Part 16 (1/2)

”Is he a German--that one there?” asked a voice.

The old man who was near the priest cast a glance in the direction of the garden and answered:

”No; he wears his moustache in the French fas.h.i.+on and he looks like one of us.”

”I saw him walking with Mademoiselle Odile Bastian, of Alsheim,”

said the young woman.

The group was rea.s.sured, and more so when Jean greeted the priest in Alsatian and asked:

”Are the bells of Alsace late?”

They all smiled, not because of what he had said, but because they felt at home among themselves without an inconvenient witness.

Odile came in her turn and leaned against a wall on the right of the first group. Jean took up a similar position on the other side of the group. They were suffering from loving so much, from having said it, and from only being sure of themselves.

The bells were not late. Their voices were encircled and enclosed by the rising mists. Suddenly they escaped from the cloudy ma.s.ses, and it seemed as if each separate morsel of fog burst like a bubble on touching the wall and poured out on the summit of the sacred mountain all the harmony of the pealing bells. ”Easter! Easter! The Lord is risen! He has changed the world and delivered men! The heavens are opened!” So sang the bells of Alsace. They were ringing from the foot of the mountain, and from the distance, and from far, far away, voices of the little bells, and voices of the great bells of cathedrals; voices which never ceased and from peal to peal were prolonged in re-echoing reverberations; voices that pa.s.sed away lightly, intermittently, delicately, like a shuttle in a loom; a prodigious choir, whose singers were never visible to each other; cries of joy from a whole population of churches, songs of the spring eternal, which rose up from the depths of the misty plain and mounted to the summit of Sainte Odile to blend into one harmonious whole.

The grandeur of this concert of pealing bells silenced the few folk gathered together up there. The very air prayed. Souls thought of the risen Christ. Several thought of Alsace.

”There is some blue sky,” said a voice.

”Some blue up there,” repeated a woman's voice, as if in a dream.

They scarcely heard it, in the roar of sounds which rose from the valley. Yet all eyes were raised at once. They saw in the sky, amidst the ma.s.ses of fog fleeing before the a.s.sailing sun, blue depths opening and opening with bewildering rapidity. And when they again looked downwards they perceived that the cloud of mist also was tearing itself to pieces on the slopes. It was the clearing up.

Parts of the forest slipped, as it were, into the divisions made in the moving fog; then others; then black creva.s.ses, the thickets, and rocks; then of a sudden the last rags of mist, drawn, thin, contorted, lamentable, went up in whirling ma.s.ses, brushed against the terrace, and disappeared above. And the plain of Alsace appeared all blue and gold.

One of those who saw it cried out:

”How beautiful!”

All leaned forward to see in the opening of the mountain the plain growing lighter and lighter as far as eye could see.

All these Alsatian souls were touched. Three hundred villages of their own country lay below them scattered about amidst the young green of the cornfields. They were sleeping to the sound of the bells. Each was only a rose-red spot. The river, near the horizon, showed like a bar of dusky silver. And beyond rose stretches of country, whose shape was vanis.h.i.+ng rapidly in the fogs which still hung above the Rhine. Quite near by, following the slope of the fir plantations, one saw, on the contrary, the smallest details of the forest of Sainte Odile. Several points of dark green jutted out into the valley and mixed with the pale green of the meadows. All was lit up by reflection from a sky full of rays of light. No bright spot attracted the eye. As the bells had united their voices, so the varying shades of the earth had melted into a harmonious unity. The old Alsatian, who kept his place at the side of the priest, stretched his arms, and said:

”I hear the cathedral bells.”

He pointed, away in the distance over the flat country, to the celebrated spire of Strasburg, which looked like an amethyst the size of a thumbnail. Now that they could see the rose-red of villages, they imagined they could recognise the sound of the bells.

A voice said: ”I recognise the sound of the bells of the Abbey of Marmoutier. How well they chime!”

”I,” said another, ”I hear the bells of Obernai!”

”And I the bells of Heiligenstein.”

The peasant, who came from the neighbourhood of Weissenburg, also said:

”We are too far off to hear what the bells of Saint George of Haguenau are ringing. However, listen, listen; there--now.”

The old Alsatian repeated seriously: