They could all see that the clouds had ascended to the regions of the sunbeams. The cloud, shapeless at the base of the mountain, had spread across the sky, and was like sheaves of gladioli thrown above the Vosges and the plain: some red, like blood, some quite pale, and some like molten gold. And all those witnesses looking up from between the two abysses, their gaze having followed the long light line, remarked that it lit up the earth with its reflection, and that the distant houses of the capital and the spire of the cathedral stood out in a tawny light from the thickening shadow.
"That is like what I saw on the night of August the 23rd, 1870," said the old Alsatian. "I was just here——"
They, even the very young ones, had heard this date frequently spoken of. Their looks were fixed more steadily on the little spire, whence came still a little shining light and the sound of the resurrection bells.
"I was here with the women and girls from yonder villages, who had come up here because the noise of the cannons had redoubled. We heard the cannons as we now hear the bells. The bombs burst like rockets. Our women were weeping here where you stand. That was the night when the library caught fire, that the new church caught fire, and the picture gallery, and ten houses in Broglie. Then a yellow-and-red smoke rose, and the clouds looked like these we now see. Strasburg was burning. They had fired one hundred and ninety-three shells against the city.
One of the students, the younger one, shook his fist.
"Down with them!" muttered the other.
The peasant took his cap off and kept it under his arm, without saying a word.
The bells were still ringing, but not so many of them. They could no longer hear the bells of Obernai, nor of Saint Nabor, nor some of the others they thought they had heard. They were like lights going out. Night was coming.
Jean saw that the two women were almost weeping, and that every one was silent.
"Please say one prayer for Alsace," he said to the priest, "while the bells are still ringing for the resurrection."