"Right! that's right, my boy!" said the old peasant standing by the priest; "you belong to the country!"
The heavy, weary face of the priest brightened at the same time. His voice, which was slightly broken, was not steady. An old and enduring sorrow, yet always new, spoke through his lips, and while they were all looking, as he was himself, towards Strasburg, the city which night was hiding, he prayed:
"My God, here, now we can see from your Sainte Odile nearly all the beloved land, our towns, our villages, and our fields. But some of our land lies also on the other side of the mountains, and yet that is also our country. You permitted us to be separated. My heart breaks to think of it. For on the other side of the mountains is the nation we love, and which you still love. It is the oldest of the Christian nations; it is the nearest to Godlike things. It has more angels in its skies because it has more churches and chapels on earth, more holy tombs to defend, more sacred dust mixed with its fields, with its grass, with the waters which permeate the land and nourish it. Oh God, we have suffered in our bodies, in our goods; we still suffer in our memories. Nevertheless, make our memories last. Grant that France also will not forget. Make her more worthy to lead nations. Give her back her lost sister, who may also return. Amen!"
"As the Easter bells return."
"Amen!" said the voices of two men.
"Amen! Amen!"
The others wept in silence. There was only the hollow sound of one single bell in the cold air that came up from the depths. The ringers had left the towers, already lost in the shadow that covered the plain.
Above the high platform in the garden the darkened clouds, flying to the west, left a border of purple on the crest of the mountains. Stars came out, in the black depths of the night, as the first primroses were coming out, at the same time under the pines. Only three persons were left on the terrace. The others had gone when the secret of their Alsatian souls had been revealed.
The old priest, seeing before him two young people close to each other, and Odile's head near Jean's shoulder, asked:
"Betrothed?"