which of the veterans would be possible candidates for the trip to Paris.
There seemed to be something the matter with every one mentioned. Rudler,
Franzi, was nice and it was a pity that his rheumatism prevented his
getting about, as he had lost his dung-heap, though not his house, in a
recent bombardment and needed distraction. It wasn’t quite clear to me
_how_ you _could_ lose a possession of that kind, but I wasn’t at the
front to ask questions, so I let it pass.
Handrupp, Hansi’s, eyes were giving him trouble. If he went, a boy would
have to go to lead him about, and, even so, would he be welcome in Paris
if it were known that his daughter, old enough to know better, had run
away with a German?
First names, it will be noticed, came last, and last names first, a relic
of German order. Another incautious but evidently esteemed veteran, by
name Bauer, Seppi, had fallen from a hayrick last summer and would never
walk again. It was like looking at the back of the web of Fate, and I
found myself wondering with somewhat of exasperation, “for this had a
hero’s death at Gravelotte or Villersexel or Saint-Privat been denied
him, where angels would have awaited his strong, young body to take it
to the heaven of those who die for country?” Suddenly the _dulce et
decora_ of so dying was quite clear to me, and Bauer, Seppi, who fell
from the hayrick last summer, and all his still extant contemporaries,
had the tragic part—as would these men of the great war some forty or
fifty years hence, who were now going about with an astonished yet proud
consciousness that, _ex millibus_, _they_ had been chosen and been spared.
But as Lavallée very justly remarked, “What would happen to the world
if everybody died young?” I suppose he is right, and I bethought myself
that there are those who must await threescore and ten before the reasons
for their having been born are apparent; the “Tiger,” for instance, and
Moses, and many others.
We then visited the curé, living at the very end of the village
toward the lines. He was called from the church where he was hearing
confessions, and Lavallée proceeded to ask him which of the schoolboys he
recommended; wideawake ones, without, of course, being obstreperous, were
wanted. Something, disappearing almost as swiftly as it came, passed over
the curé’s face. It was a look of sudden, nearly overwhelming desire to
go himself, and the immediate realization of the impossibility of that or
anything else that meant change.
On the round center-table was a book, _Deo Ignoto_, and _L’Echo de
Paris_. A little harmonium with manuscript-music on its rack was near
the bed; on the walls were shiny lithographs of three popes, and an
illuminated Lord’s Prayer in German. As the upper rooms of the house
were “unhealthy,” on account of the raids and bombardments, the curé
lived and breathed and had his being downstairs in this one room, with a
rather boisterous yellow dog that kept sniffing at my gaiters. He was a
large man, with a naturally masterful eye, who would have been at home
in many places, occupied with many things, but he had lived, and would
die, Curé of Gewenheim. And he at least owed the Germans a temporary
widening of his activities, for Gewenheim is but three kilometers from
the firing-line.
Then we crossed the muddy street to the schoolhouse to confer with
the nuns concerning little girls, and were greeted by a dark-eyed,
sparkling-faced Sister, very gifted by nature, who would have graced
any drawing-room. There was something of elegance even in the way she
had the washing of the stairs cease to allow us to pass up, and in the
way she removed piles of coarse linen from the chairs in the room to
which she conducted us. Then another Sister, not so bright, though she
evidently ranked the gifted one, came in, and together they pondered
the names of possible little girls. I had a feeling of being behind the
scenes, and recognized how orderly and reasonable is the working of a
so-often fortuitously appearing Fate, as they decided who should, or
should not, take the journey to Paris. I thought, too, that it would have
been well-nigh intolerable to me, had I been a little girl in Gewenheim,
not to be among those chosen to go. But there was no longing on either
of _their_ faces. Especially the charming one radiated happiness and
content. And how true that nothing can enter the heart that is not
already there! I wondered if I, to whom so much of life is known—its
glories and its miseries—possessed what that graceful woman had found in
the dullest routine of duty imaginable. _She_ knew whither she was bound,
also whence she had come. In comparison, shaking, shifting, uneasy,
appeared the compass of my life....
A bottle of quite sour white wine was produced and they watched Lavallée
and myself drink; no escape possible.
They are of the Sisters of the Divine Providence with their mother-house
at Ribeauville, who have taught in the schools of Alsace for generations.
