The Paris of which these Junkers talked incessantly was not the Paris to which he, the Herr Doktor, looked forward so eagerly, the Paris, for instance, of the Pasteur Institute, and of the Salpétrière. The Paris of these young officers—and he regretted indeed that it was so—was the Paris which, as every good German knew, so aroused the anger and contempt of God as to cause France to be once more crushed and humiliated to the dust. Of this Paris there existed a very fair imitation in what had been euphemistically called 'the night life of Berlin,' but Berlin, to the Herr Doktor at any rate, did not stand for his Fatherland as Paris stands for France.
So musing, so thankful for even a few moments of peace and solitude, the mildest of the conquerors of Valoise reached the bottom of the hill.
Across the paved Route Nationale was an avenue, or mall, of lime trees which formed a green wall between the road and the river. He crossed the street as he had been directed to do, and then, when actually under the dense arch formed by interlacing branches of green leaves, he uttered an exclamation of relief; for there before him, close to the entrance of the lock, and only to be reached by a narrow stone jetty, lay on the placid, slow-moving waters of the river a broad, white barge, on the side of which was painted a large Red Cross. The small, square, white curtained windows just above the dimpling water line were all open, and, set amidships, was a round porthole, on whose edge stood a pot of brilliant scarlet geraniums.
On the deck of the barge stood a woman. She wore the loose, unbecoming white overall which forms the only uniform of a French Red Cross nurse, and there was a red cross on her breast. From where he stood the German surgeon could see that she was young, straight, and lithe. The gleams of the sun, which was now resting, like a huge scarlet ball, on the horizon, lit up her fair hair, which was massed, in the French way, above her forehead. He saw her in profile, for she seemed to be gazing, through the waning light, down the river beyond the lock.
With a queer thrill at the heart the Herr Doktor told himself that so might Wagner have visioned his Elsa in war-time. Since the Herr Doktor had left Weimar, he had not seen a so awakening-to-the-better-feelings and pleasant-to-the-senses-of-man sight as was this French golden-haired girl.
Taking off his cap—for Max Keller was aware that Frenchwomen are curiously punctilious, and he did not wish her to suppose that a cultured German could be lacking in even unnecessary courtesy—he started walking along the narrow stone jetty.
And then, when at last he stood just opposite to the barge, and as suddenly the Red Cross nurse became aware of his presence, he saw a dreadful look of aversion and dread flash into her face and she turned and hastened away, down what he concluded must be a stairway leading to the interior of the barge.
For what seemed to him a considerable time the Herr Doktor stared at the now empty deck with a feeling of sharp exasperation and disappointment.
In the little town where had come that awful rush of wounded after the battle of Charleroi he had already been in contact with the French Red Cross. There had been several Frenchwomen—two countesses, so he had been told, and a duchess—middle-aged ladies who had treated him with suave, if distant, courtesy, and who had always deferred, most politely and sensibly, to his professional knowledge. In the same hastily improvised Feld-Lazaret there had also been three English nurses; them he had naturally disliked, the more so that they had a sharp, short way with them, and always seemed to disapprove of his methods—methods which, being German, were of course in every way superior-and-more-truly-scientific than anything likely to issue from the English Army Medical Service.