are seen from this point; but far more attractive than the prospects from
St. Odile is its prehistoric wall. Before the wall, however, came the
dinner, which deserves mention. It was Friday, so in company of priests,
nuns, monks and divers pious pilgrims, with a sprinkling of fashionable
ladies from Strasburg, and tourists generally, we sat down to a very fair
_menu_ for a fast-day, to wit: rice-soup, turnips and potatoes,
eggs, perch, macaroni-cheese, custard pudding, gruyère cheese, and fair
vin ordinaire. Two shillings was charged per head, and I must say people
got their money's worth, for appetites seem keen in these parts. The
mother-superior, a kindly old woman, evidently belonging to the working
class, bustled about and shook hands with each of her guests. After
dinner we were shown the bedrooms, which are very clean; for board and
lodging you pay six francs a day, out of which, judging from the hunger
of the company, the profit arising would be small except to clerical
hotel-keepers. We must bear in mind that nuns work without pay, and that
all the fish, game, dairy and garden produce the bishop gets for nothing.
However, all tourists must be glad of such a hostelry, and the nuns are
very obliging. One sister made us some afternoon tea very nicely (we
always carry tea and teapot on these excursions), and everybody made us
welcome. We found a delightful old Frenchman of Strasburg to conduct us
to the Pagan Wall, as, for want of a better name, people designate this
famous relic of prehistoric times. Fragments of stone fortifications
similarly constructed have been found on other points of the Vosges not
far from the promontory on which the convent stands, but none to be
compared to this one in colossal proportions and completeness.
We dip deep down into the woods on quitting the convent gates, then climb
for a little space and come suddenly upon the edge of the plateau, which
the wall was evidently raised to defend. Never did a spot more easily
lend itself to such rude defence by virtue of natural position, although
where the construction begins the summit of the promontory is
inaccessible from below. We are skirting dizzy precipices, feathered
with light greenery and brightened with flowers, but awful
notwithstanding, and in many places the stones have evidently been piled
together rather for the sake of symmetry than from a sense of danger. The
points thus protected were already impregnable. When we look more nearly
we see that however much Nature may have aided these primitive
constructors, the wall is mainly due to the agency of man. There is no
doubt that in many places the stupendous masses of conglomerate have been
hurled to their places by earthquake, but the entire girdle of stone, of
pyramidal size and strength, shows much symmetrical arrangement and
dexterity. The blocks have been selected according to size and shape, and
in many places mortised together. We find no trace of cement, a fact
disproving the hypothesis that the wall may have been of Roman origin. We
must doubtless go much farther back, and associate these primitive
builders with such relics of prehistoric times as the stones of Carnac
and Lokmariaker. And not to seek so wide for analogies, do we not see
here the handiwork of the same rude architects I have before alluded to
in my Vosges travels, who flung a stone bridge across the forest gorge
above Remiremont and raised in close proximity the stupendous monolith of
Kirlinkin? The prehistoric stone monuments scattered about these regions
are as yet new to the English archaeologist, and form one of the most
interesting features of Vosges and Alsatian travel.
We may follow these lightly superimposed blocks of stone for miles, and
the _enceinte_ has been traced round the entire plateau, which was
thus defended from enemies on all sides. As we continue our walk on the
inner side of the wall we get lovely views of the dim violet hills, the
vast golden plain, and, close underneath, luxuriant forests. Eagles are
flying hither and thither, and except for an occasional tourist or two,
the scene is perfectly solitary. An hour's walk brings us to the
Menelstein, a vast and lofty platform of stone, ascended by a stair, both
untouched by the hand of man. Never was a more formidable redoubt raised
by engineering skill. Nature here helped her primitive builders well.
From a terrace due to the natural formation of the rock, we obtain
another of those grand and varied panoramas so numerous in this part of
the world, but the beauty nearer at hand is more enticing. Nothing can
exceed the freshness and charm of our homeward walk. We are now no longer
following the wall, but free to enjoy the breezy, heather-scented
plateau, and the broken, romantic outline of St. Odile, the Wartburg of
Alsace, as the saint herself was its Holy Elizabeth, and with as romantic
a story for those with a taste for such legends.
