The Children of Alsace (Les Oberlés)

Jean let the avalanche pass; he looked now at Fincken, who was gesticulating, now at von Farnow, who was silent, with head held high and frowning brows.

"I believe France is very much calumniated," he said at last. "She may be governed badly. She may be weakened by dissensions; but since you attack her, I am delighted to tell you that I look upon her as a very great nation. Even you yourselves have no other opinion."

Veritable clamours arose. Ah! Oh! Indeed.

"Your very fury against her proves this. You have conquered her, but you have not left off envying her!"

"Do you read the commercial statistics, young man?" asked the resolute voice of Herr Rosenblatt.

"Her merchant navy is in the sixth rank!" whispered one of the students.

Professor Knäpple fixed his spectacles on his nose and very clearly articulated the following proposition:

"What you say, my dear Oberlé, is true as regards the past. Even to-day I think I can add, that if we had France to ourselves she would rapidly become a great country. We should know how to improve her."

"I beg you," added von Fincken insolently, "not to discuss an opinion which is not tenable."

"I beg you, in my turn," said Jean, "not to use in discussion arguments which are not conclusive, and do not really touch the question. One cannot judge a country simply and solely by its commerce, its navy, or its army."

"On what would you form your judgment then, sir?"

"On the soul of the country, sir. France has hers; that I know from history and from I know not what filial instinct I feel within me; and I firmly believe that there are many superior virtues, eminent qualities, generosity, disinterestedness, love of justice, taste, delicacy, and a certain flower of heroism, which are to be found more often than elsewhere in the past and in the present of this nation. I could give many proofs of it. Even if she were as weak as you assert, she holds treasures which are the honour of the world, which must be torn from her before she merits death, and by the side of these things the remainder seems very small. Your Germanisation, sir, is only destruction or diminution of those virtues or French qualities in the Alsatian soul. And that is why I maintain that it is bad!"

"Come now," said Fincken, "Alsace belongs naturally to Germany; she has made her come back. We make our repossession sure. Who would not do as much?"

"France!" answered Oberlé; "and that is why we love her. She might have taken the territory, but she would not have done violence to the soul. We belong to her by right of love."

The baron shrugged his shoulders.

"Go back then to her!"

Jean almost shouted, "Yes." The servants stopped to listen, in passing round the sweets. He went on:

"I find your attempt bad in itself, because it is a repression of consciences; but I also find that it is clumsy, even from a German point of view."

"Charming," said the little falsetto of Madame Knäpple. "You should have the interest to keep what originality and independence remains to us. It would be a useful example to Germany."

"Thanks," said a voice.

"And more and more useful," insisted the young man. "I was educated in Germany and I am sure of my contention. What struck me most, and shocked me, is the want of personality in Germans, their increasing forgetfulness of liberty, their effacement before the power of – "

"Take care, young man!" interrupted the Geheimrath quickly.

"I shall say before the power of Prussia, Geheimrath, which devours consciences, and which allows only three types of men to live, and these she has moulded from childhood – taxpayers, officials, and soldiers."

From the end of the table one of the students rose from his chair:

"The Roman Empire did the same, and it was the Roman Empire!"

A vibrating voice near him cried:

"Bravo!"

All the guests looked up. It was Wilhelm von Farnow, who had said only this one word since the beginning of the discussion. The violence of the debate had irritated him like a personal provocation. It had excited others. Herr Rosenblatt clenched his fists. Professor Knäpple muttered stormy sentences as he wiped his spectacles. His wife laughed nervously.

Then the beautiful Madame Rosenblatt, letting her pearl necklace run through her fingers, smiled, and looking pleasantly at the Alsatian, said:

"M. Oberlé has at least the courage of his opinions. No one could be more openly against us."

Jean felt far too irritated to answer pleasantly. He looked intently at the faces of Fincken, Rosenblatt, and Knäpple, at the student who was moving restlessly near Lucienne, and then leaning slightly towards Madame Rosenblatt, said:

"It is only through the women that the German nation can acquire the refinement which is wanting, madame. Germany has some accomplished women."

"Thank you for us!" answered three men's voices.

