of form, dressing older than she is, might have looked out of a Latour
pastel. M. Galland, too, is fine-featured, well groomed, agreeable, and
there was a handsome daughter with a quietly sorrowful expression on her
young face. It is a house from every one of whose many wide windows one
saw gold leaves hanging on black branches, behind them warm, rust-colored
hills, traced with pale-yellow larches and stamped with black patterns
of pine. Within, the rooms were beautiful with blue-clad men. There was
an agreeable and suave odor of kindness and unstintingness about the
house, mingling with that of the ease of people of the world, and the
surety of those in authority, altogether a _good_ house. Eight or ten
officers besides ourselves sat down to the usual delicious and abundant
Alsatian luncheon, the conversation intimate enough to have color,
general enough not to exclude the stranger within the gates. And it
ran after this way, beginning with accounts of that last day of July,
1914, when _Kriegsgefahrzustand_ had been proclaimed in the valley and
they were completely cut off from the outer world, witnessing only the
sinister passing and repassing of regiments of dragoons and detachments
of artillery. M. Galland had procured all the flour and dried vegetables
possible at Mulhouse to ration the population of Bitschwiller in case of
need, and collected what money he could. The days passed in suspense,
till the 6th of August, when they remarked much coming and going of
troops; on the 7th the German cavalry was seen beating a hasty retreat.
A _Brigadier de Chasseurs_, mounted on a great black horse, is the first
Frenchman they see, advancing alone, looking slowly about him, his
revolver in his hands, fearing some snare. Then the _Pantalons Rouges_
pour into the valley, flowers at every bayonet and in every tunic, and
the Gallands receive the first French general to enter Alsace since
1870, General Superbie, commanding the 41st Brigade. At two o’clock,
after refreshments had been offered from every house, the regiment took
the road to Mulhouse, where that same night many of them had their
“rendezvous with death.”
The talk then fell on that mysterious thing called luck, and how the
soldier must have it, be _chançard_, if he were to come through, and of
generals who, like General Liautey, wouldn’t have under them any save
notoriously lucky officers. And there was much heedless joking (with
the Fates perhaps listening). I, who never say even within myself, “I
_will_ do thus and so,” without adding “if God will,” remarked at last,
propitiatingly, that “’twas somewhat difficult to tell _beforehand_ who
was going to be lucky.”
“But for military purposes,” dryly remarked an officer who had not yet
spoken, “one needs to be lucky only as long as the war lasts,” which
being hideously true, we turned to the less elusive subject of the
rich and easy living of the peasants in this part of the world since
the war, and how they, even like unto those other tens of thousands of
“war-workers,” will “miss” it. They had become accustomed to the troops,
and there was the thrice blessed _popote_ in which they more or less
shared. And when the Americans came things were still better in a still
better world. For they were very free with their money (though no one
could understand a word that they said), and then they went, and the
French troops came again, and there was something very pleasant about
their return. Though they didn’t have the money of the Americans, they
could be conversed with and they would lend a hand in the garden, and
were always joking with the children, and helped with the crops, and the
virtues of the Americans, if not their money, were somewhat forgotten.
They were, in places, even remembered as a nuisance, wanting everything
cleared up, stupid bores about the dung-heap, “and will you believe it,
Monsieur,” one of them said to Laferrière, “they even washed their dishes
with _soap_, and you couldn’t give the dishwater to the pigs!”
After which I related Colonel Burnside’s “best short story,” also
concerning the peasant point of view. When he was in Lorraine with
his men, at the well-named watery (not watering) place called
Demanges-aux-Eaux, a delegation of villagers waited on him, with the
complaint that the Americans made so much noise at night that the _sheep_
couldn’t sleep!
And we finished luncheon gaily, to the rather distant sound of German
guns, with the story of the wife of a (or probably the) French soap
manufacturer in Tonquin who came to the Gallands’ for convalescence
after “war-strain.” How she charmed them with her singing, especially
of children’s songs, delighted them with the reserve and modesty of her
conduct, and after two months turned out to have been once a well-known,
café-chantant singer with the proverbial “past and many brilliant
presents,” enjoying a glimpse of home-life in Alsace.
Coffee was poured by the handsome daughter, who with her firm yet
delicate profile, and rich, dark hair drawn heavily back, looked like
some model for a head on a bank-note or medallion. Her mother, saying to
me, “_Vous êtes femme de cœur_” took me apart and told me her history.
