THE EASTER VIGIL
The weather had settled fine. Jean found the plain of Alsace in full
spring glory.
However, he only felt a faint and mixed pleasure in the sight he had
longed for. He came back from this excursion more upset than he
cared to own to himself. It had revealed to him the opposition of
the two nations--that is to say, of two minds, the persistent memory
of many of the poor, and the difficulty they found to make a
livelihood which their prudent and even hidden opinions created for
them. He understood better now how difficult a part his would be to
play in the family, at the works, in the village, in Alsace.
The pleasure he felt the morning after his return at his father's
congratulations on the report of the forest cultivation by the House
of Oberlé made only a short diversion in the midst of this worry. He
tried in vain to appear quite happy, and he duly deceived those
whose interest it was to be deceived.
"My Jean," said his mother, kissing him as he was going to sit down
to breakfast, "I think you look splendid. The strong Alsheim air
agrees with you, and also being near your poor mamma!"
"Fancy that!" said Lucienne, "and I thought him very gloomy!"
"Business," explained M. Joseph Oberlé, turning towards the window
where his son was sitting, "cares of business. He has handed me a
report, on which I must congratulate him publicly; it is very well
drawn up, very clear, and the result of which will be that I shall
economise, in four places at least, in the transport of my trees.
You understand, father?"
The grandfather made a sign with his head. But he finished writing
something on the slate, and showed it to his daughter-in-law.
"Has he already seen the country weep?"
Madame Monica rubbed the sentences out quickly with her fingers. The
others looked at her, and all were uneasy, as if there had been some
painful explanation between them.
Jean again experienced that intimate sorrow for which there is no
remedy. All the afternoon he worked in the office at the saw-mills,
but he was distracted and dreamy. He reflected that Lucienne would
go away one day, and that nothing would be altered; that the
grandfather might disappear also, and that the division would still
go on. All the plans that he had had when far away, the hope of
being himself a diversion, of bringing peace, of uniting them or of
giving them an appearance of union: all that appeared childish to
him now. He saw that Lucienne had spoken truly when she made fun of
his illusions.
No, the evil was not in his family, it was in the whole of Alsace.
Even if no one of his name lived at Alsheim, Jean Oberlé would meet
at his door, in the village, among his workmen, his clients, and his
friends the same annoyance at certain moments, always the same
question. Neither his will nor any will like his could deliver his
race, either now or later.
In this melancholy mood the idea of seeing Odile again, and making
her love him, came back to him and took possession of his mind. Who
else besides Odile could make life at Alsheim acceptable to him, and
bring back his scattered and suspicious friends, and re-establish
the name of Oberlé in the esteem of "Old Alsace"? He saw now that
she was more than a pretty woman towards whom his youthful heart
went out in song; he saw in her peace and dignity, and the only
strength possible in the difficult future which awaited him.
She was the brave and faithful creature whom he needed here.
How to tell her? How to find an opportunity to speak freely to her,
without the risk of being surprised, and troubling this orderly and
jealous family? Evidently not at Alsheim. Then where should he
arrange to meet her? And how could he forewarn her?
Jean thought of this all the evening.
The next day, Maundy Thursday, was the day on which in Catholic
churches the Tomb would be decorated with flowers, branches of
trees, materials, and torches placed in ledges, where the faithful
hasten to adore the Host. It was beautiful weather, clear, even too
clear for the time of year, when clearness calls up mist or rain.
After he had talked with his mother and Lucienne in M. Philippe
Oberlé's room--it was the first time that he had felt that his home
held a family--Jean went towards the orchards, which are behind the
houses of Alsheim, and followed the road which he had taken a few
weeks ago to call on the Bastians. But a little beyond the
Ramspachers' farm he took the path which up to there ran at right
angles to the avenue, and was now parallel with it, and with it
joined the village road. He came out on to a piece of waste land,
used for carts by many farmers on the plain. The neighbouring fields
were deserted. The road was partially screened by a bank of earth
planted with hazel-trees. Jean walked along the quick-set hedge
which ran round the Bastians' property, approached the village, and
came back again. He waited. He hoped that Odile would soon come into
the path on the other side of the hedge to go to the Alsheim church
to pray at the Tomb.
The remembrance of former meetings, at the same place and on the
same day, had come into his mind, and had decided him. As he began
the walk for the third time he saw what he had not seen at first.
"How wonderful," he said to himself. "The road was made for her!"