Madame Knäpple, furious at the compliment paid to Madame Rosenblatt, said:

"What is your scheme then, sir, for shaking off the yoke of Germany?"

"I have none."

"Then what do you ask for?"

"Nothing, madame; I suffer."

It was one of the Alsatian artists, the painter with the yellow beard, who looked like one of Giotto's pupils, who continued the conversation, and all the table turned towards him.

"I am not like M. Oberlé, who asks for nothing. He has only just come into the country after a long absence. If he had lived here some time, he would come to a different conclusion. We Alsatians of the new generation through our contact with three hundred thousand Germans have had the difference of our French culture from that of Germany conclusively demonstrated. We prefer our own; that is permitted? In exchange for the loyalty that we have shown to Germany, the taxes we pay, the military service we perform – we desire to remain Alsatians. And you determinedly refuse to understand. Our demand is that we should not be compelled to submit to exceptional laws, to this sort of state of siege which we have endured for thirty years. We demand that we should not be treated and governed as a country of the Empire – after the fashion of the Cameroons, Togoland, and New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, or the Isles of Providence, but like a European province of the German Empire. We shall not be satisfied until that day comes when we can feel we are in our own home here – Alsatians in Alsace, as the Bavarians are Bavarians in Bavaria. Whilst as things are, we are the conquered ones waiting on the good pleasure of a master. That is my demand!"

He spoke clearly, with apparent coldness, and his golden beard looked like the point of an arrow. His measured words succeeded in exciting their minds – and one could foresee the angry answer when Geheimrathin Brausig rose.

Her guests followed suit, and went into the blue drawing-room.

"You were absurd! What were you thinking about?" Lucienne asked in an undertone as she passed Jean.

"Perhaps what you said was imprudent," added Madame Oberlé, a moment after; "but you defended Alsace well – and I approve of you."

The Geheimrath was already turning to all sides, making use of the usual formula, which he murmured into the ears of Fincken, von Farnow, of Rosenblatt and Professor Knäpple, the two students, Jean, and the two Alsatian artists:

"Do me the pleasure of following me to the smoking-room!"

The smoking-room was a second drawing-room, separated from the first by plate-glass.

M. Brausig's guests were soon reunited there. Cigars and beer were brought. Smoke spirals went up, mingled together, and rose to the ceiling. M. Rosenblatt became a centre of conversation. The Professor Knäpple became another. The loud voices seemed to be wrangling, but were only explaining simple ideas with difficulty.

Alone, two men were talking of a serious subject and making but little noise. They were Jean Oberlé and von Farnow. Scarcely had the former lit his cigar when von Farnow touched Jean's arm and said:

"I want to have a little conversation with you apart."

To be more free, the young men seated themselves near the monumental mantelpiece, facing the bay which opened into the drawing-room, while the other smokers grouped round M. Rosenblatt and Baron von Fincken occupied the embrasure of the windows.

"You were violent to-night, my dear fellow," said von Farnow, with the haughty politeness which he often adopted; "I was tempted twenty times to answer you, but I preferred waiting. Were you not aiming at me a little?"

"Much of what I said was meant for you. I wanted to tell you very clearly what I was and to teach it to you before witnesses, so that it should be clearly understood that if you persevere in your projects, I have made no concessions to you, no advances; that I have nothing whatever to do with the marriage you are contemplating. I am not going to oppose my father's wishes, but I will not have my ideas confused with his."

"That is how I understood it. You have evidently learned that I have met your sister in society and that I love her?"

"Yes."

"Is that all you have to answer?"

A rush of blood suffused the German's cheeks.

"Explain yourself quickly!" he went on. "My family is of the nobility; do you recognise that?"

"Yes."

"Do you recognise that it is an honour for a woman to be sought by a German officer?"

"For any except an Alsatian woman. But although you do not understand that feeling, we are not like other people – we are the people of Alsace. I esteem you very much, Farnow, but your marriage with my sister will cruelly affect three persons among us – myself first of all."

"How? I ask you!"

They were obliged to speak in an undertone and to avoid any gestures, because of the presence of the Geheimrath's guests at the farther end of the room, who were observing the young men, and were trying to interpret their attitudes. All their emotion and their irritation was in their eyes and in the whispering of words which must only be heard by one person.