And perhaps because so much had been buried in the great war of youthful
love and hope, I may record a little of this story; its grief is typical
in simplicity and purity of many countless thousands in this land of
France.
For months she had been beloved by a handsome young _chasseur_ stationed
with his regiment at Bitschwiller, one of many officers to frequent the
hospitable house of the Gallands. His photograph on a table shows him
tall, broad-shouldered, straight-eyed, kind-mouthed. On account of the
uncertainties of his life he did not declare himself while there, but
immediately afterward, doubtless because of some presentiment, he wrote
to the mother telling of his love. This was found to be returned and they
became fiancés.
A few weeks after he was killed in Flanders, in one of the Mont Kemmel
combats, a ball striking him in the forehead as he leaped from a trench
to lead a counter-attack.
He was one of ten sons. Six of his brothers had fallen, too. Awed, I
asked concerning her who had borne them, but she had gone to her grave
long before the World War; though I knew her not, thinking of the mother
of the Maccabees, and many like her, I thanked God that those seven
wounds had been spared a mother’s heart. Then we returned to the young
girl’s story.
“But never to have looked into each other’s eyes and exchanged the glance
of love,” I said, “it’s a shadowy and heavy grief for her youth to bear.
Would it not have been better for them to have been united?”
The mother answered, after a pause, “There was no time.”
“But this can’t be the end for her; she’s only beginning life!” I said,
and thought of the great, sorrowing hosts of these young widows of the
heart alone, and of the vexed question in their families, as to whether
it was better to become a widow or remain a maid.
“She said to me only the other day, ‘I have all that I need for my whole
life.’”
“She will find that the heart is not like that,” I cried; “it doesn’t
seem able to content itself even with the sweetest and holiest things of
memory. It’s forever reaching out.”
For a moment we stood with clasped hands, looking out to the hills whence
despair had so often come, and Madame Galland added, quite simply,
“Fifty thousand sleep around about us.”
For one of the many-colored hills, pressing close to the broad windows
of the salons, separated us from the Molkenrain and the sacramental
Hartmannswillerkopf.
In the nearest, that rises without any perspective immediately from
the house, is an old quarry, and it is there that since four years
the workers in M. Galland’s factory are sheltered during the frequent
bombardments of the town, for in what once was used for constructing
spinning-machines eleven million shells have been turned out, all of
which is quite well known to the enemy.
The pleasant odor of the house followed us to the motor and even as we
rolled swiftly down the valley of the Thur, past Moosch, against whose
hill, still like a picture tilted back, lies the military cemetery, cut
out of the rust and gold-colored hill, with its black splashes of pines.
Again peace to those who lie there.
Everywhere negro troops, sitting, standing, leaning, lying (a good deal
of leaning and lying). An occasional forlorn-looking white officer. It is
the same Fifteenth New York Infantry.
“I am told they were all, before they were drafted, lift-boys and
newsboys and bootblacks and railway-car porters,” said one of the
officers.
“You mustn’t class these last with the others. You don’t know the majesty
and authority of the Pullman-car porter. He’s as final as the Germans
think the Fourteen Points are,” I answered.
I had felt myself somewhat exotic when I arrived in Masevaux; but I’m
blotted into the landscape, one with Alsace, compared to these sons of
Ham, clad in khaki, who fill the blue-and-gold valley of the Thur.
Then we roll into the long street of the village of St.-Amarin, named
after the saint to whom a saint friend said, upon seeing him about to
make himself scarce at the approach of assassins, “_If you miss this
opportunity for martyrdom, you may never get another!_” (It all depends
on what you want and what your friends can do for you, and it isn’t a bit
like politics.) But I’ll tell the story of St.-Amarin another time.
The town that bears his name is long and rambling. There is a pink church
tower surmounted by a slate-roofed top, shaped something like a turban
with a point like those on helmets, and there is the fountain bearing
the date 1830, and on its column is perched the Gallic cock, and it
is the pride of the long street and vies with the church square as a
meeting-place.
But this is 1918 and the commandant, who loves St.-Amarin, as I can see
by the gentle, almost affectionate way he looks about, shows me first the
cinematograph, in a sort of club for soldiers. It has been a Mecca of
warmth and comfort since three years for those coming down from frozen
mountain-sides. Pictures by George Scott (good pictures) decorate it, and
fancy is unbridled where the enemy is concerned.
