THE EXAMINATION
On the following day the morning was far advanced when Jean left his
room and appeared on the flight of steps built of the red stone of
Saverne like the house, which opened on to the park in two flights
of long steps. He was dressed in shooting clothes--of which he was
fond--gaiters of black leather, breeches and coat of blue wool, with
a hat of soft felt, in the ribbon of which he stuck a grouse
feather. From the steps he asked:
"Where is my father?"
The man whom he addressed, the gardener, busy raking the avenue,
answered:
"Monsieur is in the office at the saw-mill."
The first thing that Jean Oberlé saw on raising his eyes was the
Vosges mountains, clothed with forests of pines, with trails of snow
in the hollows, and with low, rapid clouds hiding the peaks. He
trembled with joy. Then having gazed at the lowest mountain slopes,
at the vineyards, and then the meadows, as if to impress on his
memory all the details of these places found again after a long
absence, and above all with the added satisfaction of remaining
among them, his eyes fastened on the red roofs of the saw-mill,
which made a barrier at the end of the Oberlé property, on the
chimneys, on the high building where the turbines were, to the right
on the course of the mountain stream of Alsheim, and nearer on the
timber-yard whence the factory got its supplies, on the heaps of
wood from trees of all sorts--beams, planks, which rose in pyramids
and enormous cubes, beyond the winding alleys and the clumps of
trees, some two hundred yards from the house. Jets of white steam in
many places escaped from the roof of the saw-mill, and rested on the
north wind like the clouds up above.
The young man went to the left, crossed the park, formerly planted
and designed by M. Philippe Oberlé, and which was now beginning to
be a freer and more harmonious corner of nature, and turning towards
the piles of oak trunks, elms, and pines, went to knock at the door
of the long building.
He entered the glass pavilion which served the master for a
workroom. He was engaged in reading the day's letters. Seeing his
son appear, he put the papers on the table, made a sign with his
hand which meant "I expected your visit--sit down"--and moving his
arm-chair, he said:
"Well, my boy! What have you to say to me?"
M. Joseph Oberlé was a ruddy man, quick and authoritative. Because
of his shaven lips, his short whiskers, the correctness of his
clothes, the easiness of his words and manners, he had sometimes
been taken for an old French magistrate. The mistake did not arise
with those who thought thus. It had been made by circumstances which
had taken M. Joseph Oberlé in spite of himself from the way wherein
he had intended to go, and which should have led him to some public
office in the magistrature or the administration. The father, the
founder of the dynasty, Philippe Oberlé, son of a race of peasant
proprietors, had founded at Alsheim in 1850 this mechanical
saw-mill, which had rapidly prospered. He had become in a few years
rich and powerful, very much beloved, because he neglected no means
to that end; increasingly influential, but without at all
foreseeing the events which would one day induce him to put his
influence at the service of Alsace.
The son of this industrial workman could hardly escape the ambition
of being a public functionary. That is what happened--his education
had prepared him for it. Taken early from Alsace, pupil for eight
years at the Lycée Louis le Grand, then law student, he was at
twenty-two years old attached to the office of the Prefect of
Charente, when the war broke out. Retained for some months by his
chief, who thought it would please his friend the great manufacturer
of Alsace if he sheltered the young man behind the walls of the
prefecture of Angoulême; then on his demand incorporated tardily in
the Army of the Loire, Joseph Oberlé marched much, retired much,
suffered much from cold, and fought well on rare occasions. When the
war was finished he had to make his choice.
If he had consulted his personal preferences only, he would have
remained French, and he would have continued to follow an
administrative career, having a taste for authority and few personal
opinions on the quality of an order to be transmitted. But his
father recalled him to Alsace. He implored him not to leave the work
begun and prospering. He said: "My industry is become German by
conquest; I cannot leave the instrument of my fortune and your
future to perish. I detest the Prussians, but I take the only means
which I have of continuing my life usefully. I was a Frenchman, I
become an Alsatian. Do the same. I hope it will not be for long."
