AT CAROLIS
At the beginning of the rue de Zurich, facing the Quay des
Bateliers, one of the relics of old Strasburg, there is a narrow
house, much lower than its neighbours, with a roof of two stories
like a Chinese pagoda. The front, formerly adorned with the pattern
of its painted beams, is now covered with whitewash, on which is
this inscription:
"JEAN, CALLED CAROLIS, _WEINSTUBE_."
This wine-shop, whose exterior has nothing about it to arouse the
curiosity of the passer-by, is not a nondescript place, nor is it an
ordinary public-house. The place is historical. The inhabitants of
Zurich came here in 1576, or, at least, the best shots among them,
to take part in the grand shooting competition to which Strasburg
had summoned the Empire and the confederated States. They had
brought with them a pot of boiled millet, and scarcely were they out
of the boat than they made the Strasburg people understand that the
pudding was still warm.
"We could easily come to your aid, neighbours," they said; "by the
Rhine and the Ill, the distance between our cities is very short."
The word given in 1576 was kept in 1870, as is testified to by an
engraved inscription just near by on the Zurich Fountain. At the
moment when besieged Strasburg was in the most distressed condition
the people of Zurich intervened, and obtained from General Werder
permission to allow the old men and children to leave the city. This
house was noted for something else--thanks to the Southerner who in
1860 established a shop there for wines of the South.
Jean, called Carolis, bore a remarkable resemblance to Gambetta. He
knew him, and copied his gestures and his clothes, the cut of his
beard, and the sound of his voice. His trade was fairly flourishing
before the war, but he became prosperous in the years that followed.
And a certain number of German officers got into the habit of coming
there to drink the black wines of Narbonne, Cette, and Montpellier.
One morning towards the end of April, Jean Oberlé, who was going to
see the Chief of the Administration of Forests, whom he had long
promised to visit, was passing along the quay, when a woman of about
forty, clothed in black, evidently an Alsatian, came out of the
café, crossed the road, and, apologising, said:
"Pardon me, monsieur, but will you kindly come in? One of your
friends is asking for you."
"Who is it?" asked Jean, astonished.
"The youngest officer there."
She pointed with her finger to the confused mass of shadow moving
under the lowered linen blind, and which he saw to be the inside of
the room with its groups of customers.
Jean, after hesitating for a moment, followed her, and was
surprised--for not belonging to Strasburg, he was ignorant of the
reputation and also of the customers of this wine-shop--at finding
there six officers, three of whom were Hussars, seated at tables
covered with red and blue check cloths, talking loudly, smoking, and
drinking Carolis wine.
The first glance he gave, on coming from the light into the
semi-darkness, showed him that the room was small--there were only
four tables--and decorated with allegorical pictures in the German
style; he saw a monkey, a cat, a pack of cards, a packet of
cigarettes, but above all there was a semi-circular mirror filling a
recess in the left wall and round which hung framed photographs of
the present or past habitués of the house. Jean looked again to see
who could have sent for him, when a very young cavalryman got up.
This simple movement displayed the beauty of his slender form in its
sky-blue tunic with gold lace. He rose from the back of the room to
the left. Near him, and round the same table, a captain and a
commandant remained seated.
The three officers must have returned from a long march; they were
covered with dust, their foreheads were wet with perspiration, their
features were drawn, and the veins stood out on their temples. The
youngest had even brought back from this country ride a branch of
hawthorn, which he had slipped under his flat epaulet, on the side
near the heart.
The Alsatian recognised Lieutenant Wilhelm von Farnow, a Prussian,
three years older than himself, whom he had met before during his
first year's law course in Munich, where Farnow was then
sub-lieutenant in a regiment of Bavarian Uhlans. Since then he had
not seen him. He only knew that in consequence of an altercation
between Bavarian and Prussian officers in the regimental casino,
some of the officers implicated had been removed, and that his old
comrade was among their number.
No; doubt was not possible. It was Farnow, with the same elegant,
haughty way of offering his hand, the same fair, beardless face, too
thick-set and too flat, with thick lips, an impertinent little nose,
slightly turned up, and fine eyes of steel-blue--a hard blue where
dwelt the pride of youth, of command, of a bold and disputatious
temper. His body gave promise of developing into that of a solid
and massive cuirassier later on. But at present he was still thin,
and so well-proportioned, so agile, so evidently inured to warlike
exercises, so vigorous, there was such disciplined precision in all
his movements, that de Farnow, although he had not a handsome face,
had gained a reputation for good looks, so much so that in Munich
one would call him sometimes "Beauty" Farnow, and sometimes "Death's
Head" Farnow. With reddish moustaches, bushy brows, and a helmet
accentuating the shadow over his eyes, he would have been
terrifying. But, though scarcely twenty-seven, he gave the
impression of a warlike being, violent, conqueror of himself,
disciplined even to his acquired and perfectly polished manners.