The Crown Prince is represented in a _loge_ with a voluptuous actress
twice his size, and, furthermore, the artist, not content with mere paint
and canvas, has given him real wooden legs which dangle from the painted
sides of the painted _loge_. The Prince of —— said to an officer showing
him about, “And even so you have flattered my cousin.”
Franz Joseph, shrunken by years, is represented huddled up in another
_loge_, with another actress, but it didn’t strike me as funny, nor did
it recall in any way the tales of his very unspectacular friendship with
the faithful Käthe Schratt.
A little way down the street is the pleasant officers’ club, with books
and papers, deep chairs and long divans. I dwell a little on the comfort
of it all, thinking what it has meant to half or entirely frozen men
coming down from those relentless winter heights.
Then we go to the Bureaux de l’Administration across the way, which had
been the headquarters of the “Mission Militaire d’Alsace” until it was
transferred to Masevaux a year ago.
It, too, is in what was once the Oberforster’s house, only _its_ walls
had been hung by the commandant with ancient souvenirs picked up in the
valley; old engravings of Alsatian generals, Rapp, Kléber, and Lefèvre,
Duke of Dantzig, this last vanquished husband of Madame Sans-Gêne as well
as victorious general of France. And there are some old engravings of the
portals of the church at Thann, and 1860 street scenes, with bombazined
women and high-collared men. An enormous flag of Louis Philippe decorates
one corner, and many horns and antlers of the Oberforster’s time hang in
the entrance-hall. There is a busy, pleasant coming and going of men who
like their work.
More officers are presented, and there is much joking about our Masevaux
_popote_ and odious comparisons. We tell them proudly of the new
coffee-pot, but the haughty chef of the St.-Amarin _popote_ answers that
it was needed, and probably we had at last heard what people really
thought about the coffee at the Masevaux mess. I am to lunch here on
Thursday and see—or rather, _taste_!
And all love St.-Amarin and its wide valley, even those who now live at
Masevaux.
Home by the Route Joffre with Sérin and Laferrière. A rising up over
indigo mountains, blackening at their base, blotted against the strange
white sky, white even now at sunset, then a drop into the dark valley
of Masevaux, talking of politics, theirs and mine, things of wisdom and
valiance done or undone. And the end in sight. Though Laferrière said:
“I am not sure that they will feel so conquered. They will proudly record
the dates of their great victories, and their historians will tell of
their sweeping invasions; one must confess they have had great generals.
They will doubtless reproach their statesmen with not having made better
alliances, and decry their _gaffes_. But as for fighting, they will
feel that men may fight one to two, one to three or to four or even
five, but that no one can fight the world. _Tenez_, for Napoleon, after
Waterloo, there was nothing more personally, but his victories remain
among the great military glories of history.” On the crest as we started
to drop into the valley, in that pale, pale sky above a blue, blue hill,
something almost like words was written in delicate gold, in long looping
characters, by the unseen, setting sun. I know not what they spelled, but
I think it was Peace, lovely Peace....
Thinking my day fairly over, I had just taken off my things and lain
me down when word was brought up that Captain Bernard was waiting for
me. Put on my hat in total blackness, the electric light again out all
over Masevaux, my candle snuffed, and in a darkness which conceals the
whereabouts of the match-box, as well as minor accessories like gloves
and veil, I depart to take tea at another large manufacturer’s, where
I find more handsome girls of the coming generation. Delicious little
bobbin-shaped doughnuts, called _shankelé_, are served with tea, and
there was brought out a great tricolor flag whose staff was surmounted
with the eagle of Napoleon III. It was of matchless, uncrushable silk,
dipped in unfading dyes. After Sedan, like many and many another, it
had been put in a long box and nailed against the beams in the attic,
remaining so hidden until the visit of President Poincaré in the winter
of 1915.
Then home through black and muddy streets, full of hurrying, stumbling
forms. Later the cheerful _popote_.
And then before I went to sleep I read again the story of Saint-Odile
according to Edouard Schuré, and it runs somewhat like this:[13]
At the end of the seventh century a powerful Frank of the Rhine Valley,
Atalric, was named Duke of Alsace by Childeric II, one of the last of the
Merovingian kings.
