Chapter IV: Part 4

The town that bears his name is long and rambling. There is a pink church tower surmounted by a slate-roofed top, shaped something like a turban with a point like those on helmets, and there is the fountain bearing the date 1830, and on its column is perched the Gallic cock, and it is the pride of the long street and vies with the church square as a meeting-place.

But this is 1918 and the commandant, who loves St.-Amarin, as I can see by the gentle, almost affectionate way he looks about, shows me first the cinematograph, in a sort of club for soldiers. It has been a Mecca of warmth and comfort since three years for those coming down from frozen mountain-sides. Pictures by George Scott (good pictures) decorate it, and fancy is unbridled where the enemy is concerned.

The Crown Prince is represented in a _loge_ with a voluptuous actress twice his size, and, furthermore, the artist, not content with mere paint and canvas, has given him real wooden legs which dangle from the painted sides of the painted _loge_. The Prince of —— said to an officer showing him about, “And even so you have flattered my cousin.”

Franz Joseph, shrunken by years, is represented huddled up in another _loge_, with another actress, but it didn’t strike me as funny, nor did it recall in any way the tales of his very unspectacular friendship with the faithful Käthe Schratt.

A little way down the street is the pleasant officers’ club, with books and papers, deep chairs and long divans. I dwell a little on the comfort of it all, thinking what it has meant to half or entirely frozen men coming down from those relentless winter heights.

Then we go to the Bureaux de l’Administration across the way, which had been the headquarters of the “Mission Militaire d’Alsace” until it was transferred to Masevaux a year ago.

It, too, is in what was once the Oberforster’s house, only _its_ walls had been hung by the commandant with ancient souvenirs picked up in the valley; old engravings of Alsatian generals, Rapp, Kléber, and Lefèvre, Duke of Dantzig, this last vanquished husband of Madame Sans-Gêne as well as victorious general of France. And there are some old engravings of the portals of the church at Thann, and 1860 street scenes, with bombazined women and high-collared men. An enormous flag of Louis Philippe decorates one corner, and many horns and antlers of the Oberforster’s time hang in the entrance-hall. There is a busy, pleasant coming and going of men who like their work.

More officers are presented, and there is much joking about our Masevaux _popote_ and odious comparisons. We tell them proudly of the new coffee-pot, but the haughty chef of the St.-Amarin _popote_ answers that it was needed, and probably we had at last heard what people really thought about the coffee at the Masevaux mess. I am to lunch here on Thursday and see—or rather, _taste_!

And all love St.-Amarin and its wide valley, even those who now live at Masevaux.

Home by the Route Joffre with Sérin and Laferrière. A rising up over indigo mountains, blackening at their base, blotted against the strange white sky, white even now at sunset, then a drop into the dark valley of Masevaux, talking of politics, theirs and mine, things of wisdom and valiance done or undone. And the end in sight. Though Laferrière said: “I am not sure that they will feel so conquered. They will proudly record the dates of their great victories, and their historians will tell of their sweeping invasions; one must confess they have had great generals. They will doubtless reproach their statesmen with not having made better alliances, and decry their _gaffes_. But as for fighting, they will feel that men may fight one to two, one to three or to four or even five, but that no one can fight the world. _Tenez_, for Napoleon, after Waterloo, there was nothing more personally, but his victories remain among the great military glories of history.” On the crest as we started to drop into the valley, in that pale, pale sky above a blue, blue hill, something almost like words was written in delicate gold, in long looping characters, by the unseen, setting sun. I know not what they spelled, but I think it was Peace, lovely Peace....

Thinking my day fairly over, I had just taken off my things and lain me down when word was brought up that Captain Bernard was waiting for me. Put on my hat in total blackness, the electric light again out all over Masevaux, my candle snuffed, and in a darkness which conceals the whereabouts of the match-box, as well as minor accessories like gloves and veil, I depart to take tea at another large manufacturer’s, where I find more handsome girls of the coming generation. Delicious little bobbin-shaped doughnuts, called _shankelé_, are served with tea, and there was brought out a great tricolor flag whose staff was surmounted with the eagle of Napoleon III. It was of matchless, uncrushable silk, dipped in unfading dyes. After Sedan, like many and many another, it had been put in a long box and nailed against the beams in the attic, remaining so hidden until the visit of President Poincaré in the winter of 1915.

Then home through black and muddy streets, full of hurrying, stumbling forms. Later the cheerful _popote_.

And then before I went to sleep I read again the story of Saint-Odile according to Edouard Schuré, and it runs somewhat like this:[13]

At the end of the seventh century a powerful Frank of the Rhine Valley, Atalric, was named Duke of Alsace by Childeric II, one of the last of the Merovingian kings.

He was like many of his kind, fierce and implacable, worshiping neither pagan divinities nor the one God.

He dwelt in a great castle near the town of Obernay in the Vosges, and here one day he received the visit of an Irish monk and gave him shelter, according to the custom of the time.

Thinking to improve the opportunity, the duke said to him:

“Those who wear the priestly garb boast of miraculous powers. If that be true, demand of thy God that my wife Bereswinde, now with child, bear me a son and heir.”

At that the monk threw himself on his knees, remaining long in prayer in spite of Atalric’s impatience.

When at last the holy man arose, he said:

“No one can change the will of Heaven. Thy wife will bring forth a daughter, and thy life will be one long struggle with her. But in the end the dove will vanquish the lion.”

