"Alas!" answered Jean. "Wish that it may become true."
"I do wish it. What you just said is right. I wish that you, who are young, may see Alsace once more French."
He went away.
"Good-bye," said Odile quickly, "Good-bye, Jean!"
She held out her hand, and went away without turning to look back. Jean remained near the terrace wall.
The night birds—owls, sea-eagles, eagle-owls, and horned owls—mingling their cries, flew from wood to wood. For a quarter of an hour, the time of their passage, which they made in sweeping flights, their calls resounded over the mountain sides. Then complete silence settled down. Peace arose with the perfumes of the sleeping forests.
CHAPTER VIII
AT CAROLIS
At the beginning of the rue de Zurich, facing the Quay des Bateliers, one of the relics of old Strasburg, there is a narrow house, much lower than its neighbours, with a roof of two stories like a Chinese pagoda. The front, formerly adorned with the pattern of its painted beams, is now covered with whitewash, on which is this inscription: