The Children of Alsace Part 18

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 Oberle 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 Oberle 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 gla.s.s and his own, drank.

"To your return to Alsheim!" he said.

Then, drinking it in a draught, he placed the gla.s.s 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 G.o.d, who is the great judge of it. I love hunting best--I think man is made to move in large s.p.a.ces, 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. Oberle 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 pa.s.sage; 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, Oberle, 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--Oberle, 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 c.o.c.kade 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 att.i.tude, 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 Oberle.

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 mediaeval 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 Oberle. "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 pa.s.s 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!"