At the end of the avenue, for more than two hundred yards in front,
the fence, the clumps of trees, a small portion of the long roof
appeared in a marvellous frame.
The old cherry-trees had flowered all together in the same week with
the almond-trees and the pear-trees. The pear-trees blossom in
clusters, the almond-trees in stars; as for the wild cherry-trees,
from the forest transplanted to the plain--they blossom into white
distaffs of bloom.
Round the substantial branches, swollen and coloured red with sap,
thousands of white corollas like a drift of snowflakes, trembled on
their fragile stalks, and so thick were they that in many places one
could not see the branch itself. Every tree cast its flowery
spindles in all directions. So many of the cherry-trees were old
that from one side of the avenue to the other the points of the
flowering branches touched and intermingled. A swarm of bees covered
them with hovering wings. A subtle odour of honey floated in waves
down the avenue, and was wafted on the wind far away to the plain,
to the fields, to the scarcely covered ground surprised by this
feeling of spring. There were no trees in the large open valley
which could vie with these for splendour--only to the right--and
quite close, the four walnut-trees of the Ramspachers had begun to
show their leaves, and seemed with their heavy branches to be
enamels encrusting the farm walls.
The minutes passed by--the petals of the cherry-blossoms fell in
showers. And lo, here is a woman stooping to unlatch the gate--it is
she! She stands erect, and walks onwards in the middle of the path,
between its two borders of grass--quite slowly, for she is gazing
upwards. She is looking at the white blossoms which are open. The
idea of a bride's wedding wreath, an idea so familiar to young
girls, passes through her mind. Odile does not smile, only her face
beams with an uplifted look, and an involuntary stretching out of
her hands gives the greeting and thanks of her youth to the joyous
earth.
She goes down towards Alsheim. On her fur cap, on her rounded
cheeks, on her blue cloth dress, the wild cherry-trees shed their
blossoms. She is serious. In her left hand she carries a prayer
book, half hidden in the folds of her skirt. She thinks she is
alone.
The splendour of the day speaks to her. But there is nothing languid
about her. She is a valiant creature; she is made to face life
bravely. Her eyes, which seek the tree-tops, are alive and masters
of her thoughts, and do not give themselves up to a tempting dream.
She was drawing near, never suspecting that Jean was waiting for
her. The meal-time ended, the usual noises were going on in the
village of Alsheim, rumbling cart-wheels, barking dogs, voices of
men, of children calling to each other, but all softened by the
distance, scattered in the vast aerial space, drowned in the tide of
the wind, as is the noise of a clod of earth which has become loose
and falls into the sea.
As she came near, Jean took off his hat and stood up a little on
the other side of the hedge. And she who walked between two walls of
blossoms, although she was gazing upwards, turned her head, her
glance still full of the spring which had excited her.
"Oh, is that you?" she said.
And she came at once across the strip of grass where the
cherry-trees were planted, up to the place in the hedge where Jean
was.
"I cannot come to you freely as I used to," he said, "so I came to
wait for you. I have a favour to ask of you...."
"A favour? And you say that so seriously!" She tried to smile, but
her lips refused. They had both become pale.
"I am going," said Jean, as if he was making a grave declaration; "I
am going up to Sainte Odile the day after to-morrow--I shall go to
hear the bells ring in Easter. If you also asked for permission to
come----"
"You have made a vow?"
He answered:
"Something like it. I must speak to you--to you alone."
Odile withdrew slightly. With something of fear in her look she was
trying to find out if Jean was speaking the truth--if she had
guessed aright. He was watching her in an agony of anxiety. They
were motionless, trembling, and so near and yet so far from each
other that one would have said that they were threatening each
other. And in fact both felt that the peace of their lives was at
stake. They were not children, but a man and a woman of a strong and
passionate race. All the powers of their being asserted themselves
and broke through the hackneyed commonplaces of custom, because in
these simple words, "I must speak to you," Odile had heard the
breath of a soul which was giving itself, and which demanded a
return.
In the deserted avenue the old cherry-trees lifted their white
distaffs of blossom, and in the cup of each flower the spring sun
was resting.
"The day after to-morrow?" she said, "at Sainte Odile--to hear the
bells ring?"
She repeated what he had said. But that was to gain time, and to
gaze deeper into those eyes fixed upon her, eyes which looked like
the green depths of the forest.
There was a great calm in the plain and in the next village. The
wind ceased for a moment--Odile turned away.
"I will go," she said.