After leaving them, we visited the inn, entering into the _Gastzimmer_
through a tiny antechamber of a shop, where thread and candles and oil
for lamps, socks, and a few other strict essentials were sold. The
black-toothed, thin-haired landlady, Tritter by name, might have been
of any age, but a handsome boy of fifteen or thereabouts, with a bad
cough, calling her “Mother,” gave a possible limit. A good-looking,
high-complexioned girl appeared breathless from a bethumbed back
door, arranging two little curls under her ears. After the greetings,
Lieutenant Lavallée said:
“Have you had any news of your daughter Odile?”
“Not since last winter from Colmar,” both mother and sister answer;
“the parcels we sent her, they cost each fifteen francs, have not been
received. She was hungry when she wrote.”
Then was poured out a confused story concerning the capture of a squad of
Germans with their gun, in the autumn of 1914. A few days after the event
the sisters had been standing in the street in front of their door, when
a German officer came up and said to Odile, the younger:
“You are wanted for a moment.” She followed him to another officer on
horseback, waiting in a field. They had not seen her since. Then it
appeared that it was the baker’s wife who through jealousy had denounced
the pretty Odile (the rôle of the baker himself was not indicated), but
such an expression of hatred for the baker’s wife, rather than for the
Germans, came over the mother’s visage that I was reminded of faces
in pre-Raphaelite pictures—I mean those on the goat side in Judgment
Day scenes. It was evidently one of those obscure yet ruthless village
tragedies set in the frame of equally ruthless war.
When we came out we copied an old inscription over the house door of
a man, Louis Vogler by name, who, returning from a campaign, had been
decorated with the Legion of Honor in 1816, and had recorded the fact for
all time over his door, his decoration even being carved in with the rest.
Evidently a man who, having done a deed, was not content that it
should be writ only in water (or blood), but had it put squarely and
clearly over the door of the house to which he returned; and was he
not justified? For here it is being recorded some hundred years after,
instead of having been carried away on the great river of Napoleonic
deeds.
Then, through several wet villages, groups of girls with their felt
slippers stuck into their clacking wooden sabots (very comfortable
footgear, it appears) pass groups of blue-clad soldiers, and words are
exchanged. I couldn’t hear, but by the looks accompanying them and the
giggles I judged them to be the eternal words exchanged in all ages
between soldiers and future mothers of the race. And there is a verse,
old as the army, which runs:
_Le négligent troupier_
_Qui laisse passer l’heure_
_Et trop longtemps demeure_
_Sera puni par son sous-officier._[6]
Everywhere along the road, through the mist, detachments of blue-clad
men would appear and disappear. I thought with a touch of sadness, an
esthetic sadness, to be sure, that this extreme beauty of dissolving
distances would be lost when the world of blue-clad men would have
disappeared, replaced by men in shabby, nondescript, civilian clothes, or
by _des types à melon ou à tube_—those wearing derby hats or cylinders.
Near Rodern, between some lines of poplars, a helmeted cavalryman, with
his detachment, rode by on a great black horse. He was bending slightly
forward, his lance in his hand, his eyes looking straight ahead, his
ample, light-blue tunic almost concealing his saddle. He was a pure
French type, pale of face, with black hair, black mustache, slanting
nose, and I knew him for the archetypal Gallic warrior as he has appeared
through the ages, making epics for France.
At Bourbach-le-Haut, Lieutenant Lavallée was to invite a last mayor
to partake of the trip to Paris, and hunt up some remaining veterans.
Whatever gentle thirst I had had for mayors and veterans being now
quite slaked, I went to the little church, instead of to the _Mairie_.
Through the half-open door came light and chanting sounds. I went in to
find a dim interior, with an ancient arch framing the altar space, in
front of which was a narrow, black coffin. Only some very old bit of
mortality, waxy and shrunken, could lie within. Women, children, and what
may have been veterans were saying the rosary in German—the Sorrowful
Mysteries—and I thought on my dead, and on that dear and holy brother
born into the world on this day long years ago. In Alsace he had desired
and received, dreaming and adolescent, the baptismal waters.
