
 I ought to have written before in answer to your kind 
 letter, but we have been having a terrible time. . . . 
 Strange that we did not believe war was coming. We 
 were too near the powder-magazine to know what was 
 going on inside. Up to the very last day our masters 
 fed us on false news; war was already declared when they 
 were telling us that everything would be arranged. We 
 learned the truth only when the first shots were fired 
 from the summits of the Vosges. An hour afterwards 
 Francois, who was working at his thesis for his doctor's 
 degree with us, had gone to the forest. We spent some 
 hours of mortal anxiety. How many of our poor Alsa- 
 tians have been shot down like dogs as they were gliding 
 along from tree to tree towards the frontier! 
 
 One morning about seven o'clock shots were heard 
 close at hand. Our masters made off in all haste — po- 
 licemen, Customs officers, officials of every kind, Doring, 
 and Kummel, bareheaded, his red hair bristling on his 
 Pan-German skull, dressed, in his agitation, in a dressing- 
 gown, and clasping the bust of the Emperor in his arms. 
 . . . We have not seen him since. Shortly afterwards 
 we heard the hurried tramp of the Chasseurs Alpins in 
 our street. Then, how did it happen? I don't know. 
 In a minute all the flowers in the gardens were gathered: 
 they fell in showers from the windows on to the blue caps; 
 in a minute, the tricoloured flags appeared. I could not 
 have believed that there were so many in Friedensbach : 
 faded, crumpled, ragged, time-worn as they were, they 
 shook out gaily in the August sunshine. Near me, 
 
278 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 leaning out of the same window, was my father. Eighty- 
 five years old! Like all the rest of us, he was weeping 
 silently. Looking up at that venerable head, the officers 
 saluted with their swords. . . . The flag was dipped. . . . 
 It is impossible to describe such things. 
 
 A month later my beloved and honoured father died 
 quietly in his arm-chair. Since that march past of the 
 Chasseurs Alpins in our Friedensbach street, he had 
 never spoken. He was already gone. What more had 
 he to wait for in life? We wrapped him in the historic 
 flag. At the grave there was a section of the Alpins, 
 the band, the Major of the battalion: " I bow before this 
 witness of Alsatian suffering." My gallant father! It 
 was the faith of these men which prepared the days 
 through which we are now living. 
 
 And whom did we see one morning standing at the 
 garden-gate but Frangois in the uniform of a foot 
 Chasseur. He had been three days in the forest, hunted 
 by Customs officers and rangers. . . . He was arrested 
 by the French as a spy, and imprisoned. There was an 
 enquiry. Now he is a corporal. The most unlikely 
 things seem natural in these days. One adapts oneself. 
 One accepts. If the moon came down to earth it would 
 hardly astonish us. 
 
 And now I must tell you of our sorrow. And it is 
 because of this that I have delayed writing to you so 
 long, hoping every day to hear that our Charles is a 
 prisoner in Russia. This would mean that two months 
 later he would be a French soldier! Alas! this news has 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 279 
 
 not come to us. Two postcards, six lines, told us that 
 he was in East Prussia, and then in Poland. . . . We 
 can imagine what is going on in the heart of this boy. I 
 am still waiting confidently. Vigorous, intelligent, with 
 a will of iron, our Charles will find his hour. It will 
 come. It has perhaps already come. But how far away 
 Russia is! . . . Think of us. I believe in telepathy. 
 Send out sympathetic fluids to us, more and ever more. 
 My wife worries terribly. She sends her remembrances 
 to you, and so does our little Marie, our consolation in all 
 these trials, the only one of our children left to us; for 
 Suzanne is a nurse at Besangon, where she is devoting 
 herself heart and soul to the wounded. Ah! why to the 
 devil am I sixty -three years old? 
 
 Defend Switzerland well if she is attacked. I press 
 your hand in the Alsatian fashion, which means that I 
 almost crush it. 
 
 Your Friend, 
 
 Victor Weiss. 
 
 From Jean Bohler, 
 
 X , 
 
 May 10, 1915. 
 Dear Master and Friend, 
 
 I have scarcely written to you. Only a few words 
 on postcards. I am like that; it costs me more of an 
 effort to seize a pen than to go into battle. It is an 
 indolence of the mind that I find it very hard to over- 
 come. I think, too, that I have seen too much. Things 
 that cannot be told. If I am going to try today, it is be- 
 
280 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 cause you and your people ought to know what sort of a 
 war they have imposed on us. 
 
 First of all I must explain why I have leisure to write. 
 I have two bullets, one in my leg, one in my shoulder. 
 They are nursing and coddling me, and operating on me 
 too. I am beginning to get up. And I am so fat and 
 rosy that within five or six weeks I shall rejoin my battery, 
 where my Captain is anxiously awaiting the return of 
 his Second-Lieutenant — for I have been a Second- 
 Lieutenant since January. I have good news from home. 
 At the end of every letter there are the words Courage, 
 my son. Father writes courage; mother, my son. With 
 that in my pocket-book and my heart I would go to the 
 end of the world, and at any rate to the end of Alsace. 
 Dear country! The part of it we have retaken is being 
 furiously bombarded by the Kummels. How many 
 villages are now nothing but heaps of stones ! Friedens- 
 bach, which our troops took in the early days of the war, 
 has fared better. From time to time, however, Kummel 
 sends a greeting across the mountain, more or less hap- 
 hazard. On New Year's Eve, the shoemaker Herzog 
 and his apprentice were killed in their workshop, and in 
 February a woman and her two children ! . . . War ! 
 
 There is good news from Rene. He is fighting in 
 Alsace. You will not be surprised to hear that he has 
 already been twice mentioned in dispatches. I am proud 
 of my younger brother. 
 
 Have you heard that Emile Zumbach fell at the wood 
 of La Grurie? His "escape" from Alsace was an 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 281 
 
 extraordinary business. Always modest and taciturn, 
 he fought with a bravery and contempt of death that 
 won him the military medal. And he was shot through 
 the heart in an attack, just ten paces from the German 
 trench. Gallant friend! The first of our little band to 
 go! Who will be the next? 
 