Neither of them explained themselves further. A covered cart rolled
along the road, not far off. A man shut the gate through which carts
pass to the Bastians' farm. But the great thing was Jean had said
what he had to say.
In the profound depths of their souls the words echoed and
re-echoed. They were no longer alone. Both had the sacred moment of
their meeting enclosed, as it were, in themselves, and they fell
back on their own thoughts as the earth in the furrows does when the
sowing is done, and the germinating seed is beginning to expand.
Odile went away. Jean admired the healthy and beautiful woman
disappearing along the road. She walked well, without swinging her
body. Above the white neck, Jean placed in imagination the big black
bows of the Alsatian women who live beyond Strasburg. She no longer
raised her eyes towards the cherry-trees. She let her skirt trail,
and it swept the grass, making a little dust fly, and the petals of
cherry blossoms, which flew about a little in the wind before dying.
* * * * *
The day after to-morrow was slow in coming. Jean had said to his
father:
"Some pilgrims are going up to Sainte Odile on Saturday to hear the
Easter bells. I have never been there at this time. If you do not
mind, it is an excursion I should much like to make."
He did not mind.
Jean opened his window when he woke that morning. There was a thick
fog. The fields near the house were invisible.
"You will not go in this weather?" asked Lucienne, when she saw her
brother come into the dining-room, where she was drinking her
chocolate.
"Yes, I shall go."
"You will see nothing."
"I shall hear."
"Is it then so extraordinary?"
"Yes."
"Then will you take me?"
She did not wish to go to Sainte Odile. Dressed in a light
morning-gown trimmed with lace, and drinking her chocolate in little
sips, she had no intention whatever of doing anything but stop her
brother on his way and kiss him.
"Seriously, are you making a kind of pilgrimage up there?"
"Yes--a kind of----"
Bending at this moment over her cup, she did not see the quick smile
which accompanied the words. She answered a little bitterly:
"You know I'm not devout. I fulfil my obligations as a Catholic but
poorly, and the practices of devotion do not tempt me. But you, you
have more faith than I have. I am going to tell you what you ought
to ask for--it will be worth a pilgrimage, I can tell you." She
changed her tone, and her voice became suddenly passionate; she
raised her eyebrows, her eyes were at once self-willed and
affectionate, and she said:
"You must ask for that miracle of perfection among women who will
live with you here. When I am married and go away life will be
terrible for you here. You will have to bear all alone the misery of
the family quarrels, and the suspicions of the peasants. You will
have no one to pity you. That is the part to play. Ask for some one
strong enough, gay enough, and with a conscience fine enough to do
it, since you would live at Alsheim. You see, my thought is that of
a friend."
"Of a great friend."
They kissed each other.
"Good-bye, Pilgrim, good-bye--good luck!"
"Good-bye."
Jean got away. He was soon in the park, turned after passing through
the gate, went through the hop-fields and the vineyards, and so into
the forest.
The forest was also full of mist. The serried masses of pines, which
took the hill as it were by storm, appeared grey from one bank of
the stream to the other, and were almost immediately lost in a thick
mist without sun and without shadow.
Jean did not go up the beaten track. He went gaily climbing up the
woods when not too steep, and stopping sometimes to take breath and
to listen if he could not catch above as below, somewhere in the
mysterious and impenetrable mists of the mountain, either the voice
of Odile or the chant of the pilgrims. But no; he only heard the
rushing of water, or perhaps the voice of some one calling to his
dog, or the timid call of some poor peasant of Obernai picking up
dead sticks with his child, in spite of the regulation which allows
wood-picking only on Thursdays. The saucepan must boil on Easter
Sunday! And was not this fog which hid everything a divine
protection against the forest guard?
Jean experienced great pleasure from this solitary, stiff climb. As
he went up he thought of Odile more and more, and he was more and
more glad that he had chosen this holy place of Alsace in which to
meet her--and this day--doubly affecting. Everywhere around him the
beautiful scalefern which carpets the rocky slopes unfolded its
velvet fronds. On all last year's shoots of honeysuckle there were
little leaves; the first strawberries were in flower, and the first
lilies of the valley. The geraniums, which are so fine in Sainte
Odile, lifted their hairy stalks, and the multitude of whortle
berries and bilberries and raspberries, that is the entire
undergrowth, whole fields of it, began to pour out on the breeze the
perfume of their moving sap. The fog retained these few scents and
kept them in like a net work on the sides of the Vosges.