Sadness invaded me, even as the dreary night was invading the day, and
I would have groaned aloud, but I saw Lieutenant Lavallée standing by
me. Haunted by the mournful chanting, with its mysterious indications,
“_Jetz und in der Stunde unseres Absterbens, Amen_,” I passed out into
falling night and rain; dark masses of mountain loomed up, lighter spaces
were the stretching valleys. Soon we found ourselves on the deep road to
Masevaux, I lonelier than the loneliest of the dark and hurrying clouds.
IV
THANN AND OLD THANN
_Sunday morning, November 3d._—Awakened at six by heavy firing. After
wondering what could be happening, I remember that life, as far as I
am concerned, is for the moment largely joy, or rather joyous riding,
with a series of agreeable French officers (they certainly are of an
amiability!), in a series of large, powerful military motors, through a
series of beautiful autumnal hills, over a series of the newest and most
wonderful of war roads.
Enough church-going, however, as will have been noticed, to keep me
mindful that man, and woman, too, is grass, and though it, or rather she,
springs up in the morning, she may be cut down by night, and that this
bending of the hills is by the journeys of her eternity.
Well, to get to the point, or rather to Thann. We started out early, at
nine, for I was to find a Mass in the cathedral, after which we were to
proceed to Vieux Thann, where war has not spared the church nor left
worshipers.
Again we took the screened road overhanging the valley. Again we stopped
on an eminence and climbed into a field, and again I was shown the blue
valley, over the tops of some red cherry trees. Nothing detached itself
from gradations of velvety mists and beaming distances, but I knew that
on the grape-planted slopes of an unseen river that other wine of defeat
was being drunk from cups held stiffly to unwilling lips.
[Illustration: THANN AND ITS VINEYARDS]
As we dipped down into the valley of the Thur, the belfry of the church
of Thann appeared, so mistily, lacily soft that its form and substance
seemed but as something breathed into the air, at any moment to be
dissolved, against hills that were like brocaded stuffs, whose gold would
be very thick if one turned them wrong side out. My heart was stirred
because of the fairness of the Sabbath world.
We drew up in front of the gorgeous portal of the cathedral, once a deep
pink, but with time grown paler and softer at all its edges, and whose
boardings and sandbags now partly hide the carved story of the life of
Christ and His Mother. We grope our way in through several swinging
doors, and find the high, Gothic space filled with a misty yellow light
coming in through narrow windows, covered with oiled paper, the precious
stained-glass having been long since removed.
Little by little the forms of kneeling women and children, and many
soldiers standing, detach themselves from the lovely gloom. The green
vestment of the priest at the altar, on which are six tall, crystal,
wide-branched candelabra, misty like the rest, is the only spot of color,
for the splashes of horizon-blue become nearly white after a strange
fashion of this color in dim light, whether of church or falling night.
In the ancient wrought-iron pulpit the curé was just finishing a sermon
in French, immediately beginning one in German. It appears that as the
_communiqués_ improve, the French sermon gets longer, and the German
shorter, and mercifully neither is long.
We passed out quickly after the “_Ite, missa est_.” I had been feeling
that Captain B—— might be in a hurry, but when I looked about to see if
he were fidgeting, I found him doing what any _miles gloriosus_ should be
doing from time to time, saying his prayers.
And this is the story of the building of the church of Thann, and of its
arms, which bear a single pine tree.
Death found the holy Bishop Théobald in the Umbrian Valley, and, knowing
that his hour had come, he said to his servitor Maternus, who knelt
weeping by his side:
“Thou knowest I leave no worldly goods, for the poor have needed what
I had. But this sapphire ring, dear memory of her once loved, take it,
thou, that worms may not dwell within it.” And then he entered into
contemplation, saying nothing further of the things of earth.
When Maternus had made ready to hide his master’s body from the light,
he tried to take the ring from its finger. But with the ring came the
finger, and both were inclosed as in a shining rim.
Maternus, greatly wondering, hid the precious relic in a hollow place in
his staff and started back to Alsace, begging his bread along the way.
After many delays, having been set upon by wicked men and molested by
prowling animals, he finally arrived in the valley of the Thur.
Exhausted, he laid himself down to rest, placing against a pine tree the
precious staff. The next morning he was awakened by the ringing of the
Angelus, and when he started to grasp his staff he found that it was as
if grafted on to the great pine, while to left and right were burning two
tall, pale, sapphire flames.
