The Children of Alsace (Les Oberlés)

THE EXAMINATION

On the following day the morning was far advanced when Jean left his room and appeared on the flight of steps built of the red stone of Saverne like the house, which opened on to the park in two flights of long steps. He was dressed in shooting clothes – of which he was fond – gaiters of black leather, breeches and coat of blue wool, with a hat of soft felt, in the ribbon of which he stuck a grouse feather. From the steps he asked:

"Where is my father?"

The man whom he addressed, the gardener, busy raking the avenue, answered:

"Monsieur is in the office at the saw-mill."

The first thing that Jean Oberlé saw on raising his eyes was the Vosges mountains, clothed with forests of pines, with trails of snow in the hollows, and with low, rapid clouds hiding the peaks. He trembled with joy. Then having gazed at the lowest mountain slopes, at the vineyards, and then the meadows, as if to impress on his memory all the details of these places found again after a long absence, and above all with the added satisfaction of remaining among them, his eyes fastened on the red roofs of the saw-mill, which made a barrier at the end of the Oberlé property, on the chimneys, on the high building where the turbines were, to the right on the course of the mountain stream of Alsheim, and nearer on the timber-yard whence the factory got its supplies, on the heaps of wood from trees of all sorts – beams, planks, which rose in pyramids and enormous cubes, beyond the winding alleys and the clumps of trees, some two hundred yards from the house. Jets of white steam in many places escaped from the roof of the saw-mill, and rested on the north wind like the clouds up above.

The young man went to the left, crossed the park, formerly planted and designed by M. Philippe Oberlé, and which was now beginning to be a freer and more harmonious corner of nature, and turning towards the piles of oak trunks, elms, and pines, went to knock at the door of the long building.

He entered the glass pavilion which served the master for a workroom. He was engaged in reading the day's letters. Seeing his son appear, he put the papers on the table, made a sign with his hand which meant "I expected your visit – sit down" – and moving his arm-chair, he said:

"Well, my boy! What have you to say to me?"

M. Joseph Oberlé was a ruddy man, quick and authoritative. Because of his shaven lips, his short whiskers, the correctness of his clothes, the easiness of his words and manners, he had sometimes been taken for an old French magistrate. The mistake did not arise with those who thought thus. It had been made by circumstances which had taken M. Joseph Oberlé in spite of himself from the way wherein he had intended to go, and which should have led him to some public office in the magistrature or the administration. The father, the founder of the dynasty, Philippe Oberlé, son of a race of peasant proprietors, had founded at Alsheim in 1850 this mechanical saw-mill, which had rapidly prospered. He had become in a few years rich and powerful, very much beloved, because he neglected no means to that end; increasingly influential, but without at all foreseeing the events which would one day induce him to put his influence at the service of Alsace.

The son of this industrial workman could hardly escape the ambition of being a public functionary. That is what happened – his education had prepared him for it. Taken early from Alsace, pupil for eight years at the Lycée Louis le Grand, then law student, he was at twenty-two years old attached to the office of the Prefect of Charente, when the war broke out. Retained for some months by his chief, who thought it would please his friend the great manufacturer of Alsace if he sheltered the young man behind the walls of the prefecture of Angoulême; then on his demand incorporated tardily in the Army of the Loire, Joseph Oberlé marched much, retired much, suffered much from cold, and fought well on rare occasions. When the war was finished he had to make his choice.

If he had consulted his personal preferences only, he would have remained French, and he would have continued to follow an administrative career, having a taste for authority and few personal opinions on the quality of an order to be transmitted. But his father recalled him to Alsace. He implored him not to leave the work begun and prospering. He said: "My industry is become German by conquest; I cannot leave the instrument of my fortune and your future to perish. I detest the Prussians, but I take the only means which I have of continuing my life usefully. I was a Frenchman, I become an Alsatian. Do the same. I hope it will not be for long."