Jean came close to Heidenbruch, looked at the green shutters and
went on his way. "Uncle Ulrich," he murmured, "you would be glad if
you saw me, and if you knew where I am going, and with whom,
perhaps, I shall be presently!" Fidèle barked, half asleep, but did
not come. The mountain was again deserted. A buzzard called above
the mist. Jean, who had not been this way since his childhood,
enjoyed the wildness and peacefulness of the place. He reached the
higher part, which is the property of the bishopric of Strasburg,
and followed the "pagan wall" which surrounds the summit for ten
miles, that he might recall his school-boy impressions of long ago.
At midday he had passed the Männelstein rock and entered the convent
courtyard, built on the mountain top, a crown of old stone placed
above the summit of the pine forests; and there, although there was
no crowd, he found groups of pilgrims, carriages with horses
unharnessed, fastened to the trunks of ancient lime-trees, grown no
one knew how at this altitude, and covering with their branches
nearly the whole enclosure. Jean remembered the way; he went towards
the chapels on the right. He merely passed through the first, which
is painted, but stopped in the second, with elliptical arches
leading to the shrine, where lies the wax figure of the patroness of
Alsace, the Abbess Sainte Odile--so gentle, with her pink face, her
veil, and her golden crozier, her purple mantle lined with ermine.
Jean knelt down: with all the strength of his faith he prayed for
his home, so sadly divided against itself, from which he felt glad
to be away, and that Odile Bastian should not fail to keep this love
tryst, the hour for which was so near at hand. As his was a sincere
soul, he added: "Let our way be made clear to us! May we follow it
together! Let us see all obstacles removed from our path!"
The whole of Alsace had knelt at the same spot for centuries.
Then he went out to the refectory, where the nuns had begun to help
the first visitors. Odile was not there. After the lunch, which was
very long, being continually lengthened by the arrival of fresh
pilgrims, Jean went hastily to the foot of the great rock on which
the convent is built, and finding once more the road which comes
from Saint Nabor and passes by Sainte Odile's well, he posted
himself in a thick part of the wood which overlooked a bend in the
road. At his feet was the narrow strip of downtrodden earth, bare of
grass and covered with pine needles, and which seemed hanging in the
air. Far beyond that point the slope of the mountain became so steep
that he could see no farther. In clear weather you could see to
right and left two sunken wooden buttresses, but now the curtain of
white mist hid everything--the abyss, the slopes, and the trees. But
the wind blew and moved the mist, whose thickness, one could feel,
varied from minute to minute.
It was two o'clock. In an hour the Easter bells would ring. The
people who wanted to hear them could not now be far from the summit,
and in the great silence Jean heard, rising upwards from below,
voices blending round the bend of the wood. Then a phrase whistled:
"_Formez vos bataillons!_" warned him that Alsatian students were
near. Two young men--he who had whistled overtaken by another--came
little by little out of the fog and went towards the abbey.
Then a young couple passed, the wife dressed in black, her
square-cut bodice showing a white chemise, and wearing a lace cap
like a helmet on her head; the man wore a flowered velvet waistcoat,
a jacket with a row of copper buttons, and a fur cap.
Weissenburg peasants thought Jean.
Then he saw florid women from Alsheim and Heiligenstein pass,
chattering, but not showing any trace of Alsatian dress.
Among them was a woman from the Münster valley, recognisable by her
cap of dark stuff, bound round her head like the handkerchief of the
southerners, and decorated in front with a red rosette. Two minutes
slipped by. A step was heard through the fog, and a priest
appeared--an old, heavy man, who wiped his face as he walked. Two
children, very alert, doubtless the belated children of one of the
women who had already gone by, overtook him, greeting him in
Alsatian with the words, "Praised be Jesus Christ, M. le curé!"
"For ever and ever!" answered the priest.
He did not know them; he only spoke to them to answer the old and
beautiful form of greeting. Jean, seated near a pine-tree and half
hidden, heard an old man overtake the priest at the bend of the road
and say, "Praised be Jesus Christ!"
How many times must that greeting have echoed through the vaults of
the forest!
Jean looked before him as one in a dream, who sees only vague
figures without attaching any meaning to them.
He stayed like that a short time. Then a murmur, almost
imperceptible, so faint as to pass almost unheard, weaker than the
twitter of a bird, was borne up on the fog: "Hail, Mary, full of
grace; blessed art thou among women!" Another murmur followed, and
finished with "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us!" and an
involuntary agitation, a mysterious certainty, preceded the
appearance of two women.