Here and there on the remoter wooded peaks are stately ruins of feudal
castles, whilst all the way our path lies amid bright foliage of young
forest trees, chestnut and oak, pine and acacia, and the ground is purple
with heather. Blocks of the conglomerate used in the construction of the
so-called Pagan Wall meet us at every turn, and as we gaze down the steep
sides of the promontory we can trace its massive outline. A scene not
soon to be forgotten! The still, solitary field of Carnac, with its
avenues of monoliths, is not more impressive than these Cyclopean walls,
thrown as a girdle round the green slopes of St. Odile.
We would fain have stayed here some time, but much more still remained to
be seen and accomplished in Alsace. Rothau, the district known as the Ban
de la Roche, where Oberlin laboured for sixty years, Thann, Wesserling,
with a sojourn among French subjects of the German Empire at
Mulhouse--all these things had to be done, and the bright summer days
were drawing to an end.
IV
FROM BARR TO STRASBURG, MULHOUSE AND BELFORT
The opening sentences of this chapter, written many years ago, are no
longer applicable. Were I to revisit Alsace-Lorraine at the present time,
I should only hear French speech among intimate friends and in private,
so strictly of late years has the law of lèse-majesté been, and is still,
enforced.
Nothing strikes the sojourner in Alsace-Lorraine more forcibly than the
outspokenness of its inhabitants regarding Prussian rule. Young and old,
rich and poor, wise and simple alike unburden themselves to their
chance-made English acquaintance with a candour that is at the same time
amusing and pathetic. For the most part no heed whatever is paid to
possible German listeners. At the ordinaries of country hotels, by the
shop door, in the railway carriage, Alsatians will pour out their
hearts, especially the women, who, as two pretty sisters assured us, are
not interfered with, be their conversation of the most treasonable kind.
We travelled with these two charming girls from Barr to Rothau, and they
corroborated what we had already heard at Barr and other places. The
Prussian inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine--for the most part Government
officials--are completely shut off from all social intercourse with the
French population, the latter, of course, still forming the vast
majority. Thus at Barr, a town consisting of over six thousand
inhabitants, only a score or two are Prussians, who are employed in the
railway and postal service, the police, the survey of forests, etc. The
position of these officials is far from agreeable, although, on the
other hand, there is compensation in the shape of higher pay, and much
more material comfort, even luxury, than are to be had in the
Fatherland. Alsace-Lorraine, especially by comparison with Prussia, may
be called a land of Goshen, overflowing with milk and honey. The vine
ripens on these warm hill-sides and rocky terraces, the plain produces
abundant variety of fruit and vegetables, the streams abound with trout
and the forests with game. No wonder, therefore, that whilst thousands
of patriotic Alsatians have already quitted the country, thousands of
Prussians are ready to fill their places. But the Alsatian exodus is far
from finished. At first, as was only natural, the inhabitants could not
realize the annexation. They refused to believe that the Prussian
occupation was final, so, for the most part, stayed on, hoping against
hope. The time of illusion is past. French parents of children born
since the war had to decide whether their sons are to become Prussian or
French citizens. After the age of sixteen a lad's fate is no longer in
their hands; he must don the uniform so odious in French eyes, and
renounce the cherished _patrie_ and _tricolor_ for ever.
The enforced military service, necessitated, perhaps, by the new order of
things, is the bitterest drop in the cup of the Alsatians. Only the
poorest, and those who are too much hampered by circumstances to evade
it, resign themselves to the enrolment of their sons in the German army.
For this reason well-to-do parents, and even many in the humbler ranks of
life, are quitting the country in much larger numbers than is taken
account of, whilst all who can possibly afford it send their young sons
across the frontier for the purpose of giving them a French education.
The prohibition of French in the public schools and colleges is another
grievous condition of annexation. Alsatians of all ranks are therefore
under the necessity of providing private masters for their children,
unless they would let them grow up in ignorance of their mother tongue.