Joseph Oberlé had obeyed with real repugnance – repugnance at submitting to the law of the conqueror, repugnance at living in the village of Alsheim, lost at the foot of the Vosges. He had even committed at this time imprudences of speech and attitude which he regretted now. For the conquest had lasted; the fortunes of Germany were strengthened, and the young man, associated with his father and become the master of a factory, had felt the meshes of an administration similar to the French administration, but more harassing, stricter, and better obeyed, knotting itself and drawing closer round him. He saw that on every occasion, without any exception, the German authorities would put him in the wrong; the police, the magistrates, the functionaries established for public services which he used daily, the commission of public roads, the railways, the water supply, the forests, the customs. The malevolence which he met with on all sides and in all departments of German administration, although he had become a German subject, was aggravated and had become quite a danger to the prosperity of the house of Alsheim, when, in 1874, M. Philippe Oberlé, giving to his son the direction of the saw-mill, had yielded to the insistences of that poor forsaken country, which wanted to make of him, and did make him, the representative of her interests at the Reichstag, and one of the protesting deputies of Alsace.

This experience, the weariness of waiting, the removal of M. Philippe Oberlé, who spent a part of the year at Berlin, modified sensibly the attitude of the young head of the industrial enterprise. His first fervour, and that of others, grew less. He saw the anti-German manifestations of Alsatian peasants becoming rarer and more prudent. He hardly did any business with France; he no longer received visits from French people, even those made from interested and commercial motives. France, so near by distance, became like a walled-in country, shut up, and whence nothing more came to Alsace, neither travellers nor merchandise. The newspapers he received left him in no doubt as to the slow abandonment which certain French politicians counselled under the name of wisdom and concentration.

In ten years M. Joseph Oberlé had used up, till he could no longer find a trace in himself, all that his temperament allowed him of resistance to oppose to an established power. He was rallied. His marriage with Monica Biehler, desired and arranged by the old and ardent patriot who voted in the Reichstag against Prince Bismarck, had had no influence on his new ideas and attitude, at first secret, soon suspected, then known, then affirmed, then scandalously published by M. Joseph Oberlé. He gave pledges to the Germans, then hostages. He overstepped the boundary. He went farther than obedience. The foremen of the factory, old soldiers of France, admirers of M. Philippe Oberlé, companions of his struggle against the Germanisation of Alsace, bore with difficulty the attitude of the new master and blamed him. One of them in a moment of impatience had said to him one day, "Do you think we are so particularly proud to work for a renegade like you?" He had been discharged. His comrades immediately had taken his part, interceded, talked, and threatened a strike. "Well, do it," the master had said; "I shall be delighted. You are all quarrelsome fellows; I shall replace you by Germans!" They did not believe in the threat, but when a fresh crisis arose M. Joseph Oberlé carried it into execution a little later, that he might not be accused of weakness, which he feared more than injustice, and because he thought he could gain some advantage by replacing the Alsatians, continual grumblers, by workmen from Baden and Wurtemburg who were better disciplined and more easily managed. A third of the employés at the saw-mill had thus been replaced. A little German colony had been established to the north of the village, in the houses built by the master, and the Alsatians who remained had to bend before the argument of daily bread. That happened in 1882. Some years later, they learned that M. Oberlé had sent his son Jean to be educated in Bavaria at the Munich gymnasium. In the same way he sent off his daughter Lucienne, placing her in the charge of the mistress of the most German school in Baden-Baden, the Mündner boarding-school. This last measure roused public opinion most of all. They were furious at this repudiation of Alsatian education and influence. They pitied Madame Oberlé thus separated from her son and deprived, as if she had been unworthy, of the right of bringing up her own daughter. To all those who blamed him the father replied, "It is for their good. I have spoiled my life; I do not wish them to spoil theirs. They will choose their road later when they have been able to make comparisons. But I will not have them from their very youth catalogued, pointed at, and inscribed on the official list as Alsatian pariahs."

Sometimes he added: "You do not understand, then, all the sacrifice that I am making! I am sparing my children these sacrifices; I am devoting myself to them. But that does not mean that I am not suffering."

He did suffer in fact, and so much the more that the confidence of the German administration was hard to gain. The reward of so much effort did not seem enviable. True, those in office began to flatter, to draw nearer, to seek out M. Joseph Oberlé, a precious conquest, of which many district directors had boasted in high places. But they watched him, whilst loading him with invitations and kind attentions. He felt the hesitation, the mistrust, scarcely disguised, sometimes even emphasised by the new masters he wished to please. Was he safe? Had he taken the side of the Annexation without any mental reservation? Did he sufficiently admire the German genius, German civilisation, German commerce, the German future? One had to admire so much and so many things!