Atalric’s first thought was to have the unpleasant prophet well flogged, but he finally contented himself by chasing him from the castle to the accompaniment of his choicest maledictions.

When, a few days later, the gentle Bereswinde in fear and trembling (her lord having made no secret of what he expected) gave birth to a blind daughter, such a rage possessed Atalric that the dwellers in the castle thought their last hour had come. Bereswinde’s feelings are not recorded. The duke declared loudly that he did not intend to endure such dishonor, and that if the child were not promptly hidden he would with his own hands make away with it.

Fortunately Bereswinde had a sister who was abbess of the Convent of Baume-les-Dames in Burgundy. To her the child was sent, and the legend has it that Odile recovered her sight at the touch of the baptismal waters, thus symbolizing the opening of her eyes to spiritual light in the darkness of a barbarian age.

She was tenderly reared by the abbess, who, however, told her nothing of her princely birth, letting her think she was the child of parents killed in war, though, as she grew in years and beauty, she was treated as a princess; her charm and gentleness were so great that it was recorded that birds and even deer would eat from her hands as she wandered in the forest clearings. Often at night in her cell she had strange and beautiful visions. The most frequent was that of an angel of shining though severe visage, who would appear presenting her now with roses, now with lilies, the perfume enfolding her as if in some heavenly felicity. But once as day was about to break she had quite a different vision. It was that of a proud and beautiful adolescent who wore, as did the Frankish lords of the times, a gray tunic with a leathern girdle, while his golden hair fell freely about his shoulders. His long sword was suspended from a strap decorated with shining plaques of gold. The purple border of his tunic showed him indeed to be a prince, and in his mien there was both pride and gentleness.

Odile’s heart leaped up and she was about to address him when suddenly he vanished, and the angel of the austere visage took his place, holding out a cross of ebony on which hung an ivory Christ. The next night, and many after, the young lord returned. At last he came carrying in his hands a crown of gold. Odile was about to grasp it, when the angel, graver and sterner than before, stepped between them and presented to Odile a jeweled chalice. Thinking she was to partake of the Saving Host, Odile pressed it to her lips. What was her horror when she found it filled with blood still hot and throbbing. So great was her trouble that on awakening she recounted her dream to the abbess, who then revealed to her the secret of her birth. How her gentle mother, worn by the harsh tempers of the duke, was long since dead, and her father had sworn never to look upon her face. The image in the dream was that of her young brother, Adalbert, born after her, and heir to the duchy. “But,” added the abbess, “beware of seeking out thy fierce father; thy mother is no longer there to defend thee. Stay rather here, for thou art destined at my death to become abbess of this convent.”

But Odile was so deeply moved by this glimpse of the glory of her race and the promise of fraternal love that she could not resist the desire to contemplate with her earthly eyes the brother whose image had so enchanted her, to enfold him, if even for a single time, in her arms. By a faithful servitor she despatched a letter to him, saying in it: “I am Odile, thine unknown sister. If thou lovest me as I thee, obtain from my father that I enter into my daughterly estate. I salute thee tenderly. At thought of thee my heart blossoms like a lily in the desert.”

This letter acted as a charm upon Adalbert, awaking in his youthful heart all generous and romantic sentiments. He cried, “Who is this sister whose words are sweeter than those of a betrothed?”

A tender desire seized him to make her his companion and coheir and to give her back her rank and family estate. He answered, “Trust but in me. I will arrange all things for the best.”

Shortly after, while his father was absent at the chase, he sent to Baume-les-Dames a splendid chariot drawn by six richly caparisoned horses. With it went a numerous retinue, that Odile might return to her father’s house in a way befitting her estate. And now begins the tragedy.

Atalric is in the banquet-hall of his castle of Obernay, where his birthday is being celebrated with great pomp and circumstance. It is the day, too, that he has chosen to present his son and heir to his vassals. About the tables, groaning under the weight of gold and silver dishes, his many courtiers are sitting, drinking from great horns of aurochs or clanking their burnished hanaps. Atalric, happening to go to the window, espies in the plain a chariot approaching, drawn by six horses; banners are flying and palms waving. Above it float the ducal colors.

He cries out in surprise, “Who is it that approaches?”

Adalbert answers with all the valiance of his young and trusting heart, “It is thy daughter Odile come to beg thy mercy.”

“Who is the dolt that counseled her return?”

“It is I who called her, and on this day of thy feast I beg thy grace for her.”

“How has she, who desires my death, been able to bewitch you?” cries Atalric, pale and stiff with anger.

Adalbert protests, invoking his father’s pity, the honor of the family, and his own brotherly love, but Atalric, beside himself, commands the youth to cast his sister from the threshold. Adalbert refuses.

“If it must be done, do it thyself,” he answers, proudly. Upon this the duke menaces his son with disinheritance if he does not immediately obey. But Adalbert, drawing his sword, lays it at his father’s feet, telling him that rather than fail in fraternal love he will give up his heritage. This fills his father with so blind a fury that he gives his son a great blow upon the temple with the hilt of his sword.

The stroke is mortal, and Adalbert falls to the ground. The vassals crowd in fear at one end of the great hall, while Atalric stands alone, petrified by the horror of his crime.