And here a word of explanation may be necessary. Let no strangers in
Alsace take it for granted that because a great part of the rural
population speak a _patois_ made up of bad German and equally bad
French, they are any more German at heart for all that. Some of the most
patriotic French inhabitants of Alsace can only express themselves in
this dialect, a fact that should not surprise us, seeing the amalgamation
of races that has been going on for many generations.
Physically speaking, so far the result has been satisfactory. In
Alsace-Lorraine no one can help being struck with the fine appearance of
the people. The men are tall, handsome, and well made, the women
graceful and often exceedingly lovely, French piquancy and symmetrical
proportions combined with Teutonic fairness of complexion, blonde hair,
and blue eyes.
I will now continue my journey from Barr to Strasburg by way of the Ban
de la Roche, Oberlin's country. A railway connects Barr with Rothau, a
very pleasant halting-place in the midst of sweet pastoral scenery. It is
another of those resorts in Alsace whither holiday folks flock from
Strasburg and other towns during the long vacation, in quest of health,
recreation and society.
Rothau is a very prosperous little town, with large factories, handsome
châteaux of mill-owners, and trim little cottages, having flowers in all
the windows and a trellised vine in every garden. Pomegranates and
oleanders are in full bloom here and there, and the general aspect is
bright and cheerful. At Rothau are several _blanchisseries_ or
laundries, on a large scale, employing many hands, besides dye-works and
saw-mills. Through the town runs the little river Bruche, and the whole
district, known as the Ban de la Roche, a hundred years ago one of the
dreariest regions in France, is now all smiling fertility. The principal
building is its handsome Protestant church--for here we are among
Protestants, although of a less zealous temper than their fore-fathers,
the fervid Anabaptists. I attended morning service, and although an
eloquent preacher from Paris officiated, the audience was small, and the
general impression that of coldness and want of animation.
From the sweet, fragrant valley of Rothau a road winds amid green hills
and by the tumbling river to the little old-world village of Foudai,
where Oberlin lies buried. The tiny church and shady churchyard lie above
the village, and a more out-of-the-way spot than Foudai itself can hardly
be imagined. Yet many a pious pilgrim finds it out and comes hither to
pay a tribute to the memory of "Papa Oberlin," as he was artlessly
called by the country folk. This is the inscription at the head of the
plain stone slab marking his resting-place; and very suggestive it is of
the relation between the pastor and his flock. Oberlin's career of sixty
years among the primitive people of the Ban de la Roche was rather that
of a missionary among an uncivilized race than of a country priest among
his parishioners. How he toiled, and how he induced others to toil, in
order to raise the material as well as moral and spiritual conditions of
his charges, is pretty well known. His story reads like the German
narrative, _Des Goldmachers Dorf_. Nor does it require any lively
fancy to picture what this region must have been like before Oberlin and
his fellow-workers made the wilderness to blossom as the rose. The soil
is rocky and barren, the hill-sides whitened with mountain streams, the
more fertile spots isolated and difficult of access. An elaborate system
of irrigation has now clothed the valleys with rich pastures, the river
turns a dozen wheels, and every available inch of soil has been turned to
account. The cottages with orchards and flower-gardens are trim and
comfortable. The place in verity is a veritable little Arcadia. No less
so is Waldersbach, which was Oberlin's home. The little river winding
amid hayfields and fruit-trees leads us thither from Foudai in
half-an-hour. It is Sunday afternoon, and a fête day. Young and old in
Sunday garb are keeping holiday, the lads and lasses waltzing, the
children enjoying swings and peep-shows. No acerbity has lingered among
these descendants of the austere parishioners of Oberlin. Here, as at
Foudai, the entire population is Protestant. The church and parsonage
lie at the back of the village, and we were warmly welcomed by the
pastor and his wife, a great-great-granddaughter of Oberlin. Their six
pretty children were playing in the garden with two young girls in the
costume of Alsace, forming a pleasant domestic picture. Our hosts
showed us many relics of Oberlin, the handsome cabinets and presses of
carved oak, in which were stored the family wardrobe and other
treasures, and in the study the table on which he habitually wrote.
This is a charming upper room with wide views over the green hills and
sunny, peaceful valley.