 And Andre Berger, of whom Rene said that night on 
 the mountain : " He disgusts me ; when he talks you 
 would think his mouth was full of powdered sugar " — 
 Berger, so cold, so distant, so provoking, has splendid 
 reports, as one who is always ready for a tough job. 
 Bravo ! 
 
 I have little or no news of the poor Weisses. Frangois 
 is fighting with us. As to Charles, who was surprised by 
 the declaration of war on the confines of Russia, and 
 closely watched, no doubt he was in the hurly-burly from 
 the very first. You know him. You realize how he 
 must have suffered. There has been no word of him for 
 a long time. What has happened to him? I dare not 
 think of it, and I will say no more, for fear of saying too 
 much. 
 
 Truly, war is a more ignoble business than anything 
 that could be imagined. Ignoble is a euphemism. No 
 words can express it. Alsace's greatness in the eyes of 
 history will lie in the fact that she consented to suffer 
 rather than provoke war. Now I understand my father's 
 answer to the stranger who asked him: " Do you wish for 
 revenge {la revanche) ? " " We feel we have no right," 
 he replied, " to send millions and millions of men to theii: 
 
282 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 death in order to put an end to the injustice of which we 
 are the victims. We will never cease to bear witness to 
 the violence done to us, to protest against it in the name 
 of human dignity and as a conscientious duty. But that 
 very conscience forbids us to desire the butchery which 
 would deliver us. If we stand fast, what should be will 
 be. I believe in the eflScacy of suffering." I remember 
 that I felt indignant at the time. How could I under- 
 stand at the age of eighteen? My father had seen and 
 had made war. 
 
 And now it is my turn. And I say again that war is 
 worse than ignoble. The day after a battle! The 
 ground strewn with debris, dying horses rolling in their 
 own entrails, shell-holes half full of water, and in them 
 wide-eyed corpses already livid and stinking under the 
 sun or the rain. It's horrible! It's hideous! I have 
 vomited at the sight. 
 
 We must draw our strength from this ugliness of war. 
 The filthier it is, the greater is the crime of those who 
 planned it, who let it loose at their own hour, and decreed 
 that it should be atrocious, savage, without quarter, 
 stained with every crime, in the hope that our hearts 
 would fail us and that we should fall on our knees. The 
 foul deeds by which they hoped to subdue us have 
 revealed our duty to us. It is very simple. We must 
 put an end to war. We must harry those who have made 
 it a national industry. And that is why the most ardent 
 anti-militarists are fighting like lions. An awful task 
 is laid upon us. But we know (and we Alsatians by 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 283 
 
 experience) what the sufferings of the world would be if 
 we did not accomplish it. It may count upon us. 
 
 It was on the 25th of August, 1914, that I first realized 
 the sort of enemy we have to deal with. That evening we 
 were fighting in Lorraine, thirty kilometres from Metz. 
 From the place where our battery lay we could see the 
 time on the clock-tower of Mars-la-Tour. Alas! it w,as 
 not yet the hour of deliverance ! Our soldiers held their 
 ground with a demoniacal recklessness, which was en- 
 hanced by the attraction of that beloved soil we hoped to 
 free. We fought from dawn to sunset. In the evening 
 the battlefield lay before us with all its horrors, its 
 ghastly sights. I shall remember the spectacle as long 
 as I live. It was about eight o'clock in the evening. The 
 country rose and fell in undulations as far as the eye 
 could reach. On every side were the dead and wounded 
 abandoned by the Germans. A lowering sky, a red globe 
 very low on the horizon, gave a sinister aspect to fields 
 and woods and hills. We marched forward silently in 
 the fading light in the midst of corpses, wounded, and 
 dying men, imploring our pity: Durst . , . trinken 
 (Thirst . . . drink). A German whose right cheek was 
 hanging loose like a red rag, murmured: Arzt . . . ein 
 Arzt (A doctor). But the words, passing through the 
 gaping hole in his face came to us in a vague sound, so 
 transformed that only the profound pity we felt for the 
 miserable man enabled us to understand them. In the 
 midst of all the death-rattles, the screams of the dying, 
 we heard in the distance a strident, horrible whistle, 
 
284 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 rending the heavy air, and rising above the concert of 
 groans. It was no doubt some wounded man who was 
 spending all his remaining strength in an appeal for 
 help which never came. 
 
 Of course, we picked up all the German wounded we 
 could take, and put them on our waggons. We formed 
 our park towards midnight in the darkness, near a village 
 where there had been furious fighting during the day. 
 The next morning at dawn we gathered up brains, 
 distorted limbs, and skulls already rotting, between the 
 legs of our horses and our guns. We had unknowingly 
 bivouacked on a spot where the struggle had been par- 
 ticularly fierce. 
 
 But another spectacle of horror lay before us. Passing 
 through the village which the Germans had held till the 
 night before (Rouvres, between Etain and Metz), we 
 found a heap of corpses of women and young girls. One 
 of them still clasped in her blood-stained arms a baby 
 whose little body was riddled with bayonet wounds. We 
 wept with rage and grief. In this same village we were 
 told that a man who had been dragged away by the 
 soldiers was just about to be shot against a wall when his 
 daughter, a charming little fair-haired creature of seven- 
 teen — I saw her corpse — threw herself on her knees be- 
 fore the officers, begging for her father's life. They re- 
 pulsed her brutally. They made her witness his execu- 
 tion. Shortly afterwards, her mutilated body was thrown 
 on to the heap of female corpses at the entrance to the 
 village. Into what a hell we have gone down! 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 285 
 
 All this was only a beginning. Since then I have seen 
 such horrors that I sometimes wonder whether they are 
 possible, or whether I am the prey of terrible hallucina- 
 tions. What is death compared to the life we should 
 lead if we were beaten ? I assure you one needs more 
 courage to offer a moral resistance to the sight of all 
 these horrible and atrocious things than to face an 
 avalanche of high explosives and 10.5 shells. But fear 
 nothing. Ask yourself no questions. We shall not be 
 beaten. This will not go on. They will fall. The 
 weight of their crimes will drag them down into the abyss. 
 
