The Children of Alsace Part 17

"I do wish it. What you just said is right. I wish that you, who are young, may see Alsace once more French."

He went away.

"Good-bye," said Odile quickly, "Good-bye, Jean!"

She held out her hand, and went away without turning to look back.

Jean remained near the terrace wall.

The night birds--owls, sea-eagles, eagle-owls, and horned owls--mingling their cries, flew from wood to wood. For a quarter of an hour, the time of their pa.s.sage, which they made in sweeping flights, their calls resounded over the mountain sides. Then complete silence settled down. Peace arose with the perfumes of the sleeping forests.

CHAPTER VIII

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 paG.o.da. 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 pa.s.ser-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 compet.i.tion 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 Oberle, who was going to see the Chief of the Administration of Forests, whom he had long promised to visit, was pa.s.sing along the quay, when a woman of about forty, clothed in black, evidently an Alsatian, came out of the cafe, 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 ma.s.s 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 habitues 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 ma.s.sive cuira.s.sier 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 Oberle 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 Oberle, 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 Oberle 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 Oberle, 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. Oberle 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, Oberle, 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."