In the Heart of the Vosges by Matilda Betham-Edwards (digital e reader TXT) 📖

health, recreation and society.

Rothau is a very prosperous little town, with large factories, handsome chateaux of mill-owners, and trim little cottages, having flowers in all the windows and a trellised vine in every garden. Pomegranates and oleanders are in full bloom here and there, and the general aspect is bright and cheerful. At Rothau are several _blanchisseries_ or laundries, on a large scale, employing many hands, besides dye-works and saw-mills. Through the town runs the little river Bruche, and the whole district, known as the Ban de la Roche, a hundred years ago one of the dreariest regions in France, is now all smiling fertility. The principal building is its handsome Protestant church--for here we are among Protestants, although of a less zealous temper than their fore-fathers, the fervid Anabaptists. I attended morning service, and although an eloquent preacher from Paris officiated, the audience was small, and the general impression that of coldness and want of animation.

From the sweet, fragrant valley of Rothau a road winds amid green hills and by the tumbling river to the little old-world village of Foudai, where Oberlin lies buried. The tiny church and shady churchyard lie above the village, and a more out-of-the-way spot than Foudai itself can hardly be imagined. Yet many a pious pilgrim finds it out and comes hither to pay a tribute to the memory of "Papa Oberlin," as he was artlessly called by the country folk. This is the inscription at the head of the plain stone slab marking his resting-place; and very suggestive it is of the relation between the pastor and his flock. Oberlin's career of sixty years among the primitive people of the Ban de la Roche was rather that of a missionary among an uncivilized race than of a country priest among his parishioners. How he toiled, and how he induced others to toil, in order to raise the material as well as moral and spiritual conditions of his charges, is pretty well known. His story reads like the German narrative, _Des Goldmachers Dorf_. Nor does it require any lively fancy to picture what this region must have been like before Oberlin and his fellow-workers made the wilderness to blossom as the rose. The soil is rocky and barren, the hill-sides whitened with mountain streams, the more fertile spots isolated and difficult of access. An elaborate system of irrigation has now clothed the valleys with rich pastures, the river turns a dozen wheels, and every available inch of soil has been turned to account. The cottages with orchards and flower-gardens are trim and comfortable. The place in verity is a veritable little Arcadia. No less so is Waldersbach, which was Oberlin's home. The little river winding amid hayfields and fruit-trees leads us thither from Foudai in half-an-hour. It is Sunday afternoon, and a fete day. Young and old in Sunday garb are keeping holiday, the lads and lasses waltzing, the children enjoying swings and peep-shows. No acerbity has lingered among these descendants of the austere parishioners of Oberlin. Here, as at Foudai, the entire population is Protestant. The church and parsonage lie at the back of the village, and we were warmly welcomed by the pastor and his wife, a great-great-granddaughter of Oberlin. Their six pretty children were playing in the garden with two young girls in the costume of Alsace, forming a pleasant domestic picture. Our hosts showed us many relics of Oberlin, the handsome cabinets and presses of carved oak, in which were stored the family wardrobe and other treasures, and in the study the table on which he habitually wrote. This is a charming upper room with wide views over the green hills and sunny, peaceful valley.

We were offered hospitality for days, nay, weeks, if we chose to stay, and even the use of Oberlin's study to sit and write in! A summer might be pleasantly spent here, with quiet mornings in this cheerful chamber, full of pious memories, and in the afternoon long rambles with the children over the peaceful hills. From Foudai, too, you may climb the wild rocky plateau known as the Champ de Feu--no spot in the Vosges chain is more interesting from a geological point of view.

After much pleasant talk we took leave of our kind hosts, not going away, however, without visiting the church. A tablet with medallion portrait of Oberlin bears the touching inscription that for fifty-nine years he was "the father of this parish." Then we drove back as we had come, stopping at Foudai to rest the horse and drink tea. We were served in a cool little parlour opening on to a garden, and, so tempting looked the tiny inn that we regretted we could not stay there a week. A pleasant pastoral country rather than romantic or picturesque is the Ban de la Roche, but close at hand is the lofty Donon, which may be climbed from Rothau or Foudai, and there are many other excursions within reach.