 We have already gone through many dark hours. 
 Well, never, even when we were utterly exhausted, drunk 
 with fatigue, did we despair. 
 
 I was at Senlis on the 2nd of September. My division 
 had orders to protect the left wing of our army. We 
 maintained contact with the enemy. At Saint-Chamant, 
 and then on the high road from Senlis to Meaux, we ex- 
 hausted our ammunition fighting against an enemy three 
 times superior to us in numbers. How many comrades 
 I left there, officer friends and gallant troopers who died 
 with such simplicity beside us! Just one last look which 
 means " Stand fast! " and then the other world. 
 
 We were retreating slowly under an incessant hail of 
 bullets. On the evening of the 2nd of September, when 
 we passed through Senlis again, shells were already rain- 
 ing upon it, pursuing us without intermission. You can- 
 not imagine what our feelings were as we marched once 
 more through the town where the population had made 
 
286 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 festival in our honour two days before. They had re- 
 ceived us as their saviours, throwing flowers to us. And 
 these strangers, who knew what awaited them, who knew 
 the enemy was only three kilometres away, and were al- 
 ready getting their first shells, still encouraged us. The 
 women smiled, and the old men pressed our hands. 
 
 After this came the strenuous days of the Marne; I 
 was at Barcy, Marcilly, Strepilly, Ay-en-Multien. Then 
 there were the battles on the Aisne, the march towards 
 the sea, Lassigny and Roye. Then five months in mud 
 up to our necks, between the waters of earth and sky, 
 dragging with us our 75's, which are like our children. 
 We are still confident. Our soldiers are splendid. Yet 
 there are hours when the human machine gets out of gear, 
 when the springs are relaxed. Then I think of Alsace. 
 I look back to the hill of Wissembourg. I remember my 
 vow. I probe the depths of my being, and I find a 
 peaceful heart, an unfaltering will. 
 
 Sometimes I close my eyes the better to see the faces 
 of those who have fallen beside me. It is really difiicult 
 to distinguish myself from them, for at the front the 
 barrier between living and dead is so slight. . . . And 
 now, more fortunate than many mutilated companions, 
 I am waiting at the hospital for orders to return. I hope 
 to arrive before the great offensive. This phrase of my 
 Captain's will go with me: "Let us do a gallant duty 
 gallantly." 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 287 
 
 From Jean Bohler. 
 
 June 20, 1915. 
 
 I am off on Saturday. I don't say that I go with joy — 
 such a word would be offensive — but certainly I shall go 
 calmly, glad to rejoin my comrades in that furnace where 
 the life of man is but as straw. We must make an end 
 of those who have attempted to murder Europe. It may 
 seem strange to you, but I have no hatred in my heart. 
 Indeed, one very rarely hears a violent word from the lips 
 of soldiers — I mean of those who have been at the front. 
 The methods of our enemies disgust and revolt us: 
 burning men alive by means of Flammenwerfer, suffo- 
 cating them by gases. . . . Yet we respect the combatant 
 who offers his life as we offer ours. What we want to 
 overthrow is a system which perverts the moral sense. 
 A wounded man in the bed next to mine expressed him- 
 self this morning as follows: "They are sick ... we 
 must cure them." ^ 
 
 I read everything relating to Switzerland with the 
 greatest interest. Like us, like all the countries in the 
 world, you have been encircled, cajoled, fettered eco- 
 nomically. It is not surprising, therefore, that many 
 should have been bound by their interests, and that 
 others — so skilfully have facts been perverted — have 
 been unable to believe in the enormity of the crimes com- 
 mitted. The recently naturalized tradesmen and jour- 
 nalists have done their best to trouble the waters. True, 
 all of us in France looked for unanimous indignation on 
 the part of neutrals, after the violation of Belgium and 
 
288 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 Luxemburg and the innumerable atrocities that were 
 committed. Little Switzerland, neutral out of the re- 
 spect due to treaties, protesting in the sight of the world 
 against those who by violating treaties make all inter- 
 national relations impossible! What a lesson it would 
 have been! . . . What authority it would have given you, 
 with what respect you would have been surrounded! 
 
 But enough of this. These matters do not concern 
 me. It is your business to thresh them out among your- 
 selves. On the other hand, what you tell me about your 
 comrades in the regiment, and about your people, the 
 real Swiss people, fills me with joy. They know, above 
 all they feel that our cause is theirs, that our defeat 
 would be that of liberty, that the bird of prey must be 
 struck down. Our wounded repatriated from Germany 
 tell us of their journey through your country, of the 
 crowds at the stations from Schaffhausen to Geneva in the 
 middle of the night, of things which bring tears to one's 
 eyes. The words your authorities have not said have 
 been cried aloud by your people. They throw their 
 whole hearts into the carriages of our wounded, together 
 with their flowers and letters and parcels. You cannot 
 imagine how these spontaneous manifestations strengthen 
 us. 
 
 I can assure you that our soldiers deserve this sympa- 
 thy. I have seen hundreds of them die. Their deaths 
 have not been at all like those described in well-meaning 
 feuilletons, deaths embellished by a theatrical gesture. 
 A grandiloquent cry, a sublime apostrophe to the enemy. 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 289 
 
 They have done what they could. They have offered 
 their lives. The hour has come to give them. They close 
 their eyes; they suffer in silence or they moan; they die. 
 No sight could be more sublime. And nearly all these 
 men have wives and children, and love life. Yet they 
 have agreed to the sacrifice. They well know why. 
 Would it be worth while to live in slavery? 
 