The answer, however, became more and more affirmative. There was the acknowledged desire to make his son, Jean, enter the German magistracy, and there was the systematic continuation of this kind of exile imposed on the young man. When his classical studies were finished and his final examination passed with success at the end of the scholastic year, 1895, Jean spent his first year of law studies at the University of Munich; he divided the next year between Bonn and Heidelberg; then took his licentiate's degree at Berlin, where he went through the Referendar Examination. At last, after a fourth year, when as a licentiate in law he entered the office of a lawyer at Berlin, after long travel in foreign countries, the young man came back to his home to rest before joining a regiment.

Truly the plan had been thoroughly carried out. In the first years of his student life, in his holidays even, excepting some days given to his family, his time had been given to travelling. During the last years he had not even appeared in Alsheim.

The end of it was that the administration no longer suspected him. Besides, one of the great obstacles to a public reconciliation between the functionaries of Alsace and M. Joseph Oberlé had disappeared. The old protesting deputy, seized by the illness which became chronic, retired from political life in 1890. From that moment dated, for the son, the smiles, the promises, the favours so long solicited. M. Joseph Oberlé recognised in the development his affairs had taken – in the Rhenish country and even beyond it – in the diminution of the official reports directed against his employés, or against himself in cases of contravention, in the signs of deference which the small officials showed him – formerly the most arrogant of all, in the ease with which he had ruled disputable points, obtained authorisations, altered the rules in divers points – in all these signs, as well as in others, he recognised that the governmental mind, present everywhere, incarnate everywhere in a multitude of men of gold lace – was no longer against him.

More definite advances were made to him. The preceding winter, while Lucienne, who had returned from the Mündner school, pretty, witty, charming, was dancing in the German salons of Strasburg, the father was talking with the representatives of the Empire. One of them, the prefect of Strasburg, Count Kassewitz, acting probably in accordance with superior orders, had let drop that the Government would see, without displeasure, M. Joseph Oberlé present himself as candidate for the deputyship in one of the districts of Alsace, and that the official support of the administration would be given to the son of the old protesting deputy.

This prospect filled M. Oberlé with joy. It had revived the ambition of this man who found himself up to then repaid but badly for the sacrifices of self-respect, friendships, and memories, which he had had to make. It gave new energies and a definite object to this official temperament, depressed by circumstances. M. Oberlé saw his justification in it, without being able to reveal it. He said to himself that, thanks to his energy, to his contempt for Utopia, to his clear sight of what was possible and what was not, he could hope for a future for himself – a participation in public life – a part he had believed to be reserved for his son. And henceforward it would be the answer that he would make to himself; if ever a doubt entered his mind, it would be his revenge against the mute insults offered him by some backward peasants, who forgot to recognise him in the streets, and by certain citizens of Strasburg or Alsheim, who scarcely, or no longer, saluted him.

He was therefore now going to receive his son in a frame of mind very different from that of the past. To-day, when he knew himself in full personal favour with the Government of Alsace-Lorraine, he was less set on his son carrying out to the letter the plan that he had traced at first. Jean had already assisted his father, as Lucienne was assisting him. He had been an argument, and one of the causes of this long-expected change of the governmental attitude. His collaboration was still going to be useful, but not necessary; and the father, warned by certain allusions and a certain reticence in the last letters written from Berlin by his son, did not feel so irritated when he thought that perhaps he would not follow the career in the German magistracy so carefully prepared for him, and would give up his last three years of terms and his State examinations. Such were the reflections of this man, whose life had been guided by the most unadulterated egotism, at the moment when he was preparing to receive his son's visit. For he had seen Jean and had watched him coming across the park. M. Oberlé had built at the extreme end of the saw-mill a sort of cage or footbridge, from which he could survey everything at once. One window opened on to the timber yard, and allowed him to follow the movements of the men occupied in stowing away and transporting the wood. Another, composed of a double glazed framework, placed the book-keepers under the eye of their master, ranged along a wall in a room like the master's room; and by a third, that is to say by a glass partition, which separated him from the workshop, he took in at a glance the immense hall where machines of all kinds, great saws in leather bands, cogged wheels, drills, and planes, were cutting, boring, and polishing trunks of trees brought to them on sliding grooves. Round him the low woodwork painted water-green; electric lamps in the shape of violets, the call-buttons placed on a copper plaque which served as a pediment to his work bureau, a telephone, a typewriter, light chairs painted white, spoke of his taste for bright colours, for convenient innovations, and for fragile-looking objects.