Through the sheet of plate-glass, Lucienne could see von Farnow, and getting up and crossing the drawing-room, or pretending to admire the basket of flowers which stood out from the frame-work, she looked inquiringly at the faces of the officer and of her brother.

"You are a man of heart, von Farnow. Think what our home in Alsheim will be when this fresh cause of dissension is added to the others?"

"I shall go away," said the officer; "I can exchange and leave Strasburg."

"The memory will remain with us. But that is not all. And from now on there is my mother, who will never consent…"

With a movement of his hand von Farnow showed that he brushed aside that objection.

"There is my grandfather, whom Alsace once elected to protest, and who cannot to-day give the lie to all his past life."

"I owe nothing to M. Philippe Oberlé," interrupted Farnow.

His voice became more imperious.

"I warn you that I never give up a resolution once taken. When M. von Kassewitz, the prefect of Strasburg, and the only near relation remaining to me, returns from the holiday he is going to take in a few days' time, he will go to Alsheim, to your house; he will ask for the hand of Mlle. Lucienne Oberlé for his nephew, and his request will be granted, because Mlle. Lucienne Oberlé wishes to accept me, because her father has already consented, and because I will have it so – I, Wilhelm von Farnow!"

"It remains to be seen whether you have done well…"

"According to my will: that is sufficient for me."

"How much pride there is in your love, Farnow!"

"It is in everything I do, Oberlé!"

"Do you think I am mistaken? My sister pleases you because she is pretty?"

"Yes."

"Intelligent?"

"Yes."

"But also because she is an Alsatian girl! Your pride has seen in her a victory to be gained. You are not ignorant of the fact that the women of Alsace are in the habit of refusing Germans. They are queens not easily accessible to your amorous ambitions, from the country girls, who at their gatherings refuse to dance with the emigrants, up to our sisters, who are not often seen in your drawing-rooms or on your arms. In the various regiments you will belong to you will boast that you have won Lucienne Oberlé. It will even be a good mark for you in high quarters? Will it not?"

"Perhaps," said Farnow with a sneer.

"Go on then, break, or finish breaking, three of us!"

They were getting more and more irritated, each trying to control himself.

The officer rose, threw away his cigar, and said haughtily:

"We are civilised barbarians – that is understood, less burdened than you with prejudices and pretensions to justice. That is why we shall conquer the world. But in the meantime, Oberlé, I am going to join your mother and talk to her, as amiably as an enemy possibly can. Will you accompany me?"

Jean Oberlé shook his head in the negative.

Farnow crossed the smoking-room, leaving Oberlé there.

Lucienne was anxiously awaiting him in the drawing-room. She saw him direct his steps towards Madame Oberlé, and, forcing himself to smile, place a chair near the arm-chair in which the fragile Alsatian lady in black was sitting. At the same time the Geheimrath called out, "Oberlé! You have smoked a cigar without even drinking one glass of beer. But that is a crime! Come. Professor Knäpple is explaining the measures the Government is taking to prevent the Russianising of the eastern provinces of Germany."

Late that night, a landau bore away to Alsheim three travellers; it had fetched them from the station at Molsheim.

The way there was a long one, and Lucienne soon went to sleep in the carriage. Her mother, who had hardly said anything up to then, bent towards her son, and, pointing to the beautiful creature sound asleep, asked him:

"You knew?"

"Yes."

"I guessed it. There was no need to tell me much. I have seen her look at him. Oh, Jean, this trial that I hoped to escape! – the fear of which has made me accept so many, many things! I have only you left, my Jean! But you remain to me!"

She kissed him fervently.

CHAPTER XI

IN SUSPENSE

As things do not usually happen as we foresee, the visit of Herr von Kassewitz to Alsheim did not take place on the date Farnow said it would. Towards the end of June – at the moment when the prefect, returned from taking the waters, was getting ready to go to ask for Lucienne's hand, a telegram had asked him to put off the visit. The condition of M. Philippe Oberlé had suddenly become worse.