Jean Oberlé remarked that when he rose Farnow spoke to the
commandant, his immediate neighbour, a robust soldier with slow,
sure eyes. He was explaining something, and the other approved, with
an inclination of his head, at the moment when the lieutenant made
the introduction.
"Will the commandant permit me to present to him my comrade, Jean
Oberlé, son of the factory owner of Alsheim?"
"Certainly, sir. An intelligent Alsatian--very well known."
Jean's introduction to the captain, a man still young, with straight
features, evidently cultured, and no less evidently of a haughty
temper, led to the same flattering expressions regarding the factory
owner at Alsheim: "Yes, truly Monsieur Oberlé is well known--an
enlightened mind. I have had the pleasure of seeing him--kindly
remember me to him."
Jean felt humiliated by the marked attentions of these two officers.
He had the impression that he was the object of exceptional
attention, he, a civilian, a citizen; he, an Alsatian; he, who from
every point of view should have been looked upon by these lofty
personages as their inferior. "What my father has done then is of
great importance," he thought, "that they should requite him in this
fashion. Neither his fortune, nor his style of living, nor his
conversation, can justify this. He does not live at Strasburg, nor
has he filled any office."
A sign from the commandant almost at once put an end to the awkward
situation, and gave the young men liberty to go and sit at the table
farthest away from the window at the back of the room.
"It is quite by chance that you meet me here," said Farnow, in a
slightly sarcastic tone, which revealed the pride of the Prussian
lieutenant.
"My regiment is hardly ever here--it is mostly infantry officers who
come here.... I generally go to the 'Germania'--but we have just
been reconnoitring, as you see, and my commandant was very hot....
You will pardon me, my dear Oberlé, for having sent for you."
"On the contrary, it was very friendly. You could hardly leave your
chiefs."
"And I wanted to renew my acquaintance with you. I have not seen you
for so long, not since Munich days. You had just gone past the
corner of the house over there, when I said to the servant, 'That is
one of my friends! Run and fetch M. Oberlé here!'"
"And truly, you see me very happy, Farnow."
The two young men looked at each other with the curiosity of two
beings who try to fill in the unknown years. "What sort of a life
has he led? What does he think of me? How far can I trust him?"
"I fancy," said Farnow, "that you have arrived quite recently?"
"Just so; I came at the end of February."
"They told me that you were going to commence your military service
in October in the Hussars."
"That is true."
"Do you know, Oberlé, that I had the honour of meeting your father
in society last winter? I asked to be introduced."
"Excuse me, I am still such a new-comer...."
Conversation languished at this moment at Carolis, and Jean noticed
that the two blue tunics had turned towards him, and that the
commandant and the captain were both examining the face of the
future volunteer.
They finished drinking the wine like Bordeaux they had ordered in a
sealed bottle.
"I should much like to see more of you," said Farnow, lowering his
voice. "I hope we shall be able to meet."
"Do you know Alsheim?"
"Yes; I've been through it several times during manoeuvres."
The lieutenant was visibly trying to find out how far he could go.
He was in an annexed country; many incidents of daily life had
taught him that. He did not care about renewing the experience. He
was feeling his way. Should he promise a call? He did not know yet.
And this uncertainty, so contrary to his energetic nature; this
caution, so wounding to his pride--made him hold up his head as if
he were going to pick up a challenge.
Jean, on his side, was disturbed. This simple thing, the receiving a
former comrade, seemed to him now a delicate problem to solve.
Personally he should have inclined towards the affirmative. But
neither Madame Oberlé nor the grandfather would admit any exception
to the rule so strictly kept up to now--that no Germans, except
quick and commonplace business men, should be admitted to the house
of the old protesting deputy. They would never consent. But it was
hard for Jean to show himself less tolerant in Strasburg than he had
been in Munich, and at the first meeting on Alsatian ground to
offend the young officer who had come to him with hand outstretched.
He tried at least to put a note of cordiality into his answer:
"I will come and see you, dear Farnow, with pleasure."
The German understood, frowned, and was silent. Evidently others had
refused even to visit him. He did not meet in Oberlé that systematic
and complete hostility. His anger did not last, or he did not show
it. He reached out his slender hand, the wrist of which looked like
a bundle of steel threads covered with skin, and with the tips of
his fingers he touched the hilt of his sword, which had not left his
side.
"I shall be charmed," he said at last.