Joseph Oberlé had obeyed with real repugnance--repugnance at
submitting to the law of the conqueror, repugnance at living in the
village of Alsheim, lost at the foot of the Vosges. He had even
committed at this time imprudences of speech and attitude which he
regretted now. For the conquest had lasted; the fortunes of Germany
were strengthened, and the young man, associated with his father
and become the master of a factory, had felt the meshes of an
administration similar to the French administration, but more
harassing, stricter, and better obeyed, knotting itself and drawing
closer round him. He saw that on every occasion, without any
exception, the German authorities would put him in the wrong; the
police, the magistrates, the functionaries established for public
services which he used daily, the commission of public roads, the
railways, the water supply, the forests, the customs. The
malevolence which he met with on all sides and in all departments of
German administration, although he had become a German subject, was
aggravated and had become quite a danger to the prosperity of the
house of Alsheim, when, in 1874, M. Philippe Oberlé, giving to his
son the direction of the saw-mill, had yielded to the insistences of
that poor forsaken country, which wanted to make of him, and did
make him, the representative of her interests at the Reichstag, and
one of the protesting deputies of Alsace.
This experience, the weariness of waiting, the removal of M.
Philippe Oberlé, who spent a part of the year at Berlin, modified
sensibly the attitude of the young head of the industrial
enterprise. His first fervour, and that of others, grew less. He saw
the anti-German manifestations of Alsatian peasants becoming rarer
and more prudent. He hardly did any business with France; he no
longer received visits from French people, even those made from
interested and commercial motives. France, so near by distance,
became like a walled-in country, shut up, and whence nothing more
came to Alsace, neither travellers nor merchandise. The newspapers
he received left him in no doubt as to the slow abandonment which
certain French politicians counselled under the name of wisdom and
concentration.
In ten years M. Joseph Oberlé had used up, till he could no longer
find a trace in himself, all that his temperament allowed him of
resistance to oppose to an established power. He was rallied. His
marriage with Monica Biehler, desired and arranged by the old and
ardent patriot who voted in the Reichstag against Prince Bismarck,
had had no influence on his new ideas and attitude, at first secret,
soon suspected, then known, then affirmed, then scandalously
published by M. Joseph Oberlé. He gave pledges to the Germans, then
hostages. He overstepped the boundary. He went farther than
obedience. The foremen of the factory, old soldiers of France,
admirers of M. Philippe Oberlé, companions of his struggle against
the Germanisation of Alsace, bore with difficulty the attitude of
the new master and blamed him. One of them in a moment of impatience
had said to him one day, "Do you think we are so particularly proud
to work for a renegade like you?" He had been discharged. His
comrades immediately had taken his part, interceded, talked, and
threatened a strike. "Well, do it," the master had said; "I shall be
delighted. You are all quarrelsome fellows; I shall replace you by
Germans!" They did not believe in the threat, but when a fresh
crisis arose M. Joseph Oberlé carried it into execution a little
later, that he might not be accused of weakness, which he feared
more than injustice, and because he thought he could gain some
advantage by replacing the Alsatians, continual grumblers, by
workmen from Baden and Wurtemburg who were better disciplined and
more easily managed. A third of the employés at the saw-mill had
thus been replaced. A little German colony had been established to
the north of the village, in the houses built by the master, and the
Alsatians who remained had to bend before the argument of daily
bread. That happened in 1882. Some years later, they learned that M.
Oberlé had sent his son Jean to be educated in Bavaria at the Munich
gymnasium. In the same way he sent off his daughter Lucienne,
placing her in the charge of the mistress of the most German school
in Baden-Baden, the Mündner boarding-school. This last measure
roused public opinion most of all. They were furious at this
repudiation of Alsatian education and influence. They pitied Madame
Oberlé thus separated from her son and deprived, as if she had been
unworthy, of the right of bringing up her own daughter. To all those
who blamed him the father replied, "It is for their good. I have
spoiled my life; I do not wish them to spoil theirs. They will
choose their road later when they have been able to make
comparisons. But I will not have them from their very youth
catalogued, pointed at, and inscribed on the official list as
Alsatian pariahs."