At this moment in the fullness of her young beauty, dressed as a bride for her nuptials, Odile enters the hall. A single look suffices. She gives a great cry and throws herself on her knees by her dying brother. She clasps his bleeding head, she kisses his glazing eyes, and in that single kiss, that one despairing embrace, the pain of the whole world transpierces her gentle breast. It is the chalice of blood the angel once put to her lips. The dreadful crime of her father, the loss of her adored brother, to whom she had been mystically united by a more than fraternal bond, turn all her desires to the other world; the first young innocent love of family is changed into solicitude for all who are suffering in that barbarian world. Her novitiate begins.

Atalric, devoured by remorse, though still impenitent, did not dare cast his daughter out, but he spoke no word to her, harboring always in his heart the prediction of the Irish monk, “The dove will overcome the lion.”

In order to avoid him, Odile spent her days mostly in the great forests that surrounded the castle, often climbing to the heights of Altitona. Under the shadow of those great trees, high as the nave of some cathedral, she no longer heard the striking of the hours of human time. All things appeared to her under the guise of eternity. Her beautiful brother, her unique love, was dead, almost as a martyr. Why should she not in turn gather for herself a palm like to that he carried as he roamed the heavenly fields?

One day, as she was deeply meditating these things, she found herself midway up the great hill, when, enveloped in a blinding light, the angel of her dreams in the convent of Burgundy suddenly appeared. His wings, touched with glory, were widely unfolded, and his face shone like the sun. With an imperious yet protecting gesture he pointed to the top of the mountain, where were seen the crumbling remains of a Roman camp, saying to her soul, “There, Odile, is thy home; there shalt thou dwell and gather to thee others whose thoughts are holy and whose wills are bent to service.”

Odile remained long in ecstasy. When she had recovered her fleshly sight the angel was gone, but she had understood. On the heights of Altitona she was to build a sanctuary which should be a refuge of peace, a fortress of prayer, a citadel of God. It was vocation.

Strangely increased in beauty, she returned at night-fall to the castle, and this added beauty was observed by all.

Shortly after Atalric, through pride and also to get rid of her, conceived the design of marrying her to a great Austrasian lord from Metz, then his guest, who had been struck by love for her. He called her to him, and told her his intention. She answered gently:

“Father, thou canst not give me to any man. Thou knowest I am vowed to Christ alone.”

The duke, enraged at her resistance, but grown somewhat wary by experience, sought out a docile monk and commanded him to impress upon Odile the wisdom of obedience, by which she might placate him and even win his heart. But all was in vain. Then he conceived the black idea of delivering his daughter by force into the arms of the Austrasian lord, thinking, once she had been embraced by the lover, she would consent to marriage. He sent two armed men to seize her in a grotto where she was accustomed to pray. Hardened by the fierce design that filled his heart, he cried out when she was brought before him, “The Lord of Austrasia awaits thee for betrothal; willingly or unwillingly thou shalt be his.”

Odile, knowing the supreme moment had come, answered: “Thou hast already killed thy son. Wouldst thou also cause the death of thy daughter? If thou bindest me to the arms of this man I will not survive my shame, but I will kill myself. Thus thou wilt be the cause not only of the death of my body, but of my soul as well, and thou wilt thyself be destined to eternal damnation.”

“Little care I for the other world. In this I am and will remain the master.”

“That in truth thou art,” she answered, gently, “but listen to me and recognize the goodness of my God. Allow me instead to build a sanctuary upon the heights of Altitona; thou wilt thus be delivered from me for all time. There I, and those gathered with me, will pray for thee. I feel a strange power within me.”

Atalric made a violent gesture, but she continued without flinching, “Menace me, trample me under-foot, but tremble before this image,” and she took from her bosom the ivory Christ hanging from the ebon cross.

In that moment, as father and daughter faced each other, the powers of heaven and hell, of spiritual promise and unregenerate will, were arrayed in combat. But Atalric did not at first give way. Suddenly, however, the countenance of Odile became more terrible than that of a warrior, and her whole mien was wrapped in an angelic majesty. In her dilated eyes Atalric thought for an instant that he saw the bleeding image of his murdered son. An intolerable pain filled his heart, and he cried out under the irresistible pressure of the heavenly will: “Thou hast conquered. Do as thou wilt, but never let me look upon thy face.”

“Thou wilt see me in the other life,” answered his child.

The legend adds that Atalric, regretting his moment of weakness, did not immediately renounce his evil designs. Odile was obliged to flee before his increasing wrath and was pursued by him and the Austrasian lord, accompanied by many armed men, even beyond the Rhine.

But at the moment when they were about to seize her, at the foot of a mountain where there seemed no issue, the rock parted suddenly and received her. A few minutes later it again opened and Odile appeared enveloped in a supernatural light, declaring to her awestruck pursuers that she belonged forever to Christ alone. Then Atalric and the Austrasian lord turned silently and left the spot. The dove had conquered the lion.

The legend has transformed her father’s momentary conversion to her will into the physical image of the suddenly sundered rock. But in the end it is all the same, for Odile, _Vierge Candide et Forte_, represents forever the victory of the transfigured soul over brute force, the incalculable power of faith sealed by sacrifice, the saving breath of the invisible world breathed into the visible.

During centuries the great Benedictine Convent of Mount Saint-Odile (Odilienberg) performed its works of faith and mansuetude in that barbarian and ruthless world; the voices of Taran, the God of War, and of Rosmertha, the Goddess of Life and Love, according to the pagan ways, were replaced by another, promising eternal felicities to those born again in Christ.