 I can assure you that our soldiers understand. What 
 do they all say? — " We are fighting that our children 
 may never know anything of this beastliness. We shall 
 have to pay the price, but it will never happen again." 
 You would look in vain for a Kummel among us. They 
 accomplish the most extraordinary things. It seems 
 quite simple to them. And one never hears a word of 
 pride or exaggeration from them. If you question those 
 who have decorations, nine times out of ten you will get 
 this answer: "I only did my duty like all the other 
 chaps." I declare that I, in my turn, do not exaggerate 
 when I say that in their quasi-unanimity our soldiers are 
 magnificent. There is a mighty force in them. They 
 know that they are in the right. Above all, you must 
 not believe that the Germans are our equals in moral 
 strength. They are formidable adversaries, it is true. 
 They have plenty of pluck. But they fight like Germans, 
 whereas our soldiers fight like Frenchmen and like men. 
 Theirs is a different kind of strength. And that is why 
 we go back to the front, where death lies in wait, as one 
 returns to life. For us it is there. There is no paradox 
 in what I am writing to you. 
 
290 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 There is only one thing that grieves me more than I 
 can say. Too many of our men, so brave that one feels 
 inclined to kneel to them, do not understand Alsace nor 
 the Alsatians. I excuse them, but it often hurts me to 
 hear the things they say. I excuse them, because these 
 soldiers, who come from the Correze, Brittany, the Gard 
 or the Drome, know nothing of our little country. They 
 exclaim in their first stupefaction : " But they talk Ger- 
 man! " After what has passed, it seems, indeed, impos- 
 sible to them that French sentiments should be translated 
 into German patois. 
 
 It would not have been possible that there should have 
 been no defections in Alsace. We should have been 
 more than human had this been the case. But do they 
 count? Do our soldiers know what we have suffered? 
 Do they realize what it means to have had the weight of a 
 whole army of officials working to extirpate the very 
 roots of memory for forty-four years? Do they know 
 that five hundred thousand Alsatians have given up 
 everything to remain French, that as many Germans 
 have taken their places, and that these Germans call them- 
 selves Alsatians? Do they know what it is to struggle 
 for nearly half a century against one's manifest interest 
 with a population of a million and a half against sixty-five 
 millions? . . . No. Only those who have done it can 
 know. 
 
 I believe Rene sent you the field-diary of one of his 
 comrades, describing the entry of the French into Mul- 
 house. That was the cry of Alsace, the cry of her, uttered 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 291 
 
 under extraordinary conditions. Is it generally known 
 that in our country there are spies everywhere, observing, 
 noting, and denouncing? That the Alsatians call the 
 prisons to which they are sent in crowds the Hotel de 
 France? That the German courts-martial have already 
 condemned those who allowed their French sympathies 
 to be known to terms of imprisonment amounting in the 
 aggregate to three thousand years? And that more than 
 one Alsatian has already paid for his fidelity to France 
 with his life? 
 
 Civilians fired on us in Alsace, say some of our sol- 
 diers. No doubt. But wjio were they? Do our soldiers 
 know that the German rangers had orders to put on civil- 
 ian clothes as soon as war was declared, to go to the 
 Kommando for ammunition, and to take to the forest? 
 
 This misunderstanding will pass away. It is already 
 passing. If our enemies hoped to embroil us with 
 France, it was because they know neither the French nor 
 the Alsatians. Everything will come right in time. The 
 drama of our lives will be known in all its details. Then 
 the chaff will be separated from the grain. All that is 
 needed is to explain, to explain oneself. 
 
 I assure you that there is not a man in my battery who 
 does not know now what Alsace is. On a certain day 
 one of them had made an offensive remark. Seeing my 
 distress, the Captain gave me orders to assemble my 
 gunners, and to speak to them of my province. I de- 
 scribed the hour we spent at Wissembourg. All had tears 
 in their eyes. The offending gunner came to me, blush- 
 
292 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 ing, and said : " Lieutenant, there is no greater fool than 
 he who speaks without knowing. You must forgive me. 
 I'll wipe that out." Ah! he did wipe it out, my gallant 
 Martin! I saw him die a mile or two from the frontier 
 of the annexed province. His eyes were fixed on mine. 
 He said nothing, I said nothing — it was during a spell 
 of hurricane fire — but I understood. 
 
 When shall I write to you again? . . . Even if I do 
 not answer your letters, do not forget me. A friend's 
 letters are a talisman. Let your thoughts follow me. I 
 am constantly seeing in a dream, or rather in a nightmare, 
 the corpses of women and children heaped up before one 
 of the burning houses of Rouvres. In my waking hours 
 I think of the innocent dead in Belgium, in Armenia, in 
 Serbia, in Poland, in my own Alsace, and in my France, 
 and I am all eagerness to return to the atrocious conflict, 
 out of which we have sworn, a less hideous humanity 
 shall emerge. Farewell. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 Jean Bohler. 
 
 From Rene Bohler. 
 
 July 1, 1915. 
 Dear Monsieur Reymond, 
 
 Only a word. Here I am on one of the Vosges 
 peaks; I may not tell you exactly where. But I can 
 distinctly see through my field-glasses my parents' house, 
 and the window of the schoolroom. Sometimes I see 
 something moving in the garden. I say something. 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 293 
 
 because it is very vague. But I think to myself: "It's 
 Father. It's Mother. . . ." And the Boches only fifty 
 kilometres off! Truly there is something magnificent 
 about this war for us even when we die of it. Are we not 
 doing our duty? If you could have seen what we have 
 seen! I tell you this war is a crusade. Before us lies 
 the plain of Alsace, with the ruins of Cernay, of Wat- 
 wilier, of Uffholz, and in the distance the smoke of Mul- 
 house, and the bend of the Rhine. . . . The claws of the 
 Boche are still deeply embedded here. . . . Where is 
 Kummel lurking? May Providence bring us face to 
 face again some day ! We have so many things to say to 
 each other! 
 
 Your friend, 
 
 Rene Bohler. 
 
 From Victor Weiss. 
 
 Friedensbach, 
 September 15, 1915. 
 
 Dear Friend, 
 
 We are in terrible trouble. Frangois has been 
 severely wounded on the Champagne front. His left 
 leg was shattered and has been taken off above the knee. 
 The poor fellow writes us such beautiful letters that we 
 scarcely dare to pity him. He will come back to us — 
 mutilated, it is true, but still, he will come back to us. 
 
