"Come, is this not another friend—a child of our family?"
If M. Ulrich, by the expression of the face, by the movement of the eyes, by a little fear sometimes, felt that his conclusion was justified, he added in a low voice:
"You—you have the face of a French soldier!"
Then there were smiles or tears, sudden shocks to the heart, which changed the expression of the face pallors, flushings, pipes taken from the corner of the lips, and often, very often, a hand raised, turned palm outwards, touching the brim of the felt hat, thus making the military salute, as long as the two travellers were in sight.
"Do you see him?" said Uncle Ulrich, quite softly; "if he had a bugle he would play 'La Casquette.'"
Jean Oberlé never ceased talking of France. He asked when he came to the top of a mountain ridge: "Are we far from the frontier?" He made the uncle tell him what Alsace was like under the "gentle rule"—what liberty was enjoyed by each and all, how the towns were administered? What difference was there between the French gendarmes—whom M. Ulrich mentioned with a friendly smile as good fellows, not too hard on the poor—and these German gendarmes, common informers, brutal, always officious and full of zeal, whom the whole of the Alsace of to-day hated? What was the name of that prefect of the First Empire who placed by the roadsides of Lower Alsace benches of stone of two tiers so that the women going to market could sit down, and place at the same time their load above them? "The marquis de Lezay Marnésia, my boy."
"Tell me the story of our artists, of our deputies in the old days, of our bishops. Tell me what Strasburg was like in your youth, and what a sight it was when the military band played at Contades?"
M. Ulrich, with the joy of living over again which mingles with all our memories, remembered and related. While climbing and descending the intersections of the Vosges he went through the history of French Alsace. He had only to let his ardent heart speak, and it made him weep. It also made him sing, with the gaiety of a child, the songs of Nadaud, of Béranger, La Marseillaise, or the old Noels, which he sang to the pointed arches of the forest.
Jean took such a passionate interest in these evocations of old Alsace, and he so naturally entered into the hatreds and revolts of the present that his uncle, who was at first pleased at it as a sign of good family, ended by growing uneasy. One evening, when they had given alms to an old teacher, deprived of the right of teaching French, and reduced to misery because she was too old to get a German diploma, Jean's anger had carried him away.
"My dear Jean," said the uncle, "you must be careful not to go too far. You have to live with Germans."