The old man, whom it was necessary to inform of what was going on in the house, had just learned the truth. His son had gone up one morning to the sick man's room. "With circumlocution and in ways that he took out of respect and consideration for him, he let it be seen that Lucienne was not indifferent to the advances of a cavalry officer belonging to a high German family; he had said that the liking was spontaneous; that he, Joseph Oberlé, in spite of certain regrets, did not believe that he had the right to thwart the freedom of his children, and that he hoped that his father, in the interests of peace, would be resigned.

"My father," he said, "you are not ignorant of the fact that your opposition would be useless and purely vexatious. You have a chance to give Lucienne a great proof of your affection, as we ourselves have given; do not repulse her."

The old man had asked in signs:

"And Monica; has she consented?"

M. Joseph Oberlé had been able to answer yes, without telling a lie, for the poor woman, threatened with a separation, had yielded once more. Then the sick man put an end to his son's long monologue by writing two words, which were his answer:

"Not I!"

The same evening, fever declared itself. It continued the following day, and soon became so persistent and weakening that the condition of the sick man troubled the Oberlés.

From this day on, the health of M. Philippe Oberlé became the topic of anxious inquiries, evening and morning. They questioned Madame Monica or Jean, whom he received whilst excluding the others.

"How is he? Is his strength returning? Has he still all his wits about him – the full use of his mental faculties?"

Each one was wondering what was happening up above in the room where the old fighter, who had half disappeared from the world of the living, still governed his divided family, holding them all dependent on him. They spoke of their uneasiness, and under this name, which they rightly used, what projects were hid, what different thoughts!

Jean himself awaited the issue of this crisis with an impatience in which his affection for his grandfather was not the only interest involved. Since the explanation he had had with Lucienne, especially since the party at the Geheimrath's, all intimacy between brother and sister had ceased. Lucienne was as amiable and just as officiously kind as she could be, but Jean no longer responded to her advances. When work kept him no longer at the factories he fled from the house: sometimes to the country, where the first hay harvest attracted all the life from the Alsatian farms. Sometimes he would go and talk to his neighbours the Ramspachers, already his friends, when at nightfall they came back from the plain; and there he was led on by the hope that he should see the daughter of M. Bastian walking along the path. But more often still he went up to Heidenbruch. M. Ulrich had received his nephew's confidences and a mission at the same time. Jean had said to him:

"I have now no hope of winning Odile. My sister's marriage will prevent mine. But in spite of that I am bound to ask for the hand of her to whom I have confessed my love. I wish to be certain of what is already breaking my heart, although I am only afraid of it. When M. Bastian has heard that Lucienne is betrothed to Lieutenant von Farnow or that she is going to be – and that will not be delayed if grandfather gets better – you will go to M. Bastian. You will speak to him on my behalf. He will answer you, knowing fully all the facts; you will tell me if he refuses, once for all, his daughter to the brother-in-law of von Farnow; or if he insists on some time of probation – I will accept it, no matter how long it may be; or if he has the courage – in which I do not believe – to pay no attention to the scandal which my sister's marriage will cause."

M. Ulrich had promised.

Towards the middle of August the fever which was wearing out M. Philippe Oberlé disappeared. Contrary to the expectation of the doctor, his strength returned very quickly. It was soon certain that the robust constitution of the invalid had got the better of the crisis. And the truce accorded by M. Joseph Oberlé to his father had come to an end. The old man, having recovered to that sad condition of a sick man whom death does not desire, was going to be treated like the others, and would not be spared. There was no fresh scene between the sick man and his son. All went on quietly. On the 22nd of August, after dinner in the drawing-room, where Victor had just brought the coffee, the factory owner said to Madame Oberlé:

"My father is now convalescent. There is no longer any reason to put off the visit of Herr von Kassewitz. I give you notice, Monica, that it will take place during the next few days. You would do well to tell my father, since you alone go to him. And it is necessary that everything should be done in order, without anything like surprise or deception. Is that your opinion?"

"You do not wish to put off this visit any longer?"

"No."

"Then I will tell him!"

Jean wrote the same evening to Heidenbruch, where he was not able to go.