They were both tall. The elder was an old spinster of Alsheim, whose
face was the colour of the fog, and who lived in the shadow of the
church, which she decorated on feast-days. She looked weary, but she
smiled as she recited the rosary. The younger walked on the right,
at the edge of the path, even with the slope, her proud head raised.
Her fair hair was like a beautiful piece of pine bark, her body,
robust and perfectly proportioned, stood out completely from the
pale screen of cloudy mist which filled the bend of the road.
Jean did not move, nevertheless the younger woman saw him, and
turned her head towards him. Odile smiled, and without interrupting
her prayer, her eyes, turned towards the summit of the mountain,
said:
"I will wait for you up there."
The two women did not slacken their steps. With even steps, upright,
moving slightly the rosaries which they held in their hands by the
swaying of their bodies, they mounted upwards, and were hidden in
the shadow of the old wood. Jean let some moments pass by and
followed the same road. At the turning, where the road becomes
straight and crosses the crest of the mountain to reach the convent,
he saw the two women again. They were walking more quickly, glad to
have arrived, their sunshades open, for the mist, which had not
dispersed, was now warm, and there were splashes of shadow at the
foot of the trees. The sun was going down towards the peaks of the
Vosges and towards the plains of France beyond.
The pilgrims who had arrived had already made their pilgrimage to
the shrine of Sainte Odile, and were hastening to visit the places
consecrated by pious or profane tradition: Sainte Odile's well, St.
John's well, or by the pagan wall along the goat-path to the Rock of
Männelstein, from where there is generally such a lovely view, to
the tops of the Bloss and the Elsberg, to the ruined castles which
lift their ancient towers among the pines--Andlau, Spesburg,
Landsberg, and others. Jean saw the two women cross the courtyard
and go towards the chapel. He retraced his steps to the beginning of
the wind-swept avenue, along the old building, which reminds one of
the advance works of old forts, and passes through a vaulted porch
used as an entrance.
Ten minutes later Odile came out of the chapel alone, and guessing
that Jean Oberlé was waiting for her elsewhere rather than in this
courtyard too full of onlookers, took the road leading to the
forest.
She was dressed in the clothes she had worn on Maundy Thursday, the
same dark dress, but her hat was very simple, very youthful, and
suited her to perfection: a straw, with a wide brim turned up on one
side, and trimmed with a twist of tulle. She carried a summer jacket
on her arm, and a sunshade. Odile walked quickly, with her head
slightly bent, as those walk who are not interested in the road, or
who are either praying or dreaming. When she came near Jean, who was
on the right of the portico, she looked up, and said without
stopping:
"The woman who came with me is resting. Here I am!"
"It is good of you to have trusted me!" said Jean. "Come, Odile!"
He followed, close to her, the avenue planted with sorry trees
distorted by the winter winds. He was so much affected by the
realisation of his dream that he could only think and speak of one
thing: his gratitude to Odile, who was absolutely silent, only
listening to what he did not say--and as full of emotion as he was.
They left the road at the place where it begins to slope downwards,
and took a path through the forest of lofty pines in serried ranks
which leads round the convent. There was no one there, and Jean saw
that Odile's eyes of the colour of ripe corn, eyes deep and serious,
were turned towards him. There was no sound in the wood save that
from the drops of moisture falling from the leaves. They were quite
close to each other.
"I asked you to come," said Jean, "so that you should decide what my
life is to be. You were the love of my early youth. I want you to be
my love always!"
Odile's look was far away, lost in the distance. She trembled
slightly, and said:
"Have you thought?"
"Of everything!"
"Even of that which may separate us?"
"What do you mean by that? What are you afraid of? Of entering a
disunited family?"
"No!"
"You would bring them together, I am sure of it. You would be its
joy and peace. What do you fear--my father's or your father's
opposition because they are now enemies?"
"That could be got over," said the young girl.
"Then it is because your mother detests me," said Jean hastily. "She
does hate me, does she not? The other day she was so stiff to me, so
offensive."
The fair head made a sign of denial.
"She will be slower in believing in you than my father was, slower
than I was myself. But when she sees that your education has not
changed your mind towards Alsace she will overcome her prejudices."
After a moment's silence Odile said:
"I do not think I am making any mistake. To-day's difficulties can
be brushed on one side by you or by me, or by both of us. I am only
afraid of what I do not know, the least thing which to-morrow might
aggravate such a disturbed state----"
"I understand," said Jean, "you are afraid of my father's ambition?"