From a wall of _grès rose_, this same _grès rose_ that I have found as building-stone for temple and home and fountain all over Alsace, Odile, needing one day to give instant refreshment to an old man spent with fatigue, caused the spring of crystal water to gush forth from which pilgrims still drink. And in the Chapel, called that of Tears, is a deeply indented stone, worn, it is said, by the knees of the saint as she knelt there praying for the release of the soul of her father (long dead and unpenitent) from the pains of purgatory. The legend has it that only toward the end of her life was she able to accomplish this, when at last the chalice of blood the angel once gave her was transmuted into an elixir of eternal life.

The redemption of the soul of Atalric signifies, too, the conversion of the Merovingian world to Christianity, and to a new will to give up life that it might be found again—and many other things that it is difficult to tell of in words, but the soul can perceive them.

And on the Odilienberg has beat for centuries the very heart, as it were, of Alsace; above its throb being laid, passionately, now a hand from the West, now one from the East....

To this day, they who at evening ascend its heights and wander under the lindens of the terrace built above the old pagan wall, looking out upon the splendid panorama of the Vosges, breathe the mystical fragrance of the lily and the rose that perfumed the last sigh of Saint-Odile.

These things I am not able to know of myself, for the Odilienberg is still in German hands.

IX

THE “FIELD OF LIES” AND LAIMBACH

_Faro come colui che piange._—DANTE

_November 6th._—And to-morrow I am to pass into the sweet, broad valley of the Thur and there dwell. I ask neither how nor why, knowing it will be vastly pleasant, though a somewhat startled feeling overtakes me at the thought of leaving Masevaux, _tout ce qui finit est si court_. For a fleeting, nostalgic moment I think, too, “What am I about, binding sheaves in this rich corner of the earth that is not mine?”

As we gather for lunch, some one reads the sweeping clauses of the conditions of the armistice with Austria-Hungary. Nothing is left save hunger and disorder. I wonder if those to whom one of the “first aims of the war is the dismemberment of the Dual Monarchy” see, in their passion, what it will mean to surround the centripetal force of Germany with floating, unsteady bits, that inevitably will be drawn to it. Some one hazarded the remark, evidently not so trite as we once thought it, that “if Austria didn’t exist, she would have to be invented.” Passion seems more than ever to be its own blind end, and, looking at those men, I thought, have we not fought and died the good death for other and further ends?

Then Laferrière began reading the American _communiqué_. We are but five miles from the Sedan-Metz line, one of the principal lines of communication of the Germans!

As in a dream I listen to the deeds of _my_ soldiers, recited in the most beautiful of French, as many deeds of many men have been recited to many women through the ages.

“_Ce matin la Ière Armée a repris son attaque. En dépit d’une
résistance désespérée nos troupes [américaines] ont forcé le
passage de la Meuse à Brieulles et à Cléry-le-Petit._” ...

“_Beaumont, nœud de routes important, est tombé devant nos
troupes victorieuses qui se sont avancées jusqu’au Bois de
l’Hospice à deux milles au nord de Beaumont. Au cours de leur
avance elles se sont emparées de Létanne. A Beaumont, nous
avons délivré 500 citoyens français qui ont salué nos soldats
comme leurs libérateurs...._

“_L’avance des deux derniers jours a amené en certains points
notre ligne à cinq milles de la voie ferrée Sedan-Metz, une des
principales lignes de communication des armées allemandes._”[14]

As we sit down the commandant tells me they had been picking all sorts of strange things out of the air that morning, the ether stamped with unaccustomed names. He had just got a message, not meant for French ears, bearing a new signature, Ebert; the day before he had got one bearing that of Scheidemann. It is like a further dream of a dream, these things that are borne “upon the sightless couriers of the air.”

At two o’clock I started out with Bernard and Laferrière, the latter on the errand of rounding up an actor in one of those obscure yet deadly village dramas.

“Generally I have little to do; they know they are well off,” he said, and we agreed that it was indeed a pity to be pursued by original sin even unto these pleasant valleys.

We descend at Rammersmatt, a quite unsinful-looking place, and while he is gone Bernard and I visit the old church, beautifully held in the cleft of the hill, lying against another hill, looking down on the plain of Cernay, toward the German lines. It is this same plain of Cernay, which I mentioned before, that was known in the old days as the “_Champ de Mensonges_.” There Ariovistus was defeated by Caæsar. There, too, Louis le Débonnaire was attacked by his three sons and betrayed by his army, and ever since it has been justly known as the “Field of Lies.” Centuries later the Swedes vanquished the imperial armies there under a Duke of Lorraine. To-day it is that thing known as “No Man’s Land,” brown with barbed-wire entanglements and rough with shell-holes—and other things besides.

Back of it are the zigzagging German lines. It is, too, the place of the century-old legend of the Niedecker’s young Thierry who, wandering there one night, saw strange sights. He had not drained a single glass of the _Rang de Thann_, nor of the red wine of Turckheim, called “_Sang des Turcs_,” but was dreaming, as an adolescent does, of everything and nothing, when suddenly the very stones of the valley began to move, and great fissures showed in the earth. From them issued thousands upon thousands of warriors of bygone times, striking against their shields and crying out in strange, hoarse voices, “_Hodeīdah! Hodeīdah!_”

Finally a man taller than all the others, Louis le Débonnaire, son of Charlemagne it was, his long, silvery hair surmounted by a gold and jeweled crown, jumped on a white horse and called by name, one after the other, the chiefs of his cohorts, who answered, “Here.”

