Since then M. Ulrich had avoided returning so often to the question of the annexation. But alas! it was the whole of Alsace, it was the landscape, the descending road, the sign of some shop, the women's dress, the type of men, the sight of soldiers, the fortifications at the top of a hill, a finger-post, the different items in a newspaper bought in the Alsatian inn where they had dined in the evening—it was every hour of the day which called their minds back to the condition of Alsace, a nation conquered but not assimilated. In vain did M. Ulrich answer more carelessly and quickly—he could not hinder Jean's thought from travelling the road to the unknown. And when they climbed together a neck of the Vosges, the elder man saw with pleasure and apprehension Jean's eyes travel to seek the horizon on the west, and gaze there as at some loved face. Jean did not look so long at the east or the south.
A fortnight was employed in visiting the forest of the Vosges, and during this time M. Ulrich came back to Heidenbruch only twice for some hours. The separation took place only on Palm Sunday, in a village of the Valley of Münster.
It was evening—the hour when the valleys of the German side of the mountains were quite blue, and there was only a strip of light on the last pines which surrounded the shade. M. Ulrich Biehler had already said good-bye to this nephew, his dearest friend.
The servant had taken the train that same morning for Obernai, M. Ulrich, the collar of his cloak turned up because the cold was piercing, had just whistled to Fidèle and was leaving the inn, when Jean, in his blue hunting-costume, without a hat, came down the flight of steps.
"Again good-bye," he said.
And as the uncle, very upset, and not wishing to show it, made a sign with his hand to avoid words which might be tremulous—
"I will go with you to the last house of the village," continued Jean.
"Why, my boy, it is useless to prolong——"
His head turned towards his uncle, and his uncle, looking down the road, Jean began to walk. He commenced in his cajoling young voice:
"I am inexpressibly sorry to leave you, Uncle Ulrich, and I must tell you why. You understand before one says twenty words. You do not contradict aggressively: when you are not of my opinion, I know it by your mouth, which makes the point of your white beard rise—that is all. You are kind. You do not get angry, and I feel you are very decided. Other people's ideas all seem familiar to you—you are able to answer them so easily; you are respected by the weak. I was not accustomed to that on the other side of the Rhine."