"Perhaps!"
"We have already suffered much from that. But he is my father. He is
set on keeping me here; he says it every day. When he knows that I
have chosen you, Odile, if he has personal projects which would
prevent our marriage, he will at least put them off. Do not have any
fear; we shall win!"
"We shall win!" she repeated.
"I am sure of it, Odile. You will make my life, Odile, which will be
difficult, perhaps impossible, if you were not there. It was for you
that I came back to the country. If I tell you that I have travelled
much, and found no woman who had the charm for me that you have, or
who made the same impression on me--how shall I tell you? The
impression of a mountain stream so fresh and deep! Every time I
think of my future marriage your image comes before my eyes. I love
you, Odile!"
He took Odile's hand, and she answered, lifting her eyes to the
light coming from above the trees.
"God is my witness that I love you, too!"
She thrilled with joy, and Jean felt her hand tremble.
"Yes," said Jean; and he tried to look into her eyes, which were
still fixed on the distance.
"We shall overcome everything. We shall overcome the numerous
obstacles arising from this terrible subject: that is all that is
between us."
"Yes; it is the one and only question in this part of the world."
"It poisons everything!"
She stopped, and turned her radiant face full of love to him--of
that beautiful and proud love which he had longed to know and to
inspire.
"Say rather that it makes everything greater. Our quarrels here are
not village quarrels--we are either for or against a country. We are
obliged to have courage every day, to make enemies every day, every
day to break with old friends who would willingly have remained
faithful to us, but who are not faithful to Alsace. No action of our
lives is indifferent; there is no action that is not an affirmation.
I assure you, Jean, there is nobleness in that."
"That is true, Odile, my beloved."
They stopped to enjoy that delicious word to the full. Their souls
were in their eyes, and they looked at each other tremblingly. In
low tones, although there were no onlookers other than the pines
swayed by the wind, they spoke of the future as of a battle already
begun.
"Lucienne will be on my side," said Jean. "I shall entrust my secret
to her when occasion occurs. She will help me, and I count on her."
"I count on my father," said Odile; "for he is already well disposed
towards you. But take care not to do anything that would annoy him.
Do not try to see me at Alsheim. Do not try to hurry on the time."
"That glorious time when you will be mine!"
They smiled at each other for the first time.
"I love you so dearly," continued Jean, "that I shall not ask you
for the kiss that you would no doubt give me--I have no right to it.
We do not entirely depend on ourselves, Odile. And then it pleases
me to show you how sacred you are to me. Tell me at least that I
shall take away with me a little of your soul?"
The lips so near his murmured "Yes!" And almost immediately:
"Do you hear down there? Is that the first Easter bell?"
They turned together towards the side where the wood sloped
downwards.
"No; it must be the wind in the trees."
"Come," said she: "the bells are going to ring. And if I were not
seen up there when they rang, old Rose would speak of it...."
Hardly saying a word, she led him to the base of the rock. There
they separated to go back to the Abbey by two different paths.
"I shall find you again on the terrace," said Odile.
The daylight was growing blue in the hollows. That was the hour when
waiting for the night does not seem long, and the morrow already
dawns in the dreaming mind.
In a few minutes Jean had crossed the yard, followed the corridors
of the convent, and opened a door leading to the garden in a sharp
angle at the east of the buildings. There it was that all the
pilgrims to Sainte Odile met to see Alsace when the weather was
clear. A wall, high enough to lean on, runs along the top of an
enormous block of rock, advancing like a spur above the forest. It
overlooks the pines which cover the slopes everywhere. From the
extreme point shut in, like the lantern of a lighthouse, one can see
to the right quite a group of mountains, and in front and to the
left the plain of Alsace. At this moment the fog was divided into
two parts, for the sun was shining on the peaks of the Vosges. All
the cloudy mist which did not reach that waving line of peaks, was
grey and wan; but just above, almost horizontal rays pierced the
mist and coloured it, giving to the second half of the landscape a
look of brightness like luminous foam. And this separation showed
with what quickness the mist came up from the valley towards the
departing sun. The fleecy clouds intermingling, were wafted into the
illumined space, were irradiated, showing thus their incessantly
changing shapes, and the strength of the motion impelling them, as
if the light had summoned their columns to greater heights.