We were offered hospitality for days, nay, weeks, if we chose to stay,
and even the use of Oberlin's study to sit and write in! A summer might
be pleasantly spent here, with quiet mornings in this cheerful chamber,
full of pious memories, and in the afternoon long rambles with the
children over the peaceful hills. From Foudai, too, you may climb the
wild rocky plateau known as the Champ de Feu--no spot in the Vosges chain
is more interesting from a geological point of view.
After much pleasant talk we took leave of our kind hosts, not going away,
however, without visiting the church. A tablet with medallion portrait of
Oberlin bears the touching inscription that for fifty-nine years he was
"the father of this parish." Then we drove back as we had come, stopping
at Foudai to rest the horse and drink tea. We were served in a cool
little parlour opening on to a garden, and, so tempting looked the tiny
inn that we regretted we could not stay there a week. A pleasant pastoral
country rather than romantic or picturesque is the Ban de la Roche, but
close at hand is the lofty Donon, which may be climbed from Rothau or
Foudai, and there are many other excursions within reach.
Here, for the present, the romance of Alsace travel ends, and all is
prose of a somewhat painful kind. The first object that attracted our
attention on reaching Strasburg was the new railway station, of which we
had already heard so much. This handsome structure, erected by the German
Government at an enormous cost, had only been recently opened, and so
great was the soreness of feeling excited by certain allegorical
bas-reliefs decorating the façade that for many days after the opening
of the station police-officers in plain clothes carefully watched the
crowd of spectators, carrying off the more seditious to prison. To say
the least of it, these mural decorations are not in the best of taste,
and at any rate it would have been better to have withheld them for a
time. The two small bas-reliefs in question bear respectively the
inscription, "_Im alten, und im neuen Reich_" ("In the old and new
Empire"), improved by a stander-by, to the great relish of others, thus,
"_Im alten, reich, im neuen, arm_" ("In the old, rich, in the new,
poor"). They give a somewhat ideal representation of the surrender of
Strasburg to the German Emperor. But the bombardment of their city, the
destruction of public monuments and the loss of life and property
thereby occasioned, were as yet fresh in the memories of the
inhabitants, and they needed no such reminder of the new state of
things. Their better feelings towards Germany had been bombarded out of
them, as an Alsacienne wittily observed to the Duchess of Baden after
the surrender. The duchess, daughter to the Emperor William, made the
round of the hospitals, and not a single Alsatian soldier but turned his
face to the wall, whereupon she expressed her astonishment at not
finding a better sentiment. Nor can the lover of art help drawing a
painful contrast between the Strasburg of the old and the new _régime_.
There was very little to see at Strasburg except the cathedral at this
time. The Library, with its 300,000 volumes and 1,500 manuscripts--the
priceless _Hortus Deliciarium_ of the twelfth century, richly
illuminated and ornamented with miniatures invaluable to the student of
men and manners of the Middle Ages, the missal of Louis XII., bearing
his arms, the _Recueil de Prières_ of the eighth century--all these had
been completely destroyed by the ruthless Prussian bombardment. The
Museum, rich in _chefs d'oeuvre_ of the French school, both of sculpture
and painting, the handsome Protestant church, the theatre, the Palais de
Justice, all shared the same fate, not to speak of buildings of lesser
importance, including four hundred private dwellings, and of the fifteen
hundred civilians, men, women and children, killed and wounded by the
shells. The fine church of St. Thomas suffered greatly. Nor was the
cathedral spared, and it would doubtless have perished altogether, too,
but for the enforced surrender of the heroic city. On my second visit
ten years later I found immense changes, new German architecture to be
seen everywhere.
Strasburg is said to contain a much larger German element than any other
city of Alsace-Lorraine, but the most casual observer soon finds out how
it stands with the bulk of the people. The first thing that attracted our
notice in a shop window was a coloured illustration representing the
funeral procession of Gambetta, as it wound slowly past the veiled statue
of Strasburg on the Place de la Concorde. These displays of patriotic
feeling are forbidden, but they come to the fore all the same. Here, as
elsewhere, the clinging to the old country is pathetically--sometimes
comically--apparent. A rough peasant girl, employed as chambermaid in the
hotel at which we stayed, amused me not a little by her tirades against
the Prussians, spoken in a language that was neither German nor French,
but a mixture of both--the delectable tongue of Alsace!