He was like many of his kind, fierce and implacable, worshiping neither
pagan divinities nor the one God.
He dwelt in a great castle near the town of Obernay in the Vosges, and
here one day he received the visit of an Irish monk and gave him shelter,
according to the custom of the time.
Thinking to improve the opportunity, the duke said to him:
“Those who wear the priestly garb boast of miraculous powers. If that be
true, demand of thy God that my wife Bereswinde, now with child, bear me
a son and heir.”
At that the monk threw himself on his knees, remaining long in prayer in
spite of Atalric’s impatience.
When at last the holy man arose, he said:
“No one can change the will of Heaven. Thy wife will bring forth a
daughter, and thy life will be one long struggle with her. But in the end
the dove will vanquish the lion.”
Atalric’s first thought was to have the unpleasant prophet well flogged,
but he finally contented himself by chasing him from the castle to the
accompaniment of his choicest maledictions.
When, a few days later, the gentle Bereswinde in fear and trembling (her
lord having made no secret of what he expected) gave birth to a blind
daughter, such a rage possessed Atalric that the dwellers in the castle
thought their last hour had come. Bereswinde’s feelings are not recorded.
The duke declared loudly that he did not intend to endure such dishonor,
and that if the child were not promptly hidden he would with his own
hands make away with it.
Fortunately Bereswinde had a sister who was abbess of the Convent of
Baume-les-Dames in Burgundy. To her the child was sent, and the legend
has it that Odile recovered her sight at the touch of the baptismal
waters, thus symbolizing the opening of her eyes to spiritual light in
the darkness of a barbarian age.
She was tenderly reared by the abbess, who, however, told her nothing of
her princely birth, letting her think she was the child of parents killed
in war, though, as she grew in years and beauty, she was treated as a
princess; her charm and gentleness were so great that it was recorded
that birds and even deer would eat from her hands as she wandered in
the forest clearings. Often at night in her cell she had strange and
beautiful visions. The most frequent was that of an angel of shining
though severe visage, who would appear presenting her now with roses, now
with lilies, the perfume enfolding her as if in some heavenly felicity.
But once as day was about to break she had quite a different vision.
It was that of a proud and beautiful adolescent who wore, as did the
Frankish lords of the times, a gray tunic with a leathern girdle, while
his golden hair fell freely about his shoulders. His long sword was
suspended from a strap decorated with shining plaques of gold. The purple
border of his tunic showed him indeed to be a prince, and in his mien
there was both pride and gentleness.
Odile’s heart leaped up and she was about to address him when suddenly he
vanished, and the angel of the austere visage took his place, holding out
a cross of ebony on which hung an ivory Christ. The next night, and many
after, the young lord returned. At last he came carrying in his hands
a crown of gold. Odile was about to grasp it, when the angel, graver
and sterner than before, stepped between them and presented to Odile a
jeweled chalice. Thinking she was to partake of the Saving Host, Odile
pressed it to her lips. What was her horror when she found it filled
with blood still hot and throbbing. So great was her trouble that on
awakening she recounted her dream to the abbess, who then revealed to her
the secret of her birth. How her gentle mother, worn by the harsh tempers
of the duke, was long since dead, and her father had sworn never to look
upon her face. The image in the dream was that of her young brother,
Adalbert, born after her, and heir to the duchy. “But,” added the abbess,
“beware of seeking out thy fierce father; thy mother is no longer there
to defend thee. Stay rather here, for thou art destined at my death to
become abbess of this convent.”
But Odile was so deeply moved by this glimpse of the glory of her race
and the promise of fraternal love that she could not resist the desire
to contemplate with her earthly eyes the brother whose image had so
enchanted her, to enfold him, if even for a single time, in her arms. By
a faithful servitor she despatched a letter to him, saying in it: “I am
Odile, thine unknown sister. If thou lovest me as I thee, obtain from my
father that I enter into my daughterly estate. I salute thee tenderly. At
thought of thee my heart blossoms like a lily in the desert.”
This letter acted as a charm upon Adalbert, awaking in his youthful heart
all generous and romantic sentiments. He cried, “Who is this sister whose
words are sweeter than those of a betrothed?”
A tender desire seized him to make her his companion and coheir and to
give her back her rank and family estate. He answered, “Trust but in me.
