The advocate Offenheimer, Annette's brother, met me, and his first words were, "You are a great consolation to me. Come with me and give my son an escort."
I now perceived that his only son had fallen, and that the father desired him to be buried in the Jewish cemetery here.
As he divined my thoughts, he said, "It is true, I could not allow them to bury my son out there with the others; but it is, perhaps, well if there is some sign here of our having fairly and joyfully taken our part in the fight. Perhaps it will have a mollifying effect upon our new countrymen of the Jewish faith, who were particularly contumacious."
I was astounded to find the man so placid. But, as if guessing my thoughts, he said he had no more strength for complaints and tears, and that a fact must at last be accepted.
I thought of the handsome, spirited lad, that had one time come to me with Wolfgang. But I greatly desired to find a favorable opportunity for addressing the Jewish inhabitants of the village. They had an especial fear of the Germans, and were proud of French equality.
The advocate's son was buried with all the ceremonies of his church. Two slightly wounded South German officers, who were lying in the village, acted as the escort. They recognized in me the Colonel's father-in-law, and had much to tell me in his praise.
"He shows that we are not inferior to the Prussians." Such appeared to be the highest compliment they could bestow upon him.
Upon our return from the cemetery, to which the Jews here in Alsace give the peculiar name of the "good place,"[6] the advocate leaned upon my arm, and, as I sat next to him in the little room, after quietly meditating for a long while, he exclaimed, "In my youth I had willingly died for the true Fatherland; now, my son has been permitted to die for it."
For years had I been in constant intercourse with this man; now, in his grief and in the hour of civil commotion, I first learned to know him; and to learn to know an upright man is to learn to love him.
I have, like suffering Odysseus, participated in the experiences of many men; Rautenkron, the Colonel, and Arven have revealed to me their life-secrets. Now I was to hear still another's: the history of a step-child in his step-fatherland, who still longed for affection, for the closest friendship, and who, though repulsed and oppressed by the laws and his fellow-men, had not yet lost his love for them.