Then the king, groaning with great groans, spoke beseechingly the names of the sons he had begotten, Lothaire, Louis, and Pépin.

But Lothaire, Louis, and Pépin mocked him and to further wound him caused to be brought on the battlefield his nephew, Bernard, he who had taken arms against him and whose eyes the king had caused to be put out (and for this the king knew little sleep).

Then as the battle begins the sightless Bernard jumps up behind the king’s saddle, paralyzing his every movement. But at the very height of the combat, above its clash and shoutings, the third hour of morning sounds from a church tower, and suddenly the earth receives again the ancient host and all is as before. Only Thierry from the Niedeckers lay as if dead.

And the Field of Lies, _le Champ de Mensonges_, is said to be the spot where the children of earth will be assembled at the Day of Judgment, for what crime can equal that of the sons of Louis, who conquered, imprisoned, and caused to die of grief a father whose only fault was that he loved them too well? It is even said that it is the troops of Louis who will sound the brazen trumps to awaken the dead for their last accounting.

Now I see it as “No Man’s Land,” rusty and brown with patches of barbed wire, rough with great shell-holes, but they say that even in intervals of peace it is never so luxuriantly fertile as are the fields that lie about it....

A white, very white afternoon heaven stretches above us. Very violent cannonading.

“_C’est nous—c’est le Boche_,” Bernard repeats from time to time. Then his sharp eye distinguishes a group of German airplanes, and, looking where he points, I see five spots black, black in the white sky.

They, too, are immediately fired on. I hear over my head the great swish made by the shells from the guns placed on a hill behind us—or so sounding. My ear is not quick to distinguish directions in these echoing hills.

Little balls of snow-white shrapnel, like beautifully wound balls of fleecy wool, gently unloosen themselves about the black spots of the five airplanes, which, after a while, disappear to the east.

Though not so overcome as the Niedecker’s Thierry, I feel that my eyes, too, have looked on a strange spectacle.

Then Laferrière rejoins us. By the pleased look on his face we guess that he hasn’t made the wages of sin too high, and we continue on our way under the late, and still very white, afternoon sky. Suddenly the heavily plated, thickly enameled rust and gold and black of the hillsides seem to disappear and the earth is green again, young and tenderly green, like spring, but how and why? It lasted but a few minutes, for on the slopes toward Thann there was again the autumnal gleam of gold and rust, and spots of fathomless black.

Entering Laimbach, we stopped to get the mayor, who was to conduct us to the old Jesuit church, half-way between his village and the village of Otzwiller, or rather its site, for Otzwiller disappeared completely during the Thirty Years’ War, wherein each lovely Alsatian valley had been sacked and burned and destroyed, and friends of yesterday were enemies of to-day, and _vice versa_.

The mayor was a voluble, amiable mayor, who had conserved, during those many German years, a vast amount of creaking, noisy, unpleasant French.

His village was ancient, high-roofed, many-fountained, and had been much shelled. The streets were full of children playing, blue soldiers were walking about, girls were leaning out of the windows to give and get a greeting, or being pinched as they giggled about the streets, clicking their sabots in the mud. As we passed out the white sky darkened suddenly and a hard red began to burn in the west. We found ourselves nearing a half-demolished fifteenth-century church, placed strangely between the battered, living village and the ghostly village of the Thirty Years’ War. It was of _grès rose_ and had been built on the foundations of an even earlier one, and near it was a shell-shot, ancient, high, red-roofed presbytery. For generations the church had been a shrine of St.-Blaise, and on every 3d of February the mayor told us (but sadly, as one speaking of a pleasant past) there had been a great pilgrimage made by those suffering from throat maladies.

Now over all was hanging a penetrating atmosphere of bootless desolation, and I was suddenly seized with an anxious feeling that I should be about the secret lonely business of my soul. Life seemed unbearably sad and short, and “where was the place of eternal happiness, the place where the Barbarian need be feared no more?” ...[15]

In front of the church had been placed, somewhat indiscreetly, the officers thought, a big battery. And the mayor said, too, apologetically, “_Evitément z’édait mal joizi par écard à l’éclise_,” for the battery had soon been sighted. After the church had received many shells right in her pink and lovely bosom, it had been moved some forty meters away, but even so it had again been _repérée_, and the church had suffered the usual fate of churches near batteries. Some fine old columns were left in the apse, of the delicious _grès rose_. For a moment Laferrière and I stood scaling off bits of the disfiguring gray plaster and wondering why it had ever been put on, it and all the other gray stucco that a certain austere century had plastered over gorgeous building-stone everywhere in Europe.

The church, like the village of the Thirty Years’ War, will soon be but a name, for its walls are cracked and sagging, and with another winter’s frost they will crumble and fall. Through the roofless nave we walked over a mass of torn-up old mosaic flooring, and heaps of gaudy modern stained glass fallen from the lovely, ancient, pointed windows.

It was getting dark as we passed out into the disorderly cemetery, between the church and the battery (and even for a cemetery very uninviting, torn up as it was by recent shells). Ends of coffins were sticking out, shabby, twisted, bead wreaths and muddy, discolored tricolor badges lay about, while in the middle of a once tidy family plot, by name Hilz, was a huge new shell-hole of only the day before.

