CHAPTER X
THE DINNER AT THE BRAUSIGS'
At seven o'clock the guests of the Geheimrath Brausig were gathered together in the blue drawing-room—with its plush and gilded wood—which that official had taken with him to the different towns he had lived in. The Geheimrath was a Saxon of excellent education, and of amiable though somewhat fawning manners. He seemed always to bend in any direction in which he was touched. But the frame-work was solid; and, on the contrary, he was a man whose ideas were unchangeable. He was tall, ruddy, nearly blind, and wore his hair long, and his red beard streaked with white, he wore short. He did not wear spectacles, because his eyes, of a pale agate colour, were neither shortsighted nor longsighted, but were worn out and almost dead. He was a great talker. His speciality was to reconcile the most opposite opinions. In his offices, in his relations with his inferiors one saw the real basis of his character. Herr Brausig had an Imperial spirit. He never allowed private people to be in the right. The words "Public interest" seemed to him to answer all arguments. In the official world they talked about raising him to the nobility. He repeated this. His wife was fifty years old, had the remains of beauty and an imposing figure; she had received the officials of eight German towns before coming to live in Strasburg. At her entertainments she gave all her attention to supervising the servants, and her impatience at the countless annoyances connected with their service, which she tried to hide, did not allow her to reply to her neighbours except in sentences absolutely devoid of interest.
The guests formed a mixture of races and professions which one would not so easily come across in any other German town. There are so many imported elements in the Strasburg of to-day! They were fourteen in number, the dining-room could seat sixteen with a little over two feet of table for each person, such space being an essential in the eyes of the Geheimrath. He had in his house, around him—and he dominated them with his sad, insipid head—some protégés, people recommended to him, or friends gathered together from various parts of the empire: two Prussian students from the University of Strasburg, then two young Alsatian artists, two painters who had been working for a year at the decoration of a church; these were the unimportant guests, to which we must add the two Oberlés, brother and sister, and even the mother, who was looked upon in the official world as a person of limited intellect. The guests of note were Professor Knäpple, from Mecklenburg, cultured and studious, whose erudition consisted chiefly of minutiæ, and the author of an excellent work on the socialism of Plato. He was the husband of a pretty wife, round and pink, who seemed fairer and pinker by the side of her dark husband, with his black beard curling like an Assyrian's. The Professor of Æsthetics, Baron von Fincken from Baden—who shaved his cheeks and chin, so that the scars gained in the duels of his student days might be better seen, was of a slender, nervous build; his head was of the energetic type, his nose was turned up and showing the cartilage very plainly; ardent, passionate, and very anti-French, and yet he looked more like a Frenchman than any one present, except Jean Oberlé. There was no Madame von Fincken. But there was beautiful Madame Rosenblatt, the woman who was more envied, sought after, looked up to, than any other woman in the German society of Strasburg, even in the military world, because of her beauty and intelligence. She came from Rhenish Prussia, as did also her husband, the great iron-master, Karl Rosenblatt, multi-millionaire, a man of sanguine temperament, and at the same time methodical and silent, and one said that he was bold and cold and calculating in business.
This party was like all the parties that the Geheimrath gave; there was no homogeneity. The official himself called that conciliating the different elements of the country. He also spoke of the "neutral ground" of his house and of the "open tribunal," for each and every opinion. But many Alsatians did not trust this eclecticism and this liberty. Some maintained that Herr Brausig was simply playing a part, and that whatever was said in his house was always known in higher spheres.
Madame Oberlé and her children were the last to arrive at the Geheimrath. The German guests welcomed Lucienne, who was intimate with them already. They were polite to the mother, because they knew she only went into Government society under constraint. Wilhelm von Farnow, introduced by Madame Brausig, who alone knew about the officer's plans, bowed ceremoniously to the mother and the young girl, drew himself up erect, stood stiffly, then returned at once to the group of men standing near the mirror.
A servant announced that dinner was served. There was a movement among the black coats, and the guests entered the large room, decorated as at the Oberlés' house with evident predilection. But the taste was not the same. The vaulted bays with two mullions, decorated with rose windows in the pointed arch, and filled with stained-glass, of which at this time only the lead-work was to be seen; the sideboards with torso pillars with sculptured panels; the wainscoting rising to the ceiling and ending in little spires; the ceiling itself divided into numerous sunk panels, and in the carving of which electric lamps shone like fire blossoms: the whole decoration recalled to mind Gothic art.
Jean, who came in one of the last in the procession of diners, gave his arm to pretty Madame Knäpple, who had eyes only for the wonderfully made and equally wonderfully worn dress of Madame Rosenblatt. Professor Knäpple's little wife thought she saw that Jean Oberlé was noticing the same thing. So she said:
"The low neck is indecent. Don't you think so?"
"I find it irreproachable. I think that Madame Rosenblatt must go to Paris for her dresses."
"Yes; you have guessed rightly," answered the homely little woman. "When one has such a fortune one has often odd fancies, and but little patriotism."
The beginning of the meal was rather silent. Little by little the noise of different conversations rose. They began to drink. M. Rosenblatt had large bumpers of Rhine wine poured out for him. The two students in spectacles came back to Wolxheim wine, with as serious a mien as if it were some difficult passage in the classics. The voices grew louder. The servants' footsteps could no longer be heard on the parquet floor. General conversation began as the froth of intellects had been moved by the light and the wine. Professor Knäpple, who had a quiet voice, but a manner of pronouncing very clearly and distinctly, was heard above the hum of conversation, when he answered his neighbour, Madame Brausig:
"No; I do not understand that one should join the strong because one is strong. I have always been a liberal."