Sometimes he added: "You do not understand, then, all the sacrifice
that I am making! I am sparing my children these sacrifices; I am
devoting myself to them. But that does not mean that I am not
suffering."
He did suffer in fact, and so much the more that the confidence of
the German administration was hard to gain. The reward of so much
effort did not seem enviable. True, those in office began to
flatter, to draw nearer, to seek out M. Joseph Oberlé, a precious
conquest, of which many district directors had boasted in high
places. But they watched him, whilst loading him with invitations
and kind attentions. He felt the hesitation, the mistrust, scarcely
disguised, sometimes even emphasised by the new masters he wished to
please. Was he safe? Had he taken the side of the Annexation without
any mental reservation? Did he sufficiently admire the German
genius, German civilisation, German commerce, the German future? One
had to admire so much and so many things!
The answer, however, became more and more affirmative. There was the
acknowledged desire to make his son, Jean, enter the German
magistracy, and there was the systematic continuation of this kind
of exile imposed on the young man. When his classical studies were
finished and his final examination passed with success at the end of
the scholastic year, 1895, Jean spent his first year of law studies
at the University of Munich; he divided the next year between Bonn
and Heidelberg; then took his licentiate's degree at Berlin, where
he went through the Referendar Examination. At last, after a fourth
year, when as a licentiate in law he entered the office of a lawyer
at Berlin, after long travel in foreign countries, the young man
came back to his home to rest before joining a regiment.
Truly the plan had been thoroughly carried out. In the first years
of his student life, in his holidays even, excepting some days given
to his family, his time had been given to travelling. During the
last years he had not even appeared in Alsheim.
The end of it was that the administration no longer suspected him.
Besides, one of the great obstacles to a public reconciliation
between the functionaries of Alsace and M. Joseph Oberlé had
disappeared. The old protesting deputy, seized by the illness which
became chronic, retired from political life in 1890. From that
moment dated, for the son, the smiles, the promises, the favours so
long solicited. M. Joseph Oberlé recognised in the development his
affairs had taken--in the Rhenish country and even beyond it--in the
diminution of the official reports directed against his employés, or
against himself in cases of contravention, in the signs of deference
which the small officials showed him--formerly the most arrogant of
all, in the ease with which he had ruled disputable points, obtained
authorisations, altered the rules in divers points--in all these
signs, as well as in others, he recognised that the governmental
mind, present everywhere, incarnate everywhere in a multitude of
men of gold lace--was no longer against him.
More definite advances were made to him. The preceding winter, while
Lucienne, who had returned from the Mündner school, pretty, witty,
charming, was dancing in the German salons of Strasburg, the father
was talking with the representatives of the Empire. One of them, the
prefect of Strasburg, Count Kassewitz, acting probably in accordance
with superior orders, had let drop that the Government would see,
without displeasure, M. Joseph Oberlé present himself as candidate
for the deputyship in one of the districts of Alsace, and that the
official support of the administration would be given to the son of
the old protesting deputy.
This prospect filled M. Oberlé with joy. It had revived the ambition
of this man who found himself up to then repaid but badly for the
sacrifices of self-respect, friendships, and memories, which he had
had to make. It gave new energies and a definite object to this
official temperament, depressed by circumstances. M. Oberlé saw his
justification in it, without being able to reveal it. He said to
himself that, thanks to his energy, to his contempt for Utopia, to
his clear sight of what was possible and what was not, he could hope
for a future for himself--a participation in public life--a part he
had believed to be reserved for his son. And henceforward it would
be the answer that he would make to himself; if ever a doubt entered
his mind, it would be his revenge against the mute insults offered
him by some backward peasants, who forgot to recognise him in the
streets, and by certain citizens of Strasburg or Alsheim, who
scarcely, or no longer, saluted him.