The mayor gave a shudder as he looked at his own familiar graveyard, where his parents and his friends had been laid—though not to rest. He was out for the first time after grippe and he said, with a determined look and in his most creaking French, “If I have to die, all right, but I’ve forbidden my daughter to bury me here.” Many, many had also fallen in the fields, and everywhere thin earth lay over damp, shallow graves marked by shabby, crooked crosses. Meadow mists were beginning to rise and the copper-colored edge had hardened in the sky. I felt again an inexpressible discouragement. I tried to think of Peace, so near, so hotly desired, so redly pursued, but I could only perceive the damp meadow, the demolished church, the gun-emplacements, the disorderly, shelled cemetery, and the humid odor of death and mold and rotting leaves. As yet nothing seemed to have risen incorruptible.

We turned and went again along the dark, damp valley road till we reached the village with its consoling hum of life. Through the dusky street washed the lovely soft blue of soldiers; a group stood with some girls around the beautiful fountain, deeply pink in the half-light, built in the fifteenth century by the Jesuits, though the mayor insisted on placing the Sons of Loyola in the fourteenth. In fact, the Jesuits and the fourteenth century were one in his mind. Then, as far as he was concerned, came the war of 1914. He wanted us to come into his house to partake of some brand of white liqueur—as I have said the people of these valleys distil all and every bright-colored fruit of their earth. It would seem that the whole flora of Alsace can be used to this end, and no matter which of God’s colors go into their alembics, passing through, it comes out pure white, to befuddle the heads and harden the stomachs of the populace—and little boys are born with the burden of deafness. Though twilight enveloped us, I knew the look that must be on the mayor’s face, and something a bit phosphorescent came into his eyes as he spoke of a _petite mirabelle_. Fortunately, it was too late to accept.

A few minutes later we found ourselves on the screened road to Masevaux, moving slowly, without lights, the road overlooking the Field of Lies, where the Germans watched.

Above the hills in front of us was a very thin, very long, very red, crescent moon. No one spoke.

Doubtless the officers, like myself, were wondering upon what, when it was full and white, its light would shine. Now it was turned to blood.

The roads were crowded with rattling artillery wagons, transporting guns and supplies under cover of the deep, blue night. Once or twice on some hillside, turned away from the German valley, was the leaping of a flame, from the fire of a group of _artilleurs_, who were to wait the morning on wooded slopes.

Thoughts of the ghostly village of Otzwiller, now but a name, pursued me, and of the Swedish invasion. And the miseries of the Thirty Years’ War seemed to confound themselves with these of the war I know so well, while the night deepened, under the long, thin, red moon, hanging behind black-palled hills, in a heaven that still had an edge of copper.

A church bell sounded and something flying swiftly touched me at that hour of the evening sacrifice, and I knew then that those who tread the olives are rarely anointed with the oil, and I cried out within myself suddenly and in despair, a long-unremembered line of the great Italian:

“_Faro come colui che piange._”

X

THE VALLEY OF THE THUR

_November 7th, St.-Amarin._—This morning farewell, perhaps a long farewell, to Masevaux, and I now dwell in the broad, sweet valley of the Thur. I had felt many pains of parting while putting my things into the Japanese straw basket and the little leather valise. This was quite a simple act, for I flatter myself that those receptacles contain only essentials, though I had long since begun to wish that I had brought another dress for evening, feeling a bit dull always buttoned up in my uniform, and only a white shirt changed from a blue one to mark the difference between morning and evening. One of those 1918 dresses, that can be carried in the pocket without making it bulge, would not have added perceptibly to the weight of my accoutrement, and would have brightened up the _popotes_. The light from the Oberforster’s chandelier at Masevaux was as pitiless as that which beats about thrones—and presidential chairs (which much resemble them)—and ladies _en mission_ should come prepared.

Before leaving I went to say good-by to Mère Labonne, who showed me the good things in preparation for luncheon and begged me to stay—scrambled eggs with truffles, two _poulets_ ready for roasting, a tart _au mocha_ that she was frosting on a marble table. But the look of one who goes was in my eyes, and she ceased to insist.

Return to the Place du Chapitre; many officers and motors under the yellowing trees in front of the _Kommandantur_, a general arriving, some sort of delegation departing. I say a thousand thanks to the amiable, cultivated, agreeable Demoiselles Braun, three of whom wear decorations for their war-work in hospitals, for contagious diseases, and one, Stéphanie, “_qui n’a pas dit son dernier mot_,” is charming after the way of the perceptive, witty women of the seventeenth or eighteenth century. Then I find myself getting into the motor of the commandant, who, in the meantime, has greeted and sped the general on his way. His face has something shining about it as he gives the great news, written on the no longer insubstantial air, of the German demand for an armistice. Then he reads the _communiqué_ from the Belfort newspaper as we drive out of Masevaux, telling us more about the Germans in full retreat, and the Americans close behind them at _Sedan_! What a rustling of the pages of history! The mind leaps to new things, life normal again, and all forces bent to reconstruction.

As we pass over the screened road to Thann, where we are to lunch with the military mayor, Captain Saint-Girons, the net of broom and pine camouflage, screening the valley where the Germans are, suddenly seemed some monument of ancient history; and, unlike the noisy hours of yesterday, there was no sound of cannon.

