Marthe, who had turned back, saw them standing together, motionless.
***
When they emerged at the corner of the Albern Path, they saw a group of journalists and sightseers gathered behind half-a-dozen gendarmes. The whole road was thus guarded, as far as the Saint-Élophe rise. And, on the right, German gendarmes stood posted at intervals.
They reached the Butte. The Butte is a large round clearing, on almost level ground, surrounded by a circle of ancestral trees arranged like the colonnade of a temple. The road, a neutral zone, seven feet wide, runs through the middle.
On the west, the French frontier-post, in plain black cast-iron and bearing a slab with directions, like a sign-post.
On the east, the German post, in wood painted with a black and white spiral and surmounted by an escutcheon with the words, "Deutsches Reich."
Two military tents had been pitched for the double enquiry and were separated by a space of fifty or sixty yards. Above each waved the flag of its respective country. A soldier was on guard outside either tent: a Prussian infantryman, helmet on head, shin-strap buckled; an Alpine rifleman, bonneted and gaitered. Each stood with his rifle at the order.
Not far from them, on either side of the clearing, were two little camps pitched among the trees: French soldiers, German soldiers. And the officers formed two groups.
French and German horizons showed in the mist between the branches.