"Count Kassewitz told me about it, madame. He even advised me to give up the idea of marrying your daughter. But I shall not do that. To make me give her up nothing short of——"
He began to laugh—
"Nothing short of an order from the Emperor would make me! I am a good German, as you say. I do not easily give up what I have won. And Count Kassewitz is only my uncle."
"What you do not know is that my father-in-law, for the first time for many, many years, in his exasperation, in the excess of his grief, has spoken. He cried out to Jean: 'Go away! Go away!' I heard the words. I ran quickly. Well, sir, what moved me most was not seeing M. Philippe Oberlé senseless, stretched upon the floor; it was my son's expression, and it is my conviction that at that moment he resolved to obey and to leave Alsace."
"Oh," said Farnow, "that would be bad."
He cast a glance at the fair Lucienne, and saw that she was shaking her blond head in sign of denial.
"Yes, bad," continued the mother without understanding in what sense Farnow used the word. "What an old age for me in my divided house—without my daughter, whom you are going to take away; without my son, who will have gone away. You are astonished, perhaps, that I should tell you an anxiety of this sort?"
He made a gesture which might mean anything.
"It is because," the mother continued more quickly, "I have no one to advise me; no help to hope for—under the circumstances. Understand clearly. To whom shall I go? To my husband? He would be furious? He would start to work and we should find that by his influence Jean would be incorporated in a German regiment in a week's time—away in the north or the east. My brother? He would rather insist on my son leaving Alsace. You see, monsieur, you are the only one who can do anything."
"What exactly?"