Arrived at Thann, it is we who give the great, the unbelievable, the unrealizable news of the demand for an armistice to Captain Saint-Girons, who, with several uniformed schoolmasters, is waiting in front of the Mairie to receive us. And our “feet are beautiful as the feet of them that bring the Gospel of Peace and glad tidings of good things.”

I think for a moment how strange for _me_ to carry it to them, to these men, who have fought for it, who have waited for it, watched for it, bled for it—but everything is strange in this strangest of all strange worlds.

Going into the house, we find other schoolmasters, with some bright-eyed little boys ranging in years from seven to twelve.

Then to lunch. I sit on the commandant’s right, Captain Gasquet, _adjoint_ of the mayor, on my other side, the mayor himself opposite, the schoolmasters placed prudently and watchfully near that selected flock, who enliven the ends of the table. Now these little Alsatian hopefuls are very bright of eye, rosy of cheek, and on their good behavior, which, in spite of lurking potentialities, persisted during the lunch, even when a glow, doubtless not unaccustomed, tinged their cheeks, as they drank the wine of their own hillsides.

At dessert I asked Commandant Poulet to drink to Sedan, the _new_ Sedan. I thought within myself, “Is it not even now as a temple being cleansed and glorified in the chalice of the blood of _my_ people, the blood of the khaki-clad youths from over the seas, whom Fate, since all time, had decreed to unseal it?” Tears came to my eyes, there was a deep beat in my breast.

And it had been forty-eight years and two months and seven days since it was torn from a vanquished France.

I scarcely remember what was said of the day’s events; feeling, rather than thought, was flooding about the table, and it was in gratitude, in wonderment, and rather silently, for a group of Frenchmen, that the luncheon proceeded. Each was thinking perhaps of his part of loss and grief making up the victory.

Names of Americans who had visited Thann were spoken: Dr. Herbert Adams Gibbons, long the friend of Alsace, and in some wise, as I told them, the god of the machine directing my steps to them; Mr. John Weare; and others whom I don’t recall. There had been, too, a fair and fleeting vision of Mrs. Bliss one snowy winter day.

Many beautiful words were said of my country, and in that hour I think it was, to them of the reconquered triangle, “_dulce et decora_” to have even the least of the daughters of the Stars and Stripes at their board, that hers should have been among the feet bringing “the glad tidings of good things.”

When coffee and _quetsch_ and cigarettes were passed around, the schoolmasters made ready to pour some of the heady white liqueur into the glasses of even the smallest of the little boys, but the commandant said, “No,” and cigarettes only are offered to the babes. I would put my hand in the fire (knowing I could draw it out unsinged) that it was not the first time they had puffed “caporals.” The seven-year-old one held his with an astounding ease, not entirely hereditary. When he had finished he was stood on a chair, from which he recited “_Le Loup et l’Agneau_,” the lines concerning the now extremely well-demonstrated “_La raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure_,” being given almost at a breath, one word tightly tied to another in quite an ingenious way.

An older one, whose naturally flashing eye was slightly restrained only by the solemnity of the occasion, gave us the equally classic, “_Maidre corpeau sur un arbre bergé_.” He hadn’t been caught so young, and the old Adam in the shape of his German accent was heavy upon him. Then, standing in a row, they sang “_Le Chant du Départ_,” that greatest of all the wars’ marching songs, and the childish voices cut my heart like a knife, and tears were loosened, and through their blur I seemed to see the march of the generations of Alsace adown the ages, fulfilling the shifting, cruel destinies of border peoples. Ghosts of the Thirty Years’ War, of the Napoleonic wars, of 1870, and of 1914, and of the other dateless struggles that have ravaged their rich valleys, come before me. I weep and weep, and my handkerchief is a microscopic, damp, gray ball. I have an idea that pride of sex alone restrained the blue-clad men from tears. Peace, lovely Peace, desired like the morning, was arising, but her light was to shine on rivers of blood, running through such black ruins that her glory and her sweetness, and even her hope, hurt with a great hurt, and I thought again on those who, empty-armed, must yet rejoice....

Afterward I strolled along the banks of the pebbly Thur with the commandant and Captain Saint-Girons. There is a river-path leading under balconied, red-roofed houses, or by gray walls, and there is an old round tower having a caplike roof with a point on the top, and against it are silhouetted a poplar and a sycamore. Nearly everywhere the lovely gray lace spire of the cathedral shows above roof or tree or chimney; and it is said that though Strasbourg’s cathedral is higher and Friburg’s is wider, Thann’s is the loveliest.[16]

When the Mission had its headquarters at Thann, the commandant and Captain Saint-Girons were wont to walk along this path in the afternoon, holding a sort of tribunal, receiving petitions, granting favors, righting differences that may occur even among the delivered, quite after the fashion of Saint-Louis receiving the petitions of his people under the great tree.

The river flows through the heart of the lovely old town, badly bombarded in spots. To our left as we walked rose the deep-colored hills in the full afternoon burnishing of their deep rusty reds and pale gilts. As we pass up the steep winding road we meet the Duc de Trévise, under-lieutenant, with a sketch in his hand of a shell-shot historic corner of Thann, the commandant wishing to save at least a memorial wherever he can. Furthermore, Thann was black-spotted with our negro troops. Sometimes I stopped and spoke, sometimes I waved as I passed, just to see the full, white-toothed smile against the exotic background.