At this moment the lord of the Engelburg came by, the ruins of whose
great castle are those one sees rising above the town of Thann. He had
perceived the two blue flames from afar and, hastening to find out what
they signified, he recognized Maternus, faithful servitor of his friend
Théobald.
Maternus then related the death of the saint in the Umbrian plain,
showing him the finger and the ring; whereupon the lord of the Engelburg,
weeping and sighing, cried:
“Oh! my precious friend Théobald; oh! my dearly loved sister Adelaide,
this is thy betrothal ring, and these two sapphire flames announce thy
union in dear heaven!” (In those days they were quick to see divine
meanings.)
Now, the so well-loved Adelaide, in her green youth, had been struck by
a bolt from heaven, after which Théobald, for whom the whole round earth
held nothing more of value, had consecrated himself to God.
The lord of the Engelburg, his gaze fixed upon the luminous finger and
the familiar blue ring, knew soon the too often hidden will of God, and
cried out again:
“Here I will build a church, and its reliquary shall contain this
precious ring and finger.”
And so was built the church and monastery of Thann, and about them
grew the town, and during long centuries on the vigil of the feast of
Saint-Théobald, a freshly cut pine tree was placed in front of the
cathedral, flanked by two great wax candles. Nor can any one, even of the
very positive-minded, who look no farther than stones and mortar for all
meanings, give a better reason for the arms of Thann.
Then we motored on toward Vieux Thann, half destroyed, and evacuated
since 1914, but were obliged to leave the too visible motor on the
outskirts of the village, creeping close along a very high screen of wire
and broom branches that we might not be seen by the enemy. For we were
in the plain of Cernay, now known as the Ochsenfeld, once called the
“Field of Lies,” where the three sons of Louis le Débonnaire routed their
father’s army. Lothair, Louis, and Pépin were their names. But of all
this another time.
Vieux Thann is a half-demolished, echoing, empty town, with a background
of neglected vineyards on very close-pressing hills.
Everywhere were signs of German war occupation. The schoolhouse had
been their evacuation hospital, and one of the old inns bore the sign,
“Verband-Station.” The only living things in Vieux Thann were the
fountains, quite lovely in the pink-stoned, gracious Alsatian way, with
their gentle, unhurried streams of crystal water. It all reminded me
vaguely of Pompeii, even in the misty light of a northern Indian summer
sun.
Above, in the perfect blue, the usual firing on German airplanes was
going on. Long after the black specks had disappeared to the east
the little, round, soft, compact balls of shrapnel were still slowly
unfolding themselves.
About fifteen hundred feet from us were the battle-lines, where the
French and Germans have faced each other in the “Field of Lies” since
1914.
One of the battered inns, “Zum Goldenen Lamm,” has its once lovely old
sign still hanging out, but the golden lamb is gone, and only his golden
feet and the green wreath of laurel that once entwined him remain.
And to what winds had the dwellers of the great village been scattered?
Where had they been received, unwillingly, by strangers, those hosts of
refugees, fleeing from their homes, red with excitement, bright-eyed,
voluble? I’ve seen them, too, after months of treading up another’s
stairs and eating of the salt bread of charity—pale, silent, dispirited,
returning to villages like Vieux Thann, to see their all among disorderly
piles of fallen stones and crumbling mortar....
Back to the living city, to an increasing sound of cannon, but the
Sabbath stillness was so deep nothing seemed really to disturb it.
The cathedral with its single, finely pointed tower was like a needle
everywhere threading up long streets. I had a desire to see it empty,
and as I entered, its perfect proportions gave me a sweet and satisfying
welcome. The red lamp of the sanctuary was now the only spot of color
in the thick yellow gloom, out of which line and proportion gradually
detached themselves. The celebrated choir-stalls had been removed to
Sewen, but above the altar of the Virgin is a Gothic triptych, and the
beautiful pulpit is of fifteenth-century wrought-iron. We groped our
way into a low, vaulted chapel which existed even before the church was
built, passing a tombstone bearing the arms of the house of Ferrette, a
family once all-powerful in these valleys. Over the altar of the chapel
is an ancient statue of Saint-Théobald. He has a long, thin, shaven,
upper-class face, his eyes are bent, and he is looking perhaps as he did
shortly before death found him in the Umbrian Valley. It is the visage of
a man having done with personal things, and a great pity is woven into
the downward curves of the benignant face.