Strasburg is now a vast camp, with that perpetual noisy military parade
so wearisome in Berlin and other German cities, and, as I have said,
there was very little to see. It was a relief to get to Mulhouse, the
comparatively quiet and thoroughly French city of Mulhouse, in spite of
all attempts to make it German. But for the imperial eagle placed over
public offices and the sprinkling of Prussian helmets and Prussian
physiognomies, we could hardly suppose ourselves outside the French
border. The shops are French. French is the language of the better
classes, and French and Jews make up the bulk of the population. The Jews
from time immemorial have swarmed in Alsace, where, I am sorry to say,
they seemed to be little liked.
This thoroughly French appearance of Mulhouse, to be accounted for,
moreover, by an intensely patriotic clinging to the mother country,
naturally occasions great vexation to the German authorities. It is,
perhaps, hardly to be wondered at that undignified provocations and
reprisals should be the consequence. Thus the law forbids the putting up
of French signboards or names over shop doors in any but the German
language. This is evaded by withholding all else except the surname of
the individual, which is of course the same in both languages.
One instance more I give of the small annoyances to which the French
residents of Mulhouse are subject, a trifling one, yet sufficient to
irritate. Eight months after the annexation, orders were sent round to
the pastors and clergy generally to offer up prayers for the Emperor
William every Sunday. The order was obeyed, for refusal would have been
assuredly followed by dismissal, but the prayer is ungraciously
performed. The French pastors invoke the blessing of Heaven on
"_l'Empereur qui nous gouverne_". The pastors who perform the
service in German, pray not for "our Emperor," as is the apparently loyal
fashion in the Fatherland, but for "the Emperor." These things are
trifling grievances, but, on the other hand, the Prussians have theirs
also. Not even the officials of highest rank are received into any kind
of society whatever. Mulhouse possesses a charming zoological garden,
free to subscribers only, who have to be balloted for. Twenty years after
the annexation not a single Prussian has ever been able to obtain access
to this garden.
Even the very poorest contrive to show their intense patriotism. It is
the rule of the German government to give twenty-five marks to any poor
woman giving birth to twins. The wife of a French workman during my
sojourn at Mulhouse had three sons at a birth, but though in very poor
circumstances, refused to claim the donation. "My sons shall never be
Prussian," she said, "and that gift would make them so."
The real thorn in the flesh of the annexed Alsatians is, however, as I
have before pointed out, military service, and the enforced German
education. All who have read Alphonse Daudet's charming little story,
_La dernière leçon de Français_, will be able to realize the
painfulness of the truth, somewhat rudely brought home to French parents.
Their children must henceforth receive a German education, or none at
all, for this is what the law amounts to in the great majority of cases.
Rich people, of course, and those who are only well-to-do, can send their
sons to the Lycée, opened at Belfort since the annexation, but the rest
have to submit, or, by dint of great sacrifice, obtain private French
teaching. And, whilst even Alsatians are quite ready to render justice to
the forbearance and tact often shown by officials, an inquisitorial and
prying system is pursued, as vexatious to the patriotic as enforced
vaccination to the Peculiar People or school attendance to the poor. One
lady was visited at seven o'clock in the morning by the functionary
charged with the unpleasant mission of finding out where her boy was
educated. "Tell those who sent you," said the indignant mother, "that my
son shall never belong to you. We will give up our home, our prospects,
everything; but our children shall never be Prussians." True enough, the
family have since emigrated. No one who has not stayed in Alsace among
Alsatians can realize the intense clinging to France among the people,
nor the sacrifices made to retain their nationality. And it is well the
true state of feeling throughout the annexed territory should be known
outside its limits. With a considerable knowledge of French life and
character, I confess I went to Mulhouse little prepared to find there a
ferment of feeling which years have not sufficed to calm down.
[Illustration: ETTENHEIM]