The door closed, and Delcassé, dropping heavily into his chair, gazed mutely into Lépine's inscrutable eyes.
CHAPTER XXXII
STRASBOURG
A Mile or two back from the Rhine, on the banks of the Ill, stands the fair city of Strasbourg. Once she was proud as well as fair; but her pride has been trailed in the dust. For four centuries a free city, defending herself virgin-like against all comers, for two centuries more the happy capital of the loveliest of French provinces, she has borne for forty years the chain of the conqueror and bowed her head beneath the lash. But she is French still—French to the very core of her; and though her hands are bound, her soul is free!
The oldest part of the town has changed but little with the centuries. There are the narrow crooked streets, the tall half-timbered houses with their many-dormered roofs, and there is the grey Minster, which has looked down on the city through all her fortunes. To the north lie the newer quarters of the town, spick and span, and to the south are great arsenals and barracks, guarded by a mighty fortification.
For Strasbourg is now one of the great strongholds of the German Empire. Haunted by the fear that France may one day come pouring up from the south to regain her lost city, the engineers of the Kaiser have laboured with their every talent for her defence. Far-flung, a circle of fourteen forts girdles her round, and within them rampart follows rampart, culminating in the mighty citadel.
What hope can an army, however great, have of capturing such a place? In the mind of every German engineer there is but one adjective, and always one, associated with it—impregnable.
And yet, in this mid-month of October, there was in the air a feeling of uneasiness, impalpable, not to be defined or even spoken of—but present, ever-present. From far-distant posts of the Empire, troops had been hurried southward, until the usual garrison of fifteen thousand men had been more than doubled. Every rampart was manned, every wall had its sentry, and through the streets patrols moved constantly, their gaze directed at the house-tops. Their orders were to see that no one stretched a wire to any building; to arrest any one found doing so, and send him at once to Berlin, under guard.