 Frangois a cripple! But this is not the worst. It is 
 now a year since we have had a word from Charles. We 
 have moved heaven and earth without getting any sign 
 of life from him. It is horrible. ... I reproach myself 
 
294 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 bitterly. I say that when we were in Switzerland we 
 should have stayed there and should not have returned 
 to Alsace. But when one lives with the knife at one's 
 throat, one ceases to distinguish the red hours from the 
 grey ones. Too late! . . . One evening we saw the 
 abject Kummel in great excitement, flags were unfurled, 
 guns and waggons rolled along, and men defiled, singing 
 their Lie}/ Vaterland, magst ruhig sein at the top of their 
 voices. War! Too late! Our Charles was already in 
 the trap ! 
 
 He must have thought of everything, dared everything, 
 to get to the Russian lines. Day by day we shared the 
 horror he must have felt at fighting in the ranks of those 
 who were persecuting his country; we were consumed by 
 his sufferings; we strengthened his efforts by the thoughts 
 we sent out to him. ... At night we wake with a start. 
 It is like a dagger in our hearts: Charles, stolen by the 
 Germans. Our little Marie is always saying: "Charles 
 will come back." But we can no longer believe it. A 
 year of silence! His poor mother! Anything would be 
 better than these desperate hopes, these letters which 
 fall into the void one after the other. 
 
 And now I come to the point of these few words. I 
 have written to all the societies and all the officers in 
 your country which undertake researches and identifica- 
 tion among prisoners of war. You will find herewith all 
 the available information about Charles' enrolment and 
 the places to which the chances of war took him, as far 
 as we know. Would you do us the kindness of going in 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 295 
 
 person to the various agencies and enlisting the sympathy 
 of the directors in our grief, so that a supreme effort 
 may be made. I ask it for the sake of our boy — I know 
 that you loved him — for his mother's sake, for mine. 
 We will await your answer as patiently as we can. 
 We send you our most affectionate greetings. 
 
 V. Weiss. 
 
 Reymond set to work without delay. He had inter- 
 views with kindly men, a little weary already of all the 
 tragic things that had been brought before them for 
 months. He went to Geneva. He returned there. They 
 wrote letters. They wrote again and again. At last, 
 after waiting two months, a very polite old man seated 
 at a writing-table covered with papers spoke as fol- 
 lows: 
 
 " Charles Weiss? . . . We have gone through the 
 lists of those who have died in Germany, and of the 
 prisoners of war in Russia. . . . Nearly all the officers 
 of the regiment in question have been killed or have 
 disappeared. . . . The new ones can give no information. 
 . . . The snow, the cold, the mud, the inundations. . . . 
 The papers are at your service. You will see that we 
 have tried everything. . . . You say the young man was 
 an Alsatian? He has disappeared, like so many others." 
 
 " Disappeared? " repeated Reymond. " Do you mean 
 dead? " 
 
 The old man shrugged his shoulders very gently. 
 "Ah! ..." 
 
296 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 Reymond went away. It was a mild day in late Octo- 
 ber. The lake rippled between the stones of the quay. 
 The red-and-green parasols twinkled gaily on the decks 
 of the steamers; people were walking about and laugh- 
 ing; young couples were sitting on the benches of the 
 promenades. 
 
 He had disappeared, the frank, merry boy. After all 
 the long silence, this supreme silence of mystery. In 
 that Poland, a martyr like himself, in some hastily dug 
 hole, lay the body of this son of Alsace. . . . 
 
 From Victor Weiss. 
 
 Friedensbach, 
 November 18, 1915. 
 
 Dear Friend, 
 
 It is now just a year and two months since we 
 heard from Charles. Probably we shall never learn 
 anything more about him. Do not raise false hopes in 
 us. . . . We have heard from a trustworthy source that 
 the regiment of our gallant son was literally destroyed 
 at Lodz, and that his company was annihilated. The 
 Russians may have shot him down when he was crawling 
 towards them as to his saviours. Our Charles, so frank, 
 so loyal ! What he must have suffered ! 
 
 The peace of the grave is grateful to those who have to 
 bear such mortal tortures! There are times when his 
 mother and I have a terrible sense of consolation. . . . 
 He has ceased to suffer. On the other hand, I sometimes 
 walk in our forests looking about everywhere, as if he 
 were hidden in the hollow of some ditch. I call him in 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 297 
 
 my thoughts. The guns make answer: the German guns 
 that threaten us, the French guns that defend us. I 
 come home overwhelmed. 
 
 Bohler often comes to see me. He has good news of 
 his boys. 
 
 There is grief and misery all around us. When the 
 Germans retired, they carried off nearly all our men. 
 They, too, were dragged to Poland. Jacob Schmoler, a 
 boy barely seventeen, though he was big and strong, was 
 of the number. The shock was too much for old 
 Schmoler. He has rejoined Jacobine. 
 
 My poor wife makes my heart ache. She spends her 
 days gazing at the photographs of our Charles and our 
 Jacques. To think that two of our sons have died in the 
 German army so that France may be free! ... It is so 
 senseless! You who have lived among us will under- 
 stand, you will reverence these martyrs to the cause. 
 We cannot weep for them as we should. We are too much 
 embittered, too overwrought, too indignant. Three 
 sons! . . . One is left, and he is mutilated. How we 
 shall love him! But no joy will ever be able to still the 
 weeping of our hearts. 
 
 Elsewhere, fathers and mothers know that their chil- 
 dren died gladly. In Alsace, the death of our dear 
 ones has been an agony: they have been shot by brutes 
 or killed by the bullets of those whose victory they de- 
 sired. When all is known! . . . The men of Wissem- 
 bourg have many friends now. 
 
 In our misery we have one consolation: our boy did 
 
298 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 not acquiesce in a lie. Deaths like his are not fruitless. 
 They have the value and the weight of a curse. 
 
 Your unhappy 
 Victor Weiss. 
 
 FTom Henri Bohler, 
 
 Friedensbach, 
 
 January 7, 1916. 
 