There was at the entrance of this narrow place, arranged for
pilgrims and visitors, an old man wearing the costume of the old
Alsatians to the north of Strasburg; near him the priest with grey
curly hair whom the children had greeted in the morning on the slope
of Sainte Odile; a step or two farther on were the young Weissenburg
peasants, and at the narrowest spot, squeezed close together on the
wall, were the two students who might have been taken for brothers
on account of their protruding lips and their beards divided in the
middle, one fair, the other chestnut coloured. Both were Alsatians.
They exchanged everyday remarks, as is usual among people who do not
know each other. When they saw Jean Oberlé they turned round, and
they felt themselves suddenly united by a common bond of race which
becomes stronger in the face of a common danger.
"Is he a German--that one there?" asked a voice.
The old man who was near the priest cast a glance in the direction
of the garden and answered:
"No; he wears his moustache in the French fashion and he looks like
one of us."
"I saw him walking with Mademoiselle Odile Bastian, of Alsheim,"
said the young woman.
The group was reassured, and more so when Jean greeted the priest in
Alsatian and asked:
"Are the bells of Alsace late?"
They all smiled, not because of what he had said, but because they
felt at home among themselves without an inconvenient witness.
Odile came in her turn and leaned against a wall on the right of the
first group. Jean took up a similar position on the other side of
the group. They were suffering from loving so much, from having said
it, and from only being sure of themselves.
The bells were not late. Their voices were encircled and enclosed by
the rising mists. Suddenly they escaped from the cloudy masses, and
it seemed as if each separate morsel of fog burst like a bubble on
touching the wall and poured out on the summit of the sacred
mountain all the harmony of the pealing bells. "Easter! Easter! The
Lord is risen! He has changed the world and delivered men! The
heavens are opened!" So sang the bells of Alsace. They were ringing
from the foot of the mountain, and from the distance, and from far,
far away, voices of the little bells, and voices of the great bells
of cathedrals; voices which never ceased and from peal to peal were
prolonged in re-echoing reverberations; voices that passed away
lightly, intermittently, delicately, like a shuttle in a loom; a
prodigious choir, whose singers were never visible to each other;
cries of joy from a whole population of churches, songs of the
spring eternal, which rose up from the depths of the misty plain and
mounted to the summit of Sainte Odile to blend into one harmonious
whole.
The grandeur of this concert of pealing bells silenced the few folk
gathered together up there. The very air prayed. Souls thought of
the risen Christ. Several thought of Alsace.
"There is some blue sky," said a voice.
"Some blue up there," repeated a woman's voice, as if in a dream.
They scarcely heard it, in the roar of sounds which rose from the
valley. Yet all eyes were raised at once. They saw in the sky,
amidst the masses of fog fleeing before the assailing sun, blue
depths opening and opening with bewildering rapidity. And when they
again looked downwards they perceived that the cloud of mist also
was tearing itself to pieces on the slopes. It was the clearing up.
Parts of the forest slipped, as it were, into the divisions made in
the moving fog; then others; then black crevasses, the thickets, and
rocks; then of a sudden the last rags of mist, drawn, thin,
contorted, lamentable, went up in whirling masses, brushed against
the terrace, and disappeared above. And the plain of Alsace appeared
all blue and gold.
One of those who saw it cried out:
"How beautiful!"
All leaned forward to see in the opening of the mountain the plain
growing lighter and lighter as far as eye could see.
All these Alsatian souls were touched. Three hundred villages of
their own country lay below them scattered about amidst the young
green of the cornfields. They were sleeping to the sound of the
bells. Each was only a rose-red spot. The river, near the horizon,
showed like a bar of dusky silver. And beyond rose stretches of
country, whose shape was vanishing rapidly in the fogs which still
hung above the Rhine. Quite near by, following the slope of the fir
plantations, one saw, on the contrary, the smallest details of the
forest of Sainte Odile. Several points of dark green jutted out into
the valley and mixed with the pale green of the meadows. All was lit
up by reflection from a sky full of rays of light. No bright spot
attracted the eye. As the bells had united their voices, so the
varying shades of the earth had melted into a harmonious unity. The
old Alsatian, who kept his place at the side of the priest,
stretched his arms, and said:
"I hear the cathedral bells."
He pointed, away in the distance over the flat country, to the
celebrated spire of Strasburg, which looked like an amethyst the
size of a thumbnail. Now that they could see the rose-red of
villages, they imagined they could recognise the sound of the bells.
A voice said: "I recognise the sound of the bells of the Abbey of
Marmoutier. How well they chime!"
"I," said another, "I hear the bells of Obernai!"
"And I the bells of Heiligenstein."