He was therefore now going to receive his son in a frame of mind
very different from that of the past. To-day, when he knew himself
in full personal favour with the Government of Alsace-Lorraine, he
was less set on his son carrying out to the letter the plan that he
had traced at first. Jean had already assisted his father, as
Lucienne was assisting him. He had been an argument, and one of the
causes of this long-expected change of the governmental attitude.
His collaboration was still going to be useful, but not necessary;
and the father, warned by certain allusions and a certain reticence
in the last letters written from Berlin by his son, did not feel so
irritated when he thought that perhaps he would not follow the
career in the German magistracy so carefully prepared for him, and
would give up his last three years of terms and his State
examinations. Such were the reflections of this man, whose life had
been guided by the most unadulterated egotism, at the moment when he
was preparing to receive his son's visit. For he had seen Jean and
had watched him coming across the park. M. Oberlé had built at the
extreme end of the saw-mill a sort of cage or footbridge, from which
he could survey everything at once. One window opened on to the
timber yard, and allowed him to follow the movements of the men
occupied in stowing away and transporting the wood. Another,
composed of a double glazed framework, placed the book-keepers under
the eye of their master, ranged along a wall in a room like the
master's room; and by a third, that is to say by a glass partition,
which separated him from the workshop, he took in at a glance the
immense hall where machines of all kinds, great saws in leather
bands, cogged wheels, drills, and planes, were cutting, boring, and
polishing trunks of trees brought to them on sliding grooves. Round
him the low woodwork painted water-green; electric lamps in the
shape of violets, the call-buttons placed on a copper plaque which
served as a pediment to his work bureau, a telephone, a typewriter,
light chairs painted white, spoke of his taste for bright colours,
for convenient innovations, and for fragile-looking objects.
Seeing his son enter, he had turned towards the window overlooking
the park; he had crossed his legs, and placed his right elbow on the
desk. He examined curiously this tall, thin, handsome man, his son,
who sat down facing him, and he smiled. To see him thus, leaning
back in his arm-chair, and smiling his own mechanical and irrelevant
smile, by only judging from the full face framed by two grey
whiskers, and the gesture of his raised right hand, touching his
head and playing with the cord of his eyeglass, it would be easy to
understand the mistake of those who took M. Oberlé for a magistrate.
But the eyes, a little closed on account of the bright light, were
too quick and too hard to belong to any but a man of action. They
gave the lie to the mechanical smile of his lips. They had no
scientific curiosity, worldly or paternal; they sought simply a way,
like those of a ship's captain--in order to pass on. Scarcely had M.
Oberlé asked, "What have you to tell me?" than he added, "Have you
spoken with your mother this morning?"
"No!"
"With Lucienne?"
"Neither; I have just come from my room."
"It is better so. It is better for us to make our plans together, we
two, without any one interfering. I have allowed you to return and
to stay here precisely that we may arrange your future. Firstly,
your military service in the month of October, with the fixed
determination--am I right?"--and he dwelt on the following
words--"to become an officer of the reserve?"
Jean, motionless, with head erect and straight look, and with the
charming gravity of a young man who speaks of his future and who
keeps a sort of quiet hold on himself which is not quite natural to
him:
"Yes, father, that is my intention."
"The first point is then settled--and afterwards? You have seen the
world. You know the people among whom you are called to live. You
know that with regard to the German magistracy the chances of
succeeding increased some time ago, because my own position has been
considerably bettered in Alsace?"
"I know it."
"You know equally well that I have never wavered in my desire to see
you follow the career which would have been mine if circumstances
had not been stronger than my will."