He ordered a bottle of Burgundy, and having filled Jean's glass and
his own, drank.
"To your return to Alsheim!" he said.
Then, drinking it in a draught, he placed the glass upon the table.
"I am really very pleased to see you again. I live pretty well
alone, and you know my tastes outside my profession, which I adore,
above which I place nothing whatever, nothing if it be not God, who
is the great judge of it. I love hunting best--I think man is made
to move in large spaces, to strengthen his power and his dominion
over the beasts, when he has not the occasion to do it over his
kind. For me there is no pleasure to equal it. Apropos of this, it
seems that M. Oberlé has been ousted from his hunting rights?"
"Yes," said Jean; "he has given them up almost entirely----"
"Would you like to have a turn at my place? I have rented some
shooting near Haguenau, half wood and half plain; I have roebuck
which come from the forest--the ancient Sacred Forest; I have hares
and pheasants, and snipe at the time of passage; and if you like
glowworms, I have some who fly under the pine-trees and shine like
the lances of my Hussars."
The conversation ran on for a while on this subject. Then Farnow
finished the bottle of Carolis wine with Jean, and lifting the
hawthorn which beflowered his epaulet and letting it drop to the
ground, said:
"If you will allow me, Oberlé, I will go some way with you. What
direction do you take?"
"Towards the University!"
"That is my way."
The two young men got up together. They were nearly of the same
height and figure; both were of an energetic type, although
different in expression--Oberlé, careful to relax all that was too
serious in his face when at rest; Farnow exaggerating the harshness
of his whole personality. The young lieutenant drew down his tunic
to take out the creases, took from a chair his flat cap decorated in
front with a cockade of the Prussian colours, and walking first with
a studied stiffness, half turned towards the table where the
commandant and the captain were sitting, saluted them with an almost
invisible and several times repeated inclination of the body. The
respectful good-fellowship of a short time ago was not now in place.
The two chiefs from habit inspected this lieutenant leaving Carolis.
Gentlemen themselves, very jealous of the honour of their corps,
having learned by heart all the articles of the code of the perfect
officer, they interested themselves in all that had to do with the
conduct, the attitude, the dress, and the speech of a subordinate,
who is the object of public criticism. The examination must have
been favourable to Farnow. With a friendly and protective movement
of his hand, the commandant dismissed him.
As soon as they were in the street Farnow asked:
"Well, they were perfect, were they not?"
"Yes."
"How you say that? Did you not find them kindly? You ought to see
them in the service."
"On the contrary," interrupted Jean, "they were too amiable. I see
every day more and more that my father must have humiliated himself
very much to be so honoured in high places. And that wounds me,
Farnow."
The other looked serious, and said:
"_Franzosenkopf!_ What a strange character this nation has--who
cannot accept their position as the conquered, and think themselves
dishonoured if Germans make advances to them!"
"It is because they do nothing gratuitously," said Oberlé.
Farnow was not displeased at the word. It seemed to him a kind of
homage to the hard, utilitarian temperamant of his race. Besides,
the young lieutenant would not enter into a discussion where he knew
that friendships ran the risk of being spoilt. He greeted a young
woman, who came towards him, and followed her with his eyes.
"That is the wife of Captain von Holtzberg. Pretty, isn't she?"
Then pointing to the left, beyond the bridge to the quarters of the
old city, illumined by the vaporous light of this spring morning, he
added, as if the two thoughts were united naturally in his mind:
"I like this old-world Strasburg. How feudal it is!"
Above the river, whose waters were soiled by works and sewers, rose
the long sloping roofs, with their high dormer windows, the tiles of
all shades of red--the mediæval purple of Strasburg, mended,
patched, and spotted, and washed, violet in places, nearly yellow in
others adjoining, rose-colour on certain slopes, orange-coloured in
some lights, royally beautiful everywhere and stretched out like a
marvellous Eastern carpet of soft faded silks round the cathedral.
The cathedral itself, built in red stone, viewed from this point,
seemed to have been, and still to be, the pattern which had decided
the colour of all the rest; it was the ornament, the glory, and the
centre of all. A stork, with open wings, cleaving the air with wide
strokes, as an oarsman cleaves water, his feet horizontally
prolonging his body and acting as rudder, his bill a little raised
like a prow, an heraldic bird, was flying through the blue, faithful
to Strasburg, like all its ancient race, protected, sacred like the
place, and always returning to the same nests above the same chimney
stacks.
Jean and Farnow saw it inclining towards the cathedral spire, and
seen from behind, foreshortened, it looked like some bird beating
the air with its bow of feathers, and then it disappeared.
