Part 17 (1/2)
”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 pa.s.sage, 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 paG.o.da. The front, formerly adorned with the pattern of its painted beams, is now covered with whitewash, on which is this inscription:
”JEAN, CALLED CAROLIS, _WEINSTUBE_.”
This wine-shop, whose exterior has nothing about it to arouse the curiosity of the pa.s.ser-by, is not a nondescript place, nor is it an ordinary public-house. The place is historical. The inhabitants of Zurich came here in 1576, or, at least, the best shots among them, to take part in the grand shooting compet.i.tion to which Strasburg had summoned the Empire and the confederated States. They had brought with them a pot of boiled millet, and scarcely were they out of the boat than they made the Strasburg people understand that the pudding was still warm.
”We could easily come to your aid, neighbours,” they said; ”by the Rhine and the Ill, the distance between our cities is very short.”
The word given in 1576 was kept in 1870, as is testified to by an engraved inscription just near by on the Zurich Fountain. At the moment when besieged Strasburg was in the most distressed condition the people of Zurich intervened, and obtained from General Werder permission to allow the old men and children to leave the city. This house was noted for something else--thanks to the Southerner who in 1860 established a shop there for wines of the South.
Jean, called Carolis, bore a remarkable resemblance to Gambetta. He knew him, and copied his gestures and his clothes, the cut of his beard, and the sound of his voice. His trade was fairly flouris.h.i.+ng before the war, but he became prosperous in the years that followed.
And a certain number of German officers got into the habit of coming there to drink the black wines of Narbonne, Cette, and Montpellier.
One morning towards the end of April, Jean Oberle, who was going to see the Chief of the Administration of Forests, whom he had long promised to visit, was pa.s.sing along the quay, when a woman of about forty, clothed in black, evidently an Alsatian, came out of the cafe, crossed the road, and, apologising, said:
”Pardon me, monsieur, but will you kindly come in? One of your friends is asking for you.”
”Who is it?” asked Jean, astonished.
”The youngest officer there.”
She pointed with her finger to the confused ma.s.s of shadow moving under the lowered linen blind, and which he saw to be the inside of the room with its groups of customers.
Jean, after hesitating for a moment, followed her, and was surprised--for not belonging to Strasburg, he was ignorant of the reputation and also of the customers of this wine-shop--at finding there six officers, three of whom were Hussars, seated at tables covered with red and blue check cloths, talking loudly, smoking, and drinking Carolis wine.
The first glance he gave, on coming from the light into the semi-darkness, showed him that the room was small--there were only four tables--and decorated with allegorical pictures in the German style; he saw a monkey, a cat, a pack of cards, a packet of cigarettes, but above all there was a semi-circular mirror filling a recess in the left wall and round which hung framed photographs of the present or past habitues of the house. Jean looked again to see who could have sent for him, when a very young cavalryman got up.
This simple movement displayed the beauty of his slender form in its sky-blue tunic with gold lace. He rose from the back of the room to the left. Near him, and round the same table, a captain and a commandant remained seated.
The three officers must have returned from a long march; they were covered with dust, their foreheads were wet with perspiration, their features were drawn, and the veins stood out on their temples. The youngest had even brought back from this country ride a branch of hawthorn, which he had slipped under his flat epaulet, on the side near the heart.
The Alsatian recognised Lieutenant Wilhelm von Farnow, a Prussian, three years older than himself, whom he had met before during his first year's law course in Munich, where Farnow was then sub-lieutenant in a regiment of Bavarian Uhlans. Since then he had not seen him. He only knew that in consequence of an altercation between Bavarian and Prussian officers in the regimental casino, some of the officers implicated had been removed, and that his old comrade was among their number.
No; doubt was not possible. It was Farnow, with the same elegant, haughty way of offering his hand, the same fair, beardless face, too thick-set and too flat, with thick lips, an impertinent little nose, slightly turned up, and fine eyes of steel-blue--a hard blue where dwelt the pride of youth, of command, of a bold and disputatious temper. His body gave promise of developing into that of a solid and ma.s.sive cuira.s.sier later on. But at present he was still thin, and so well-proportioned, so agile, so evidently inured to warlike exercises, so vigorous, there was such disciplined precision in all his movements, that de Farnow, although he had not a handsome face, had gained a reputation for good looks, so much so that in Munich one would call him sometimes ”Beauty” Farnow, and sometimes ”Death's Head” Farnow. With reddish moustaches, bushy brows, and a helmet accentuating the shadow over his eyes, he would have been terrifying. But, though scarcely twenty-seven, he gave the impression of a warlike being, violent, conqueror of himself, disciplined even to his acquired and perfectly polished manners.