As if this word had suddenly excited in him the strength to will,
the eyes of M. Oberlé were fixed, imperious and masterful, on those
of his son, like the claws of a bird of prey. He left off playing
with his eyeglass, and said quickly:
"Your last letters indicated, however, a certain hesitation. Answer
me. Will you become a magistrate?"
Jean became slightly pale, and answered:
"No!"
The father bent forward as if he were going to rise, and without
taking his eyes off him whose moral energy he was weighing and
judging at that moment:
"Administrator?"
"Neither. Nothing official."
"Then your law studies?"
"Useless."
"Because?"
"Because," said the young man, trying to steady his voice, "I have
not the German spirit."
M. Oberlé had not expected this answer. It was a disavowal. He
started, and instinctively looked into the workshop to make sure
that no one had heard or even guessed at such words. He met the
raised eyes of many workmen, who thought he was supervising the
work, and who turned away at once.
M. Oberlé turned again to his son. A violent irritation had seized
him. But he understood that it was best not to let it be seen. For
fear that his hands should show his agitation, he had seized the two
arms of the arm-chair in which he was seated, bent forward as
before, but now considering this young man from head to foot,
considering his attitude, his clothes, his manner, this young man
who was voicing ideas which seemed like a judgment on the conduct of
his father. After a moment of silence, his voice broken, he asked:
"Who has put you against me? Your mother?"
"No one," said Jean Oberlé quickly. "I have nothing against you. Why
do you take it like that? I say simply that I have not the German
spirit. It is the result of a long comparison, and nothing else."
M. Joseph Oberlé saw that he had shown his hand too much. He
withdrew into himself, and putting on that expression of cold irony
with which he was accustomed to disguise his true sentiments:
"Then, since you refuse to follow the career which I destined for
you, have you chosen another?"
"Without doubt, with your consent."
"Which?"
"Yours. Do not be mistaken with regard to what I have just told you.
I have lived without a quarrel for ten years in an exclusively
German centre. I know what it has cost me. You ask me the result of
my experience. Well, I do not believe that my character is supple
enough, or easy-going enough if you like, to do more than that, or
to become a German official. I am sure that I should not always
understand, and that I should disobey sometimes. My decision is
irrevocable. And, on the contrary, your work pleases me."
"You imagine that a manufacturer is independent?"
"No; but he is more independent than many are. I studied law so
that I should not refuse to follow without reflection, without
examination, the way you pointed out to me. But I have profited by
the travels which you suggested, every year."
"You may say which I imposed upon you; that is the truth, and I am
going to explain my reasons."
"I have profited by them to study the forest industry wherever I
could--in Germany, in Austria, in the Caucasus. I have given more
thought and consideration to those questions than you might suppose.
And I wish to live in Alsheim. Will you allow me to?"
The father did not answer at first. He was trying on his son an
experiment to which he deliberately submitted other men who came to
treat with him about some important affair. He was silent at the
moment when decisive words were to be expected from him. If the
questioner, disturbed, turned away to escape the look which seemed
to be oppressive, or if he renewed the explanation already made, M.
Joseph Oberlé classed him among weak men, his inferiors. Jean bore
his father's look, and did not open his mouth. M. Oberlé was
secretly flattered. He understood that he found himself in the
presence of a man completely formed, of a very resolute, and
probably inflexible spirit. He knew others like him in the
neighbourhood. He secretly appreciated their independence of temper,
and feared it. With the quickness of combination and organisation
habitual to him, he perceived very clearly the industry of Alsheim
directed by Jean, and the father of Jean, Joseph Oberlé, sitting in
the Reichstag, admitted among the financiers, the administrators,
and the powerful men of Germany. He was one of those who know how to
turn his mistakes to some advantage, just as he managed to get
something from the factory waste. This new vision softened him. Far
from being angry, he let the ironical expression relax which he had
put on while speaking of his son's project. With a movement of his
hand he pointed to the immense workshop, where, without ceasing,
with a roar which slightly shook the double windows, the steel
blades entered into the heart of the old trees of the Vosges, and
said, in a tone of affectionate scolding:
"So be it, my son. It will give joy to my father, to your mother,
and to Ulrich. I agree that you put me in the wrong on one point
with regard to them, but in one point only. Some years ago I should
not have allowed you to refuse the career which seemed to me the
best for you, and which would have saved us all from difficulties
which you could not take the measure of. At that moment you were not
able to judge for yourself. And further, I found my work, my
position, too precarious and too dangerous to pass it on to you.