I will arrange all things for the best.”
Shortly after, while his father was absent at the chase, he sent to
Baume-les-Dames a splendid chariot drawn by six richly caparisoned
horses. With it went a numerous retinue, that Odile might return to her
father’s house in a way befitting her estate. And now begins the tragedy.
Atalric is in the banquet-hall of his castle of Obernay, where his
birthday is being celebrated with great pomp and circumstance. It is the
day, too, that he has chosen to present his son and heir to his vassals.
About the tables, groaning under the weight of gold and silver dishes,
his many courtiers are sitting, drinking from great horns of aurochs or
clanking their burnished hanaps. Atalric, happening to go to the window,
espies in the plain a chariot approaching, drawn by six horses; banners
are flying and palms waving. Above it float the ducal colors.
He cries out in surprise, “Who is it that approaches?”
Adalbert answers with all the valiance of his young and trusting heart,
“It is thy daughter Odile come to beg thy mercy.”
“Who is the dolt that counseled her return?”
“It is I who called her, and on this day of thy feast I beg thy grace for
her.”
“How has she, who desires my death, been able to bewitch you?” cries
Atalric, pale and stiff with anger.
Adalbert protests, invoking his father’s pity, the honor of the family,
and his own brotherly love, but Atalric, beside himself, commands the
youth to cast his sister from the threshold. Adalbert refuses.
“If it must be done, do it thyself,” he answers, proudly. Upon this the
duke menaces his son with disinheritance if he does not immediately
obey. But Adalbert, drawing his sword, lays it at his father’s feet,
telling him that rather than fail in fraternal love he will give up his
heritage. This fills his father with so blind a fury that he gives his
son a great blow upon the temple with the hilt of his sword.
The stroke is mortal, and Adalbert falls to the ground. The vassals
crowd in fear at one end of the great hall, while Atalric stands alone,
petrified by the horror of his crime.
At this moment in the fullness of her young beauty, dressed as a bride
for her nuptials, Odile enters the hall. A single look suffices. She
gives a great cry and throws herself on her knees by her dying brother.
She clasps his bleeding head, she kisses his glazing eyes, and in that
single kiss, that one despairing embrace, the pain of the whole world
transpierces her gentle breast. It is the chalice of blood the angel once
put to her lips. The dreadful crime of her father, the loss of her adored
brother, to whom she had been mystically united by a more than fraternal
bond, turn all her desires to the other world; the first young innocent
love of family is changed into solicitude for all who are suffering in
that barbarian world. Her novitiate begins.
Atalric, devoured by remorse, though still impenitent, did not dare cast
his daughter out, but he spoke no word to her, harboring always in his
heart the prediction of the Irish monk, “The dove will overcome the lion.”
In order to avoid him, Odile spent her days mostly in the great forests
that surrounded the castle, often climbing to the heights of Altitona.
Under the shadow of those great trees, high as the nave of some
cathedral, she no longer heard the striking of the hours of human time.
All things appeared to her under the guise of eternity. Her beautiful
brother, her unique love, was dead, almost as a martyr. Why should she
not in turn gather for herself a palm like to that he carried as he
roamed the heavenly fields?
One day, as she was deeply meditating these things, she found herself
midway up the great hill, when, enveloped in a blinding light, the angel
of her dreams in the convent of Burgundy suddenly appeared. His wings,
touched with glory, were widely unfolded, and his face shone like the
sun. With an imperious yet protecting gesture he pointed to the top of
the mountain, where were seen the crumbling remains of a Roman camp,
saying to her soul, “There, Odile, is thy home; there shalt thou dwell
and gather to thee others whose thoughts are holy and whose wills are
bent to service.”
Odile remained long in ecstasy. When she had recovered her fleshly sight
the angel was gone, but she had understood. On the heights of Altitona
she was to build a sanctuary which should be a refuge of peace, a
fortress of prayer, a citadel of God. It was vocation.
Strangely increased in beauty, she returned at night-fall to the castle,
and this added beauty was observed by all.
Shortly after Atalric, through pride and also to get rid of her,
conceived the design of marrying her to a great Austrasian lord from
Metz, then his guest, who had been struck by love for her. He called her
to him, and told her his intention. She answered gently:
“Father, thou canst not give me to any man. Thou knowest I am vowed to
Christ alone.”