We drove back to Masevaux, over one of the splendid new war roads, rising
and dipping through forest-covered hills. The brilliant sun shone athwart
each leaf, still dewy and sparkling, and a strong, rich, autumnal smell
exuded from the earth. It reminded Captain Bernard of hunting before the
war, that carefree _chasse d’avant-guerre_, and I thought of Hungarian
castles, and long days in forests, walking through rustling leaves, or
sitting silently in glades with men in green-brown hunting garb, awaiting
the game. In the evening, shining dinner-tables, and talk about the day’s
bag by men in pink hunting-coats and women wearing their best gowns and
all their jewels.... And much that is no more.
We descended at the _popote_ as the hand of the church clock pointed
to 12.15. Blue-clad officers were standing by the windows reading the
Belfort morning paper just arrived, and the Paris newspapers of the day
before, as I went in.
The enemy is beating his retreat through the Argonne Forest, to the
sound of the hour of destiny, and there are armistice and abdication
rumors, and indications that they want to _sauver les meubles_, or, as
they would say, seeing they’ve got into a bad business, _retten was zu
retten ist_—_i.e._, German unity, which, saved, means all is saved. But
there are strange dissolvents infiltrating everywhere, scarcely any
substance can resist, and the blood of peoples boiling over, and much
good broth spilling, and too many cooks everywhere. For what man but
wants to try his ’prentice hand at seasoning of the mess? And it was all
talked about to the consuming of Mère Labonne’s especially excellent
Sunday dinner, an example of _la vraie, la délicieuse cuisine française
bourgeoise_. There were _pieds de veau_ that melted in the mouth, and
creamed potatoes, after which a very delicious _hachis_, with some
sort of horseradish sauce, and when I remark that it has also a touch
of garlic, Sérin cries out, “But not at all—it’s only horseradish.” On
my being supported by everybody at the table, he finally says, with an
innocent but somewhat discomfited smile, “It’s true that there must be a
lot for _me_ to notice it.” Then he tells with gusto of a repast in his
dear Toulouse where there was a whole cold pheasant for each guest, and
each pheasant was blanketed with such a thick cream of garlic that the
bird itself could scarcely be seen. “It was exquisite,” he added. “I dare
say; one can even smell it here,” some one cruelly finished.
Then they spoke of how the French had supported captivity better than the
English, and why.
“We always talk while eating,” said Bernard, “no matter how scanty or
ignoble the repast. It’s our hour for relaxation.” (Any one lunching or
dining at French officers’ messes will have noticed this.) “But with the
English it is different. They eat silently, and in captivity they easily
get the spleen and fall into melancholy, because the food isn’t served
as they would like, or because they can’t wash or shave or exercise.”
And I told the story of the brother of a French friend whom I had
recently seen, just back from nearly four years’ captivity, who returned
in such a stout, rosy condition that his sister was ashamed to show him,
and when asked about her _pauvre frère_ would blush.
We sat long, talking now of books, now of personages, now of local
happenings, Sérin telling of passing that morning through one of the
smaller villages where even the young girls had saluted him with a
military salute as he rode by—and one of the officers said, with a flash,
“_Très délivrées celles-là!_”(“Very delivered, those!”) Then some one
told the story of the man who came down to Masevaux to make a book on
Alsace and, seeing the line of the trenches marked that day in blue on
the commandant’s map, remarked, in a _dégagé_ way, “_Le Rhin, n’est-ce
pas?_” (“The Rhine, I suppose?”)
“Not yet,” was the quiet answer.
He then rushed them all off their feet for ten hours, after which, having
got what _he_ wanted, he went back to Paris and wrote his book. And from
what I hear it wasn’t a bad book, either. Though one of the officers said
he knew he could do the same about Prague or Peking, that he’d never
seen, with some books, a good pair of scissors and as much paste as he
wanted.
All is handled lightly, as only a group of Frenchmen could handle it,
_glissant, n’appuyant jamais_, each bringing his little gift of wit
and culture, enjoying the impersonal with the same pleasure as the
personal, in the French way. Of course, the _communiqués_ are as honey
after four years of bitter herbs, very bitter, even though distilled in
extinguishable hope.