One would have said that it was all agreed upon beforehand, for it happened so even before the capitulation of Strasburg.
How many poor devils, beer barrels or schnaps drinkers, who had been whipping the devil around the stump for years and years in all the little cities of Pomerania, of Brandenburg, and further still, who never would have become anything at home, and who did not know from whom to ask for credit at home for rye bread and potatoes—how many such men fell then upon rich Alsace, that terrestrial paradise, promised to the Germans by their kings, their professors, and their schoolmasters!
At the time of which I speak they were still modest, notwithstanding the wonderful victories of their armies; they were not yet sure of preserving that extraordinary good-fortune to the end, and, comparing their old tattered coats and their miserable appearance with the easy fortune of the least of the functionaries of Alsace and of Lorraine, they doubtless said to themselves:
"It cannot be possible that the Lord should have chosen scamps like us to fill such good places. What extraordinary merit have we, then, to play first fiddle in a country such as this, which the French have occupied for two hundred years, which they have cultivated, planted, and enriched with workshops and factories and improvements of all kinds? Provided that they do not return to retake it, and to force us to return to our schnaps and our potatoes."
Yes, George, with a little common sense and justice, these intruders must have reasoned thus to themselves; a sort of uneasiness could be recognised in their eyes and in their smile. But once Strasburg was taken and Metz given up, and they comfortably installed in large and fine houses, which they had not built, sleeping in the good beds of prefects, under-prefects, judges, and other personages, of whom they had never even had an idea; after having imposed taxes upon the good lands which they had not sowed, and laid hands upon the registers of all the administrations, which they had not established, seeing the money, the good money of rich Alsace, flowing into their coffers—then, George, they believed themselves to be really presidents of something, inspectors, controllers, receivers, and the German pride, which they know so well how to hide with cringing when they are not the stronger—that brutal pride puffed out their cheeks.
There always remained to them during the time that I was still down yonder an old remembrance of the Lorempé Strasse and of the Speingler Volk, where they had formerly lived. That remembrance made them very economical; two of them would order a mug of beer and pay for it between them; they disputed about farthings with the shoemaker and the tailor; they found something to find fault with in every bill, crying out that we wanted to cheat them; and the poorest cobbler among us would have been ashamed to display the meanness of these new functionaries, who promised us so many benefits in the name of the German fatherland, and who showed us so much avarice and even abominable meanness. But that only showed us with what race we had now to do.
XV
One day, towards the end of October, one of the gens-d'armes of Bismark Bohlen, who passed every morning through the valley, halted at the door of the forest house, calling:
"Hillo, somebody!" I went out.
"You are the Brigadier Frederick?" asked the man.