 Dear Friend, 
 
 Your letter moved us to tears. We recognized in 
 it all the affection you bore our beloved ones, an affection 
 they returned in full measure. 
 
 At the first moment we had not the courage to write 
 to you. You must forgive us if the newspapers were 
 beforehand with us. It all happened in one week. . . . 
 On the Monday news came of the death of Rene, who was 
 killed by a bullet through his forehead before Carspach. 
 He fell face forward, before that Alsace to which he had 
 long devoted his life. My wife and I had the sad con- 
 solation of seeing him once more. He was so beautiful, 
 a smile on his face. He sleeps with hundreds of others 
 in the churchyard of Moosch which you so often passed 
 by with your pupils in former times. 
 
 On the Saturday of the same week, we heard of the 
 death of Jean, who was killed with six of his men in the 
 Argonne by a high-explosive shell. For some time past 
 his letters had alarmed us. They were too beautiful, 
 worthy of those whom death has chosen. . . . Jean, 
 Rene. . . . Our sorrow is too great. We suffer all that 
 a father and a mother can humanly suffer. Pity us. . . . 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 299 
 
 Our two boys! . . . The Weisses came to us at once. 
 We mingled our tears. 
 
 For us, life is over. Yet for their sakes we try not to 
 give way, and we repeat the words which Jean wrote in 
 his last letter : " What does death matter when one is in 
 the right? " Write to us often. Talk to us of them, 
 only of them. 
 
 Until the war is over, we have too many duties at 
 Friedensbach to allow us to go to Switzerland. Could 
 you come to us, I would facilitate your journey as much 
 as possible. You would read us our boys' letters, you 
 would tell us what they used to say to you in former 
 days, and recall that night on the mountain of which they 
 had retained such radiant memories. It will be sweet 
 and cruel to speak of those who have left us, of those we 
 have given to France, and so to the most humane of 
 causes. 
 
 Meanwhile if you can, pray for us. 
 
 My wife joins me in affectionate remembrances. 
 
 Henri Bohler. 
 
XIV 
 
 June, 1916. 
 
 FROM Bassang the motor runs snorting along the road 
 which climbs up the slope of the Vosges. It passes 
 heavy lorries, hay-waggons, troopers; it overtakes gangs 
 of road-makers and battalions resting between their 
 stacked rifles. . . . Suddenly the road dives into a tunnel. 
 . . . There is a glimmer which increases, then a light 
 ... it is Alsace, her blue mountains, her valleys, her 
 villages beside the sparkling river. ... A sound as of 
 distant thunder. Yet the sky is clear,' the horizon limpid. 
 . . . Reymond bares his head. He greets this land which 
 he loves as one loves one's native place. 
 
 Is he dreaming? ... Is this thunder the echo of the 
 interminable battle? . . . Urbes, Wesserling, then other 
 villages, and in all Alsatian boys wearing the caps of the 
 Chasseurs Alpins, the red kepi of the foot soldiers; every- 
 where soldiers on the march, the supple, lively tread of 
 the soldiers of France. ... Is it possible? A spire 
 rises above the trees, a red, white, and blue flag floats 
 from the roof of the town-hall. And here is the street of 
 Friedensbach, its stream, its gobbling geese, its fountain 
 with the three jets, its roofs where the dormer windows 
 are blinking, the stork's nest. The car draws up to let a 
 battalion pass. The men are wearing helmets; they 
 
 300 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 301 
 
 carry their packs on their backs, and on these packs so 
 many things that one sees they are going where the guns 
 are roaring. It is an impressive sight : the swinging rifles, 
 the eyes which have seen so many corpses, the ears which 
 have heard so many dying groans, the tense jaws, the 
 boots that hammer the pavement with all their nails. 
 
 " Where are they going? " Reymond asks the chauffeur. 
 
 " To Vieil-Armand." 
 
 Now the band begins to play. The windows of the 
 school are thrown open; fifty little faces appear, hands 
 are waved in greeting. Instead of Kummel there is a 
 school-master in uniform who pinches the ears of laugh- 
 ing boys. There is a bunch of flowers on his desk, and 
 on the blackboard the following copy is inscribed in white 
 chalk: One's country is a mother who has thousands of 
 children. . . . 
 
 " Wait for me a minute." 
 
 Reymond asks himself again if he is not the victim of 
 some hallucination. He feels the need of speaking to 
 some one, of hearing a familiar voice. There is the door 
 he has so often pushed open and entered. 
 
 " Monsieur Reymond! You have come back! " 
 
 " Is it you, Madame Vogel? " 
 
 They look at each other. The fair-haired widow is 
 dressed in mourning; her face is pale, and there are 
 wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. She says in her slow 
 voice : 
 
 "Oh! there is no one left. Mother is dead, father is 
 dead. . . . They have taken Jacob from me." 
 
302 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 Reymond was much moved. What should he be able 
 to say presently? 
 
 He went back to the chauffeur. 
 
 "What were your orders? " 
 
 " To take you and your luggage to Monsieur Bohler's." 
 
 " All right. I will walk. I know the way. As to the 
 luggage, leave it with the lodge-keeper." 
 
 The same road. The level crossing, the rocks crowned 
 with broom. The cloud of dust in the distance is raised 
 by the advancing battalion. The dull thunder of the 
 guns has ceased. The swallows swoop and dart over- 
 head. 
 