That has changed. My business has increased. Life has become
possible for me and for you all, thanks to the efforts, and perhaps
to the sacrifices, for which those about me are not sufficiently
grateful. To-day I admit that the business has a future. You wish to
succeed me? I open the door for you immediately! You will go through
the practical part of your apprenticeship in the seven months which
remain before you join your regiment. Yes, I consent, but on one
condition."
"Which?"
"You will not mix yourself up with politics."
"I have no taste for politics."
"Ah, excuse me," continued M. Oberlé with animation; "we must
understand one another, must we not? I do not think you have any
political ambition for yourself; you are not old enough, and perhaps
you are not of the right stuff. And that is not what I forbid--I
forbid you to have anything to do with Alsatian chauvinism; to go
about repeating, as others do, on every occasion--'France, France';
to wear under your waistcoat a tricolour belt; to imitate the
Alsatian students of Strasburg, who, to recognise and encourage one
another, and for the fun of it, whistle in the ears of the police
the six notes of the Marseillaise 'Form your battalions.' I won't
have any of those little proceedings, of those little bravadoes, and
of those great risks, my dear fellow! They are forbidden
manifestations for us business men who work in a German country.
They go against our efforts and interests, for it is not France who
buys. France is very far away, my dear fellow; she is more than two
hundred leagues from here, at least one would think so, considering
the little noise, movement, or money which come to us from there. Do
not forget that! You are by your own wish a German manufacturer; if
you turn your back on the Germans you are lost. Think what you
please about the history of your country, of its past, and of its
present. I am ignorant of your opinions on that subject. I will not
try to guess what they will be in a neighbourhood so behind the
times as ours at Alsheim; but whatever you think, either try to hold
your tongue, or make a career for yourself elsewhere."
A smile stole round Jean's turned-up moustache, while the upper part
of his face remained grave and firm.
"You are asking yourself, I am sure, what I think about France?"
"Let us hear."
"I love her."
"You do not know her!"
"I have read her history and her literature carefully, and I have
compared: that is all. When one is oneself of the nation, that
enables one to divine much. I do not know it otherwise, it is true.
You have taken your precautions."
"What you say is true, though at the same time you intended to
wound----"
"Not at all."
"Yes, I have taken my precautions, in order to free your sister and
you from that deadly spirit of opposition which would have made your
lives barren from the beginning, which would have made you
discontented people, powerless, poor; there are too many people of
that sort in Alsace, who render no service to France or to Alsace,
or to themselves, by perpetually furnishing Germany with reasons for
anger. I do not regret that you make me explain myself as to the
system of education which I desired for you, and which I alone
desired. I wished to spare you the trial I have borne, of which I
have just spoken to you: to fail in life. There is still another
reason. Ah, I know well that credit will not be given me for that! I
am obliged to praise myself in my own family. My child, it is not
possible to have been brought up in France, to belong to France
through all one's ancestry, and not to love French culture."
He interrupted himself a moment to see the impression this phrase
produced, and he could see nothing, not a movement on the impassible
face of his son, who decidedly was a highly self-controlled man. The
implacable desire for justification which governed M. Oberlé, made
him go on:
"You know that the French language is not favourably looked upon
here, my dear Jean. In Bavaria you had a literary and historical
education, better from that point of view than you would have had in
Strasburg. I was able to desire, without prejudicing your masters
against you, that you should have many extra French lessons. In
Alsace, you and I would both have suffered for that. Those are the
motives which guided me. Experience will show whether I was
mistaken. I did it in any case in good faith, and for your good."