"These are the inhabitants," said Farnow, "whom neither the smoke of
our factories, nor the tramways, nor the railways, nor the new
palaces, nor the new order of things can astonish."
"They have always been German," said Jean with a smile. "The storks
have always worn your colours--white belly, red bill, black wings."
"So they have," said the officer, laughing.
He went on his way along the quays, and almost immediately stopped
laughing. Before him, coming from the direction of the new part of
the town, an artillery soldier was leading two horses, or rather he
was being led by them. He was drunk. Walking between the two brown
horses, holding the reins in his raised hands, he went on stumbling,
knocking against the shoulder of one or the other of the beasts, and
to save himself from falling, dragged from time to time at one of
them, which resisted and moved away.
"What is this?" growled Farnow--"a drunken soldier at this time of
day!"
"A little too much malt spirit," said Oberlé. "He is not merry in
drink."
Farnow did not answer. Frowning, he watched the man who was
approaching, and who was only about ten yards away.
At this distance, according to regimental rules, the man ought to
have walked in step and turned his head in the direction of his
superior officer. Not only had he forgotten all his instruction and
continued to roll painfully between the horses; but at the moment
when he had to pass Farnow he murmured something, no doubt an
insult.
That was too much. The lieutenant's shoulders shook with anger for a
moment, and then he marched straight to the soldier, whose
frightened horses backed. The officer felt humiliated for Germany.
"Halt!" he cried. "Stand straight!"
The soldier looked at him, stupefied, made an effort, and succeeded
in standing still and nearly erect.
"Your name?"
The soldier told his name.
"You will have your punishment at the barracks, you brute! But in
expectation of better things, take this on account, for dishonouring
the uniform as you have!"
Saying this, he stretched his right arm out at full length, and with
his gloved hand, hard as steel, he hit the man on the face. The
blood ran out at the corner of his mouth; he squared his shoulders;
he drew up his arms as if about to box. The soldier must have been
terribly tempted to retaliate. Jean saw the wandering eyes of the
drunkard when he was thus thrust backwards, turn right round in
their sockets with pain and rage. Then they looked down on the
pavement, overcome by a confused and terrifying remembrance of the
power of the officer.
"Now march!" cried Farnow. "And do not stumble!"
He was in the middle of the quay--erect, booted, a head higher than
his victim, as it were surrounded by sunlight, with flashing eyes,
the lower lids and the corners of his lips wrinkled by anger; and
those who called him "Death's Head" must have caught a glimpse of
him like that.
The loafers who had hurried up to witness the scene and formed a
circle, stood aside at the order of the lieutenant, and let the
soldier pass through, who was trying not to pull the reins too hard.
Then, as a certain number of them remained gathered together, either
silent or merely muttering their opinion, Farnow, turning on his
heels and crossing his arms, looked at them one after the other. The
little bank clerk went by first, adjusting his eyeglasses; then the
milk-woman with her copper pot on her hip passed on by herself,
shrugged her shoulders, ogling Farnow; then the butcher who had come
from the neighbouring shop; then two boatmen who tried to look as if
they did not care, although both had flushed faces; then the urchins
who at first wanted to cry, and who now nudged each other and went
off laughing. The officer drew near to his companion, who had
remained on the left near the canal.
"I think you went a little too far," said Oberlé. "What you have
just done is forbidden by the Emperor's express orders. You risk a
reprimand."
"That is the only way to treat those brutes!" said Farnow, his eyes
still blazing. "Besides, believe me, he has already passed on my
blow to his horses, and to-morrow he will have forgotten all about
it."
The two young men walked side by side to the University gardens,
without speaking to each other, thinking over what had just
happened. Farnow put on a new pair of gloves to replace the others,
probably soiled by the soldier's cheek. He bent towards Jean,
saying gravely and with evident conviction:
"You were very young when I met you, my dear fellow. We shall have
to tell each other a few things before we shall know exactly our
respective opinions on many points.
"But I am astonished that you have not yet perceived, you who have
stayed so long in all the German provinces, that we were born to
conquer the world, and that conquerors are never gentle men, nor
ever perfectly just."
He added, after a few steps:
"I should be vexed if I have hurt your feelings, Oberlé; but I
cannot hide from you that I do not regret what I did. Only
understand that behind my anger there is discipline, the inviolable
prestige and dignity of the army of which I am a unit. Do not report
the incident to your people, dear fellow, without also adding the
excuse _for_ it. That would mean to betray a friend. Well,
good-bye."
He held out his hand. His blue eyes lost for the moment something of
their haughty indifference.
"Good-bye, Oberlé! Here is the door of your Clerk of the Forests."