 What shall he say to them? He tries. He seeks 
 after words. No, not that. . . . The bridge over the 
 river. And now the whirr of the machinery, the slap of 
 the belts, the plaintive murmur that used to accompany 
 the voices that were translating Horace or Plato. Hold- 
 ing his cap in his hand as he used to do of yore, Grob, 
 the lodge-keeper, opens the little side-gate. There is the 
 court, the house with its glass marquise. The old servant 
 comes to answer the bell. At the sight of Reymond, 
 she wipes her eyes with her apron and murmurs some- 
 thing. In the dimness of the drawing-room, the shutters 
 of which are half closed, he finds Monsieur and Madame 
 Bohler, Monsieur and Madame Weiss, and little Marie 
 clinging to her mother. There is a moment's silence. 
 Monsieur Bohler advances, very calm, then Weiss. Rey- 
 mond understands at once that they have pledged them- 
 selves to bear their sorrow valiantly. How changed they 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 303 
 
 are! how they have aged! how thin they have grown! 
 Weiss's sturdy shoulders are bowed. Reymond does not 
 speak, he feels his throat contract. He bows before the 
 two women in mourning as he touches their cold hands. 
 They sit down and look at each other. With Reymond, 
 the absent ones have come back, those sons who filled 
 the house with their gaiety, the dead they have so often 
 invoked in vain! The two women suddenly hide their 
 faces in their hands, little Marie throws her arms round 
 her mother; they lament aloud. Weiss sobs; Monsieur 
 Bohler stiffens himself stoically, but the tears roll down 
 his cheeks. It is too pitiable! Reymond approaches 
 the two men. What does he say? He does not know. 
 He, too, sobs aloud. 
 
 It is good to weep together, to give way without shame, 
 to offer tears of tenderness and gratitude to the young 
 dead who have fallen for the salvation of the world, to go 
 in search of them through space into the depths of silence, 
 to embrace them, to commune with their love, to feel that 
 they still live, like Justice. 
 
 After this it is possible to speak. All that was bitter 
 and suffocating has been washed away; grief remains, 
 grief bathed by these tears, serene and worthy of those 
 who have departed. 
 
 " Our children were magnificent," said Monsieur 
 Bohler. " True crusaders. So gay, so simple, so will- 
 ing. We are right to weep for them, the emotion of our 
 meeting has been sweet to them, but it is even more right 
 that we should smile at them." 
 
304 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 " They were so brave," said Weiss, " that we have no 
 right to be cowards, have we, wife? " 
 
 "No. What you say is true. When I look at their 
 portraits, I find no sadness in them. The sadness is in 
 me, not in them." 
 
 "They gave their lives unhesitatingly," said Bohler. 
 "Dear boys! They never caused us a moment of grief. 
 They offered pure hearts to their country." 
 
 Memories of their childhood were evoked. Their 
 sayings were quoted. Their letters were read. Things 
 that had belonged to them were shown. Voices no 
 longer tremble, for the sacrifice was so beautiful that they 
 are no longer of those we call the dead. The desolate 
 mothers pity other mothers who have suffered less than 
 they. Marie asks: 
 
 " Why should we weep for those who are with God? " 
 
 They embrace her. 
 
 "Monsieur Reymond," says Madame Bohler with a 
 sweet and sad maternal smile, " we have no one but you 
 to remind us of the happy time when they were with us. 
 You were our friend then; you are doubly our friend 
 now. Will you come with us to see Jacques and Rene? 
 . . . When we are with them we shall be able to find 
 Charles and Jean . . . my little Jean! " 
 
 How beautiful it was! Alsace was never fairer. They 
 walked by the road which winds along the foot of the 
 mountain. Flowers in the hedges, flowers in the cracks 
 of the walls, flowers between the stones, and then flowers 
 on the graves. Here it is. Jacques Weiss, aged 23. 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 305 
 
 Hold fast that thou hast, . . . They gather round the 
 stone. Madame Weiss bends over it; she arranges the 
 young ivy shoots with gentle fingers, like a mother 
 tucking her child into his cot. They are silent. Their 
 thoughts take flight towards that other land of sorrow 
 where Charles Weiss lies. How they go out in search of 
 him there! They wander round those calcined beams 
 which were villages; they traverse the gutted plains; 
 they follow the course of sluggish rivers; they plunge into 
 forests; they call and call. Then they come back to the 
 grave before them. And Weiss speaks: 
 
 "To me, they are both here. I will have Charles's 
 name cut on the stone. . . . And under it we will 
 put . . ." 
 
 The stricken giant hesitates. May one say such 
 things? 
 
 " Well, yes ... we will put the first tooth he lost 
 when he was five years old, and a lock of his hair. Then 
 there will be something of him here. Francois and 
 Suzanne will be able to come and visit both their brothers 
 . . . both of them lent to the lie that they might still be 
 Alsatians, and that this soil might remain faithful. I 
 feel as if I had given them a hundred times over. What 
 a present we have offered to France! " 
 
 A bugle says its say: three notes, gaily repeated, ring- 
 ing out like a laugh. They can see the bugler in his blue 
 cap in the square at Friedensbach. Four times he 
 seems to cast his bugle heavenwards with a supple gesture; 
 four times he repeats the joyous rhythm of his three notes. 
 
306 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 The children are singing in the school. The awkward 
 accent of these children, who are trying with all their 
 hearts, is touching. How often Reymond had heard the 
 doleful chant to which Kummel heat time falling to the 
 earth! Today the song of the little Alsatians mounts 
 upwards, because it is sung with joy and conviction, 
 because they enter into it heart and soul, and thus it 
 rejoices the swallows and dances with them as it leaves 
 the rosy lips: 
 
 There is a word dearer than all others? 
 Liberty! Liberty! 
 
 " Liberty ! Liberty ! " repeated Victor Weiss. " Yes, 
 children, you will know liberty; you will be happy, 
 because your elder brothers died for you, after dire 
 sufferings and tortures! . . . Useless sufferings? No, 
 indeed. For they have raised up a great barrier, wider 
 than the Rhine, higher than the Black Forest. . . . Ah! 
 if only the French will understand! ... I call upon 
 them to understand; I call upon them to bow before my 
 sons who died under the German flag. The German flag? 
 Yes; but they were sacrificial victims. God heard the 
 cry of their souls. He knows how often Charles tried to 
 escape. He knows that the bullets of his rifle were fired 
 into the ground. He knows, above all, how he died. 
 He said : ' Come, brave little Alsatian ! You bore your 
 anguish courageously. Thanks to you, thanks to those 
 who died like you, those who torture hearts stand for ever 
 arraigned.' " 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 307 
 
 Outlined against the sky with his poor drawn face, 
 Weiss is an image of sorrow. 
 