"My dear father," said Jean, "I have no right to judge what you have
done. What I can tell you is that, thanks to that education I have
received, if I have not an unbounded taste or admiration for German
civilisation, I have at least the habit of living with the Germans.
And I am persuaded that I could live with them in Alsace."
The father raised his eyebrows as if he would say, "I am not so sure
of that."
"My ideas, up to now, have made me no enemy in Germany; and it seems
to me that one can direct a saw-mill in an annexed country with the
opinions I have just shown you."
"I hope so," said M. Oberlé simply.
"Then you accept me? I come to you?"
For answer the master pressed his finger on an electric button.
A man came up the steps which led from the machine hall to the
observatory that M. Oberlé had had built, and opened the port-hole,
and in the opening one saw a square blond beard, long hair, and two
eyes like two blue gems.
"Wilhelm," said the master in German, "you will make my son
conversant with the works, and you will explain to him the purchases
we have made for the past six months. From to-morrow he will
accompany you in your round of visits to where the fellings and
cuttings are being carried out in the interests of the firm."
The door was shut again.
That young enthusiast, the elegant Jean Oberlé, was standing in
front of his father. He held out his hand to him and said, pale with
joy:
"Now I am again some one in Alsace! How I thank you!"
The father took his son's hand with a somewhat studied effusion. He
thought:
"He is the image of his mother! In him I find again the spirit, the
words, and the enthusiasm of Monica." Aloud he said:
"You see, my son, that I have only one aim in view, to make you
happy. I have always had it. I agree to your adopting a career quite
different from the one I chose for you. Try now to understand our
position as your sister understands it."
Jean went away, and his father, a few minutes later, went out also.
But while M. Joseph Oberlé went towards the house, being in haste to
see his daughter, the only confidante of his thoughts, and to report
the conversation he had just had with Jean, the latter crossed the
timber yard to the left, passed before the lodge, and took the road
to the forest. But he did not go far, because the luncheon hour was
approaching. By the road that wound upward he reached the region of
the vineyards of Alsheim, beyond the hop-fields which were still
bare, where the poles rose tied together, like a stack of arms. His
soul was glad. When he came to the entrance of a vineyard which he
had known since his earliest childhood, where he had gathered the
grapes in the days of long ago, he climbed on to a hill which
overlooked the road and the rows of vines at the bottom. In spite of
the grey light, in spite of the clouds and the wind, he found his
Alsace beautiful, divinely beautiful--Alsace, sloping down very
gently in front of him, and becoming a smooth plain with strips of
grass and strips of ploughed land, and whence the villages here and
there lifted their tile roofs and the point of their belfries.
Round, isolated trees--leafless because it was winter--resembled dry
thistles; some crows were flying, helped by the north wind, and
seeking a newly sown spot.
Jean raised his hands, and spread them as if to embrace the expanse
of land stretching out from Obernai, which he saw in the farthest
undulations to the left, as far as Barr, half buried under the
avalanche of pines down the mountain-side. "I love thee, Alsace, and
I have come back to thee!" he cried. He gazed at the village of
Alsheim, at the house of red stone which rose a little below him,
and which was his; then at the other extremity of the pile of
houses, inhabited by the workmen and peasants, he marked a sort of
forest promontory which pushed out into the smooth plain. It was an
avenue ending in a great group of leafless trees, grey, between
which one could see the slopes of a roof. Jean let his eyes rest a
long time on this half-hidden dwelling, and said: "Good day,
Alsatian woman! Perhaps I am going to find that I love you. It would
be so good to live here with you!"
The bell rang for luncheon, rang out from the Oberlés' house, and
recalled him to himself. It had a thin, miserable sound, which gave
some idea of the immensity of free space in which the noise vanished
away, and the strength of the tide of the wind which carried it away
over the lands of Alsace.