The peasant, who came from the neighbourhood of Weissenburg, also
said:
"We are too far off to hear what the bells of Saint George of
Haguenau are ringing. However, listen, listen; there--now."
The old Alsatian repeated seriously:
"I hear the cathedral!" and he added: "Look up there again!"
They could all see that the clouds had ascended to the regions of
the sunbeams. The cloud, shapeless at the base of the mountain, had
spread across the sky, and was like sheaves of gladioli thrown above
the Vosges and the plain: some red, like blood, some quite pale, and
some like molten gold. And all those witnesses looking up from
between the two abysses, their gaze having followed the long light
line, remarked that it lit up the earth with its reflection, and
that the distant houses of the capital and the spire of the
cathedral stood out in a tawny light from the thickening shadow.
"That is like what I saw on the night of August the 23rd, 1870,"
said the old Alsatian. "I was just here----"
They, even the very young ones, had heard this date frequently
spoken of. Their looks were fixed more steadily on the little spire,
whence came still a little shining light and the sound of the
resurrection bells.
"I was here with the women and girls from yonder villages, who had
come up here because the noise of the cannons had redoubled. We
heard the cannons as we now hear the bells. The bombs burst like
rockets. Our women were weeping here where you stand. That was the
night when the library caught fire, that the new church caught fire,
and the picture gallery, and ten houses in Broglie. Then a
yellow-and-red smoke rose, and the clouds looked like these we now
see. Strasburg was burning. They had fired one hundred and
ninety-three shells against the city.
One of the students, the younger one, shook his fist.
"Down with them!" muttered the other.
The peasant took his cap off and kept it under his arm, without
saying a word.
The bells were still ringing, but not so many of them. They could no
longer hear the bells of Obernai, nor of Saint Nabor, nor some of
the others they thought they had heard. They were like lights going
out. Night was coming.
Jean saw that the two women were almost weeping, and that every one
was silent.
"Please say one prayer for Alsace," he said to the priest, "while
the bells are still ringing for the resurrection."
"Right! that's right, my boy!" said the old peasant standing by the
priest; "you belong to the country!"
The heavy, weary face of the priest brightened at the same time. His
voice, which was slightly broken, was not steady. An old and
enduring sorrow, yet always new, spoke through his lips, and while
they were all looking, as he was himself, towards Strasburg, the
city which night was hiding, he prayed:
"My God, here, now we can see from your Sainte Odile nearly all the
beloved land, our towns, our villages, and our fields. But some of
our land lies also on the other side of the mountains, and yet that
is also our country. You permitted us to be separated. My heart
breaks to think of it. For on the other side of the mountains is the
nation we love, and which you still love. It is the oldest of the
Christian nations; it is the nearest to Godlike things. It has more
angels in its skies because it has more churches and chapels on
earth, more holy tombs to defend, more sacred dust mixed with its
fields, with its grass, with the waters which permeate the land and
nourish it. Oh God, we have suffered in our bodies, in our goods; we
still suffer in our memories. Nevertheless, make our memories last.
Grant that France also will not forget. Make her more worthy to lead
nations. Give her back her lost sister, who may also return. Amen!"
"As the Easter bells return."
"Amen!" said the voices of two men.
"Amen! Amen!"
The others wept in silence. There was only the hollow sound of one
single bell in the cold air that came up from the depths. The
ringers had left the towers, already lost in the shadow that covered
the plain.
Above the high platform in the garden the darkened clouds, flying to
the west, left a border of purple on the crest of the mountains.
Stars came out, in the black depths of the night, as the first
primroses were coming out, at the same time under the pines. Only
three persons were left on the terrace. The others had gone when the
secret of their Alsatian souls had been revealed.
The old priest, seeing before him two young people close to each
other, and Odile's head near Jean's shoulder, asked:
"Betrothed?"
"Alas!" answered Jean. "Wish that it may become true."
"I do wish it. What you just said is right. I wish that you, who are
young, may see Alsace once more French."
He went away.
"Good-bye," said Odile quickly, "Good-bye, Jean!"
She held out her hand, and went away without turning to look back.
Jean remained near the terrace wall.
The night birds--owls, sea-eagles, eagle-owls, and horned
owls--mingling their cries, flew from wood to wood. For a quarter of
an hour, the time of their passage, which they made in sweeping
flights, their calls resounded over the mountain sides. Then
complete silence settled down. Peace arose with the perfumes of the
sleeping forests.