"My uncle, the visit is settled. My father makes no mystery about it; not even before the servants. He evidently wishes that the report of the marriage should be spread abroad. As soon as you hear some one from Alsheim get indignant or sad about us, go and see, I implore you, if the dream that I dreamed can still live on. You will tell M. Bastian that it is the grandson of M. Philippe Oberlé who loves Odile."

CHAPTER XII

THE HOP-PICKING

At the foot of Sainte Odile, a little below the vineyards in the deep earth formed by gravel and leaves fallen from the mountain, M. Bastian and other land-owners or farmers of Alsheim had planted hop-fields. Now the time was come when the flower produces its maximum of odorous pollen – a quickly passing hour difficult to seize.

The hop-planters appeared frequently in the hopfields. The brokers went through the villages. One heard buyers and sellers discussing the various merits of Wurtemburg hops and the Grand Duchy of Baden hops, and of Bohemian and Alsatian hops. The newspapers began to publish the first prices of the most famous home-grown: Hallertan, Spalt, and Wolnzach.

A Munich Jew had come to see M. Bastian on Sunday August 26, and had said to him:

"Wurtemburg is promising: Baden will have fine harvests: our own country of Spalt, in Bavaria, has hops which are paying us one hundred and sixty francs the fifty kilos, because they are rich hops – they are as full of the yellow aromatic powder as a grape of juice. Here you have been injured by the drought. But I can offer you one hundred and twenty francs on condition that you pick them at once. They are ripe."

M. Bastian had given in, and had called together his daily hop-pickers for August 28. That was also the day when the Count von Kassewitz was to pay his visit to M. Joseph Oberlé.

From dawn of a day already warmed by wafts of hot air, women had set themselves to walk up what is called "the heights of Alsheim," the region where the cultivated land, hollowed like a bow, will bear hops. Some hundreds of yards from the border of the forest high poles in battle array bore up the green tendrils. They looked like very pointed tents of foliage, or belfries – for the millions of little cones, formed of green scales sprinkled with pollen, swung themselves from the extreme top to the ground like bells whose ringer is the wind. All the inhabitants know the event of the day – one picks hops for M. Bastian. The master, up before dawn, was already in the hop-field, examining each foot, calculating the value of his crop, pressing and crushing in his fingers one of the little muslin-like pine cones whose perfume attracts the bees. At the back on the stubble furrows are two narrow wagons, harnessed to a horse, waiting for the harvest, and near them was Ramspacher the farmer, his two sons Augustin and François, and a farm servant. The women, on the direct road leading up there, came up in irregular bands, three in file, then five abreast, then one following the others, the only one who was old. Each one had put on a working dress of some thin stuff, discoloured and the worse for wear, except, however, the grocer's daughter, Ida, who wore a nearly new dress, blue with white spots, and another elegant girl from Alsheim, Juliette, a brunette, the daughter of the sacristan, and she had a fashionable bodice and a checked apron, pink and white. The greater number were without hats, and had only the shade of their hair, of every tint of fairness, to preserve their complexions. They walked along quietly and heavily. They were young and fresh. They laughed. The farm boy mounted on a farm horse, going to the fields, the reapers, encamped in a corner, and the motionless man with the scythe in the soft lucerne turned their heads, and their eyes followed these women workers, whom one did not generally see in the country: needlewomen, dressmakers, apprentices, all going as if to a fête towards the hop-field of M. Bastian. The vibration of words they could not hear flew to them on the wind that dried the dew. The weather was fair. Some old people, the pickers of fallen fruit beneath the scattered apple- and walnut-trees, rose from their stooping posture, and blinked their eyes to see the happy band of girls coming up the forest road. These girls without baskets such as the bilberry and whortleberry pickers, and raspberry gatherers had to carry.

They went into the hop-field, which contained eight rows of hops and disappeared as if in a gigantic vineyard. M. Bastian directed the work, and pointed out that they must begin with the part touching the road. Then the old farmer, his two sons and farm servant, seized each of them one of the poles, heavy with the weight of harvest, the tendrils, the little scaly bells, the leaves all trembled; and after the women had knelt down and had cut the stalks even with the ground, the loosened poles came out of the earth and were lowered and despoiled of the climbing plants they had carried.