 And now the bells are ringing. Each day those who 
 have fallen for Alsace on the mountains are laid to rest 
 in her earth. A procession advances, the crucifix, the 
 coffin draped in a flag, the priest, the choir-boys, the 
 comrades of the dead man, the old men of Friedensbach, 
 the children, who sing " Liberty ! Liberty ! " How many 
 wreaths there are on the coffin! And women come out 
 of the gardens and offer to the unknown those old-time 
 flowers which are gathered at the foot of warm walls — 
 marigolds, gallardias, campanulas. . . . 
 
 The military burial-ground adjoins the other burial- 
 ground: here trees, rose-bushes, and leafy shade; there, 
 crosses in their imposing nudity, set closely side by side, 
 like a regiment on parade. The procession groups itself 
 round the grave (other graves are open beside it). 
 Standing in the sunshine, the priest makes the eternal 
 gestures, blesses the corpse, and sends those Latin prayers 
 which come from the depths of centuries heavenwards. 
 There is the creak of straining ropes. . . . The soldiers 
 salute, their hands smartly open against their caps. 
 
 And all the old men bring their heels together as well 
 as they can, for there are some who fought at Magenta 
 and Solferino; they are in front; behind are those who 
 went through the accursed war; they are recognizable by 
 the ribbon they wear so proudly; they did what they 
 could! . . . No French corpse enters this enclosure 
 without an escort of these old Alsatians. Brushed and 
 
308 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 polished up, their wrinkled faces shining, they receive it 
 as it comes out of the hospital, and accompany it to 
 church; walking very slowly, following the upward path 
 in fours, looking at each other at intervals that they may 
 keep in line; and when the moment comes they, too, give 
 the salute, laying their hands against their bald heads. 
 The children salute as well as the old people. What a 
 sight it is, these children of Alsace, these men, motionless 
 in presence of this corpse which is slowly disappearing 
 into the grave! If his mother, who does not yet know 
 that he is dead, could see! 
 
 De profundis! 
 
 The bells of Friedensbach ring again, and then are 
 silent. An officer is speaking now: 
 
 " In the name of the Colonel, in the name of all your 
 comrades in the regiment who are at their posts up there 
 (he points to the mountain), keeping watch over this 
 valley of Alsace, Chief Adjutant Antoine, I come as your 
 escort to the glorious threshold where sleep those who 
 have given their lives for France. . . . These wreaths 
 which our Alsatian brethren offer you are woven of the 
 red of our holocausts and the green of our hopes; these 
 flowers which have been gathered in the fields by your 
 friends and bound into a sheaf typify the fidelity of our 
 memories, the gratitude of our hearts, the prayer of our 
 souls. . . . From the place where you sleep you will 
 see this valley which your valour won back for us; 
 between the hills you will see that plain of Alsace, where 
 so many of our friends whom the valour of your comrades 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 309 
 
 will deliver are still suffering. . . . Sleeping in Alsace, 
 you will sleep in France. 
 
 " Chief Adjutant Antoine, the flag which was never 
 lowered to the enemy is lowered respectfully to salute 
 your grave." 
 
 The guns thunder at Vieil-Armand. Up above, a little 
 speck in the sky, a bird of prey hovers. All around it 
 circle patches of smoke which the wind drives along 
 gaily. . . . Another bird hastens to the spot: they 
 mount, they glide along, they dance on the eddies of the 
 air, they disappear in the tack-tack-tack of machine-gun 
 fire. Presently there is nothing in the vast blue heavens 
 but this flock of white sheep. The crucifix, the priest, the 
 soldiers, the children, and the old men, have all disap- 
 peared. 
 
 " It is here," says Madame Bohler. 
 
 Once more they gather round a grave. Rene Bohler, 
 Second-Lieutenant, aged 21; died for France, December 
 14, 1915. 
 
 Suddenly Madame Weiss makes this terrible speech: 
 
 " How happy we should be if they were all four 
 here! " 
 
 They look at each other in silence. There are perhaps 
 two thousand crosses. A name, a date . . . aged 
 twenty, aged nineteen, aged twenty-three, aged twenty, 
 aged twenty. . . . This regiment of the dead climbs the 
 slope of the mountain impetuously, behind the flag which 
 floats half-mast high. Rene is with them, in his post of 
 command. On the other side of the wall is Jacques. 
 
310 THE HEART OF ALSACE 
 
 Jean sleeps in the Argonne, Charles in Poland. Looking 
 at this nation of crosses, at their disciplined ranks, their 
 friendliness to each other, it is easy to understand that 
 mother's cry : " How happy we should be if they were all 
 four here! " Here, that is to say together, side by side 
 with those who dreamt the same dream, like the dead on 
 the hill of Wissembourg. . . . Here. . . . One can come 
 to see them and speak to them, can bring them flowers. 
 Later, it will be a place of pilgrimage for fathers and 
 mothers from all the provinces of France, from the north 
 and from the south. They will get out at the station 
 timid and bewildered. They will ask: " Where are those 
 who fell in the war? " They will look for the name of 
 their son in the interminable alleys. At last, holding 
 each other by the hand, they will weep, and these tears, 
 falling on the soil, will go to all. 
 
 The dead of Wissembourg watched over Alsace, hold- 
 ing her to the faith. And now the dead are on every 
 mountain, in every village of the valleys, from the con- 
 fines of Alsace to the confines of Lorraine. This chain 
 of the dead encompasses the two provinces because they 
 were worthy of it; prisoners of violence, they would not 
 sell their souls. Soldiers of France who sleep in this 
 earth, you would not have chosen a fitter resting-place. 
 
 The agony of the world, the moan of crucified lands, 
 the cry of those who are mounting their Calvary, brood 
 over these crosses. These soldiers heard this appeal. 
 Rising in answer to it, they were found worthy to die for 
 
THE HEART OF ALSACE 311 
 
 justice. Their graves are not sad. Two men and two 
 women in mourning are bending over them. And sud- 
 denly a calm voice says: 
 " How happy they are! " 
 
 THE END 
 
re 40058 
 
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 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY