"Wilhelm, will you be quiet?" she said. "Wait till I take a look—wait, I see something. Good, I have it; you can tumble about now. Wilhelmina, come put your head upon my knees; each must take their turn; you can look at the pine trees later."
And the father, a big man, in a bottle-green coat, that had a thousand wrinkles in the back; his cheeks hanging, his little nose adorned with a pair of spectacles, his pantaloons tucked into his boots, and a big porcelain pipe in his mouth, pulled on his miserable horse by the bridle and said to his wife:
"Herminia, look at those forests, those meadows, this rich Alsace. We are in the terrestrial paradise."
It was a group resembling the gipsies, and, as Merlin came to see us that day, we talked of nothing but that the whole evening.
But we were destined to see many more of them, for these strangers, in old cabriolets, basket wagons, chars-a-banc, and two or four wheeled carriages, put into requisition along the road, continued to pass for a long time. From the first of them, the remembrance of whom has remained in my mind, the train was never ending; there passed daily three, four, or five vehicles, loaded with children, old men, young women, and young girls—the last gotten up in an odd style, with dresses which, it seemed to me, I remembered having seen some fifteen or twenty years before upon the ladies of Saverne, and with wide hats, trimmed with paper roses, set upon their plaits, just three hairs thick, like the queues of our grandfathers.
These people talked all kinds of German and were hard to understand. They had also all kinds of faces: some broad and fat, with venerable beards; others sharp as a knife-blade, and with their old overcoats buttoned to the throat, to hide their shirts; some with light gray eyes and stiff, shaggy, red whiskers; others little, round, lively, going, running, and wriggling about; but all, at the sight of our beautiful valley, uttering cries of admiration and lifting up their hands, men, women, and children, as we are told the Jews did on entering into the Promised Land.
Thus came these people from all parts of Germany; they had taken the railroads to our frontiers, but all our lines being then occupied by their troops and their provision and ammunition trains starting from Wissembourg or from Soreltz, they were forced to travel in wagons, after the Alsatian fashion.
Sometimes one and sometimes another would ask us the way to Saverne, Metting, or Lutzelstein; they got down at the spring below the bridge and drank from one of their pans or from the hollow of their hands.
Every day these passages were repeated, and I cudgelled my brain to find out what these foreigners were coming to do among us at so troubled a time, when provisions were so scarce and when we did not know to-day what we should have to eat the morrow. They never said a word, but went upon their way, under the protection of the landwehr which filled the country. We have since learned that they shared in the requisitions—a fact which permitted them to save money and even to get themselves into good condition on the road.
George, all these Bohemians of a new species, whose miserable air filled our hearts with pity, even in the midst of our troubles, were the functionaries which Germany sent to be our administrators and our rulers, preceptors, controllers, notaries, schoolmasters, foresters, etc. They were persons who, from the months of September and October, long before the treaty of peace was signed, arrived tranquilly to take the place of our own people, saying to them, without ceremony, "Get out of there, so that I may get in."