Here, for the present, the romance of Alsace travel ends, and all is prose of a somewhat painful kind. The first object that attracted our attention on reaching Strasburg was the new railway station, of which we had already heard so much. This handsome structure, erected by the German Government at an enormous cost, had only been recently opened, and so great was the soreness of feeling excited by certain allegorical bas-reliefs decorating the facade that for many days after the opening of the station police-officers in plain clothes carefully watched the crowd of spectators, carrying off the more seditious to prison. To say the least of it, these mural decorations are not in the best of taste, and at any rate it would have been better to have withheld them for a time. The two small bas-reliefs in question bear respectively the inscription, "_Im alten, und im neuen Reich_" ("In the old and new Empire"), improved by a stander-by, to the great relish of others, thus, "_Im alten, reich, im neuen, arm_" ("In the old, rich, in the new, poor"). They give a somewhat ideal representation of the surrender of Strasburg to the German Emperor. But the bombardment of their city, the destruction of public monuments and the loss of life and property thereby occasioned, were as yet fresh in the memories of the inhabitants, and they needed no such reminder of the new state of things. Their better feelings towards Germany had been bombarded out of them, as an Alsacienne wittily observed to the Duchess of Baden after the surrender. The duchess, daughter to the Emperor William, made the round of the hospitals, and not a single Alsatian soldier but turned his face to the wall, whereupon she expressed her astonishment at not finding a better sentiment. Nor can the lover of art help drawing a painful contrast between the Strasburg of the old and the new _regime_. There was very little to see at Strasburg except the cathedral at this time. The Library, with its 300,000 volumes and 1,500 manuscripts--the priceless _Hortus Deliciarium_ of the twelfth century, richly illuminated and ornamented with miniatures invaluable to the student of men and manners of the Middle Ages, the missal of Louis XII., bearing his arms, the _Recueil de Prieres_ of the eighth century--all these had been completely destroyed by the ruthless Prussian bombardment. The Museum, rich in _chefs d'oeuvre_ of the French school, both of sculpture and painting, the handsome Protestant church, the theatre, the Palais de Justice, all shared the same fate, not to speak of buildings of lesser importance, including four hundred private dwellings, and of the fifteen hundred civilians, men, women and children, killed and wounded by the shells. The fine church of St. Thomas suffered greatly. Nor was the cathedral spared, and it would doubtless have perished altogether, too, but for the enforced surrender of the heroic city. On my second visit ten years later I found immense changes, new German architecture to be seen everywhere.

Strasburg is said to contain a much larger German element than any other city of Alsace-Lorraine, but the most casual observer soon finds out how it stands with the bulk of the people. The first thing that attracted our notice in a shop window was a coloured illustration representing the funeral procession of Gambetta, as it wound slowly past the veiled statue of Strasburg on the Place de la Concorde. These displays of patriotic feeling are forbidden, but they come to the fore all the same. Here, as elsewhere, the clinging to the old country is pathetically--sometimes comically--apparent. A rough peasant girl, employed as chambermaid in the hotel at which we stayed, amused me not a little by her tirades against the Prussians, spoken in a language that was neither German nor French, but a mixture of both--the delectable tongue of Alsace!

Strasburg is now a vast camp, with that perpetual noisy military parade so wearisome in Berlin and other German cities, and, as I have said, there was very little to see. It was a relief to get to Mulhouse, the comparatively quiet and thoroughly French city of Mulhouse, in spite of all attempts to make it German. But for the imperial eagle placed over public offices and the sprinkling of Prussian helmets and Prussian physiognomies, we could hardly suppose ourselves outside the French border. The shops are French. French is the language of the better classes, and French and Jews make up the bulk of the population. The Jews from time immemorial have swarmed in Alsace, where, I am sorry to say, they seemed to be little liked.

This thoroughly French appearance of Mulhouse, to be accounted for, moreover, by an intensely patriotic clinging to the mother country, naturally occasions great vexation to the German authorities. It is, perhaps, hardly to be wondered at that undignified provocations and reprisals should be the consequence. Thus the law forbids the putting up of French signboards or names over shop doors in any but the German language. This is evaded by withholding all else except the surname of the individual, which is of course the same in both languages.

One instance more I give of the small annoyances to which the French residents of Mulhouse are subject, a trifling one, yet sufficient to irritate. Eight months after the annexation, orders were sent round to the pastors and clergy generally to offer up prayers for the Emperor William every Sunday. The order was obeyed, for refusal would have been assuredly followed by dismissal, but the prayer is ungraciously performed. The French pastors invoke the blessing of Heaven on "_l'Empereur qui nous gouverne_". The pastors who perform the service in German, pray not for "our Emperor," as is the apparently loyal fashion in the Fatherland, but for "the Emperor." These things are trifling grievances, but, on the other hand, the Prussians have theirs also. Not even the officials of highest rank are received into any kind of society whatever. Mulhouse possesses a charming zoological garden, free to subscribers only, who have to be balloted for. Twenty years after the annexation not a single Prussian has ever been able to obtain access to this garden.

Even the very poorest contrive to show their intense patriotism. It is the rule of the German government to give twenty-five marks to any poor woman giving birth to twins. The wife of a French workman during my sojourn at Mulhouse had three sons at a birth, but though in very poor circumstances, refused to claim the donation. "My sons shall never be Prussian," she said, "and that gift would make them so."

The real thorn in the flesh of the annexed Alsatians is, however, as I have before pointed out, military service, and the enforced German education. All who have read Alphonse Daudet's charming little story, _La derniere lecon de Francais_, will be able to realize the painfulness of the truth, somewhat rudely brought