"You are alluding to the Transvaal perhaps," said the Geheimrath opposite, with a loud laugh, pleased at having guessed.
"Precisely, Herr Geheimrath. It is not political greatness to crush small nations."
"You find that extraordinary?"
"No; very ordinary. But I do say there is nothing to boast about in that."
"Have other nations acted differently?" asked Baron von Fincken.
He turned up his insolent nose. No one carried on the discussion, as if the argument were unanswerable. And the wave of general talk rolled on, intermingling and drowning the private conversations of which it consisted.
Madame Rosenblatt's musical voice broke the hum of talk. She was saying to little Madame Knäpple, placed on the other side of the table:
"Yes, madame, I assure you that the question has been discussed. Everything is possible, madame; however, I should not have thought that the Municipality of a German town could even discuss such an idea."
"Not so devoid of sense; don't you think so, Professor, you who lecture on æsthetics?"
Professor von Fincken, seated at the right hand of the beautiful Madame Rosenblatt, turned towards her, looked into the depths of her eyes, which remained like an unrippled lake, and said:
"What is it about, madame?"
"I told Madame Knäpple that in the Municipal Council the question had been raised of sending the Gobelin Tapestries which the town possesses, to Paris to be mended."
"That is right, madame, the noes have it."
"Why not to Berlin?" asked Madame Knäpple's pretty red mouth. "Do they happen to work so badly in Berlin?"
The Geheimrath found it time to "conciliate." "To make Gobelin tapestry, without doubt, Madame Rosenblatt, is right, and Paris is necessary; but to mend them! I think—it seems to me—that can be done in Germany."
"Send our tapestry to Paris!" expostulated Madame Knäpple. "How do they know if they would ever come back?"
"Oh!" one of the young painters at the end of the table answered gravely. "Oh, madame!"
"How! Oh! You are an Alsatian, sir," said the homely little woman, pricked by the interjection as if it had been the point of a needle. "But we—we have the right to be mistrustful."
She had gone too far. No one stood up for her verdict—general conversation stopped, and was replaced by flattering appreciations made by each guest on some quails in aspic which had just been served. Madame Knäpple herself came back to subjects with which she was more familiar, for she but rarely took any part in discussions when men were present. She turned towards her neighbour, von Farnow, which prevented her from seeing the elegant Madame Rosenblatt, and Madame Rosenblatt's beautiful dress, and the periwinkle-blue eyes of Madame Rosenblatt, and she undertook to explain to the young man how to do quails in aspic, and how to make "Cup" according to her recipe. However, for the second time their thoughts had been turned to the vanquished nation—and this thought continued to disturb their minds in a vague way, while champagne, German-labelled, was sparkling in the glasses.
Madame Brausig had only exchanged very unmeaning words with M. Rosenblatt, her neighbour on the right, and with Professor Knäpple, her neighbour on the left, who preferred talking to Madame Rosenblatt, and Baron von Fincken, her vis-à-vis, and sometimes with Jean Oberlé. It was she, however, who started a fresh discussion, without wishing to. And the conversation rose at once to a height it had not yet reached. The councillor's wife was speaking to M. Rosenblatt—looking all the time angrily at a servant who had just knocked against the chair of her most important guest, Madame Rosenblatt; she was speaking of a marriage between an Alsatian and a German from Hanover, the commandant of the regiment of Foot Artillery No. 10. The iron-master answered quite loudly, without knowing that he was sitting beside the mother of a young girl sought after by an officer:
"The children will be good Germans. Such marriages are very rare, and I regret it, because they add immensely to the Germanisation of this obstinate country."
Baron von Fincken emptied his champagne glass at a draught and, placing it on the table, said:
"All means are good, because the end is good."
"Certainly," said M. Rosenblatt.
Jean Oberlé was the best known of the three Alsatians present, and the best qualified to make a reply, and yet the most disqualified, it seemed to him, to give his opinion, because of the discussions which this question had caused in his own house. He saw that Baron von Fincken had looked at him as he spoke, that Herr Rosenblatt was staring at him, that Professor Knäpple cast a glance at his left-hand neighbour, that Rosenblatt smiled with the air of one who would say "Is this little fellow capable of defending his nation? Will he answer to the spur? Let us see!"
The young man answered, choosing his adversary, and, turning towards the Baron, "On the contrary, I think that the Germanisation of Alsace is a bad and clumsy action."
At the same time his face grew harder and the green in his eyes vibrated, like the green of the forests when the wind blows the leaves of the trees the wrong way.
The Professor of Æsthetics looked like a man of the sword.
"Why bad, if you please? Do you look upon the conquest as unpleasant? This is the sequel of that? Do you think so, really? But say so, then!"
In the silence of all present the answer of Jean Oberlé fell clear and distinct.
"Yes."
"You dare, sir!"
"Allow me," said the Geheimrath Brausig, stretching out his hand as if to bless them. "Here we are all good Germans, my dear baron! You have no right to suspect the patriotism of our young friend, who is only speaking from a historical point of view!"
Madame Oberlé and Lucienne signed to Jean.
"Be quiet! be quiet!"
But Baron von Fincken saw nothing and heard nothing. The bitter passion of which his face was the symbol was let loose. He half rose, and leaning forward, with his head over the table, he said:
"France is pretty! united! powerful and moral!"
Little Madame Knäpple went on:
"Above all, moral!"
Voices high, low, ironical, and irritated rang out confusedly.
"Deceivers, the French! Look at their novels and plays! France is decadent! A worn-out nation! What will she do against fifty-five millions of Germans?"
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.