The orphanage toward which we are bound is in the old Château de Marsilly, beautifully situated in the cleft of its own hill and restored not too cruelly. Close above it rises the Engelberg, the tower of whose castle was blown up when Turenne practised the arts of war in the valley. Part of it lies like a great ring, and is called the “Eye of the Witch.” To our right as we mount is a V-shaped glimpse of the valley where the Germans lie intrenched, formed by close, rich hillsides, on which lie in lovely, ruglike designs the vineyards of _l’heureuse Alsace féconde en vignobles_.

A charming, vivacious nun whose age was unguessable by twenty years, dark-eyed and satin-skinned, whose manners could not have been surpassed for ease by any woman of the great world, greets us. I think for the thousandth time how perfect the polish the conventual life gives. I have seen in peasant cottages the rooms wherein they were born, these women of restrained gesture, of dignified mien, of easy charm in conversation, of finished courtesy, and realize again that something invisible, imponderable, yet all-powerful, shapes the coarse block, polishes the rough surface, till there is no resemblance to that out of which it was hewn.

As we turn to go down we stand for a moment looking again through the V-shaped cleft at the rich, blue plain held by the enemy.

“How often,” said Captain Saint-Girons, after a silence, “it has seemed to me like the Promised Land, and how often during these four interminable years have I longed to look at these hills _from_ the plain.”

“Now all is fulfilling itself,” I answered.

The commandant said nothing, but his gaze, too, was fixed on the wide horizon.

Then we visited the military cemetery, a pleasant place, as cemeteries go, with many trees, and fallen, rustling leaves, and a few late-blooming flowers. Many sons of France were lying there since “the beginning”; others had been but lately laid away. The two officers stood for a moment with uncovered heads by the graves of four comrades of the Mission, killed by a bomb in front of the Mairie, as they were going in for lunch. Again I bowed my head and tears were loosened. Never as in this war has “death been made so proud with pure and princely beauty.” How can we so soon be engaged in “business as usual,” compete with the splendor of these dead?

Then we pass down the valley of the Thur, so greatly loved by those who dwell therein, inclosed by purple and dark-amber hills, but inclosed easily, widely, leaving room for fancy, for delight, with no sense of being shut in by heaps of earth that press too tight.

As we enter St.-Amarin, the long, central street is like a pale-blue ribbon, for through it a battalion of some Marseilles regiment is passing. As my eye received it I knew the lovely picture for some bleaching daguerreotype, its color and lineaments to fade in the bright light of peace. We stop a moment at the Administration building and see again M. de Maroussem, to whom, on meeting him first at Madame Galland’s, I had said, “You are an Englishman?” And to those who have frequented international worlds I don’t need to say how he looks. To others I would say that he is tall, blond, athletic, wearing easily a well-cut, not too new uniform, and having a perceptive blue eye (which, however, is really a very French eye when one takes a second look). One would have known that he hunted in England and had polo-ponies in France. In civil life he is a banker.

Now among other things he is chef of the St.-Amarin _popote_ and tells me dinner is at 7.45 “tapant.” The hour is near wherein I am to be shown how far superior the St.-Amarin _popote_ is to that of Masevaux.

Then the commandant accompanies me to the house of M. Helmer, the well-known Alsatian lawyer who is counsel for the Mission. Also it was he who defended Hansi when he was brought before the German courts and condemned for _lèse-majesté_.[17]

From the great bowed window of Madame Helmer’s drawing-room I could look down the suddenly mystical-seeming valley, discerned by the spirit rather than the eye at 4.30 of a November afternoon. It was but a stretch of white filmy substance between violet hills, under a gray-green heaven, with something warm and precious at its western edge. Such a passing of the day as the saints of old would have loved.

Hung along the wall opposite the great window are engravings of the Mantegna frieze from Hampton Court, and there were many books.

After tea the commandant took his leave and Madame Helmer showed me to my comfortable room where I had thirty saving minutes, horizontal and in the dark, fully conscious, but completely resting, thought consecutive but not active, flowing in a smooth way between banks of quiet nerves in quiet flesh.

“Seven forty-five tapant” finds me again at the Administration building, whither M. Helmer accompanied me, and it is very pleasant as I enter. Commandant Poulet is sitting at a huge desk signing papers, more blue-clad officers and two _infirmières_ are presented, after which we pass into the dining-room, whose doors are flung open in classic style by a well-trained orderly. In Masevaux we simply gathered and sat down. Now the mess-table of St.-Amarin has a decided touch of elegance, too, in the way of pink-shaded candles, and in the middle there was an arrangement of chrysanthemums and autumn leaves. Instead of a Mère Labonne they have a _cordon bleu_ who performs his rites very suitably in the dark-blue uniform of the chasseurs. We sit down to a dinner that might have been served with pride at Voisin’s or the Café de Paris, where all except the chairs is extra and getting back a cane or hat costs the remaining eye (if one remains) of the head. I am indeed impressed, as I was meant to be, and M. de Maroussem might have said, “Didn’t I tell you so?” in his pure and pleasant English. I sat between the commandant and Captain Perdrizet, chief of the Forestry Service of the Thann district, and to the sound of cannon, which in spite of peace prospects was heavily firing over the Hartmannswillerkopf, we consumed _carpes à la Flamande_, a course of game elaborately presented with all its feathers, finishing with _poires Bordaloue_, the whole perpetuated on a charming menu card decorated with the classic Alsatian stork by Andrieux, one of the officers of the mess.