Seeing his son enter, he had turned towards the window overlooking the park; he had crossed his legs, and placed his right elbow on the desk. He examined curiously this tall, thin, handsome man, his son, who sat down facing him, and he smiled. To see him thus, leaning back in his arm-chair, and smiling his own mechanical and irrelevant smile, by only judging from the full face framed by two grey whiskers, and the gesture of his raised right hand, touching his head and playing with the cord of his eyeglass, it would be easy to understand the mistake of those who took M. Oberlé for a magistrate. But the eyes, a little closed on account of the bright light, were too quick and too hard to belong to any but a man of action. They gave the lie to the mechanical smile of his lips. They had no scientific curiosity, worldly or paternal; they sought simply a way, like those of a ship's captain – in order to pass on. Scarcely had M. Oberlé asked, "What have you to tell me?" than he added, "Have you spoken with your mother this morning?"

"No!"

"With Lucienne?"

"Neither; I have just come from my room."

"It is better so. It is better for us to make our plans together, we two, without any one interfering. I have allowed you to return and to stay here precisely that we may arrange your future. Firstly, your military service in the month of October, with the fixed determination – am I right?" – and he dwelt on the following words – "to become an officer of the reserve?"

Jean, motionless, with head erect and straight look, and with the charming gravity of a young man who speaks of his future and who keeps a sort of quiet hold on himself which is not quite natural to him:

"Yes, father, that is my intention."

"The first point is then settled – and afterwards? You have seen the world. You know the people among whom you are called to live. You know that with regard to the German magistracy the chances of succeeding increased some time ago, because my own position has been considerably bettered in Alsace?"

"I know it."

"You know equally well that I have never wavered in my desire to see you follow the career which would have been mine if circumstances had not been stronger than my will."

As if this word had suddenly excited in him the strength to will, the eyes of M. Oberlé were fixed, imperious and masterful, on those of his son, like the claws of a bird of prey. He left off playing with his eyeglass, and said quickly:

"Your last letters indicated, however, a certain hesitation. Answer me. Will you become a magistrate?"

Jean became slightly pale, and answered:

"No!"

The father bent forward as if he were going to rise, and without taking his eyes off him whose moral energy he was weighing and judging at that moment:

"Administrator?"

"Neither. Nothing official."

"Then your law studies?"

"Useless."

"Because?"

"Because," said the young man, trying to steady his voice, "I have not the German spirit."

M. Oberlé had not expected this answer. It was a disavowal. He started, and instinctively looked into the workshop to make sure that no one had heard or even guessed at such words. He met the raised eyes of many workmen, who thought he was supervising the work, and who turned away at once.

M. Oberlé turned again to his son. A violent irritation had seized him. But he understood that it was best not to let it be seen. For fear that his hands should show his agitation, he had seized the two arms of the arm-chair in which he was seated, bent forward as before, but now considering this young man from head to foot, considering his attitude, his clothes, his manner, this young man who was voicing ideas which seemed like a judgment on the conduct of his father. After a moment of silence, his voice broken, he asked:

"Who has put you against me? Your mother?"

"No one," said Jean Oberlé quickly. "I have nothing against you. Why do you take it like that? I say simply that I have not the German spirit. It is the result of a long comparison, and nothing else."

M. Joseph Oberlé saw that he had shown his hand too much. He withdrew into himself, and putting on that expression of cold irony with which he was accustomed to disguise his true sentiments:

"Then, since you refuse to follow the career which I destined for you, have you chosen another?"

"Without doubt, with your consent."

"Which?"

"Yours. Do not be mistaken with regard to what I have just told you. I have lived without a quarrel for ten years in an exclusively German centre. I know what it has cost me. You ask me the result of my experience. Well, I do not believe that my character is supple enough, or easy-going enough if you like, to do more than that, or to become a German official. I am sure that I should not always understand, and that I should disobey sometimes. My decision is irrevocable. And, on the contrary, your work pleases me."

"You imagine that a manufacturer is independent?"

"No; but he is more independent than many are. I studied law so that I should not refuse to follow without reflection, without examination, the way you pointed out to me. But I have profited by the travels which you suggested, every year."

"You may say which I imposed upon you; that is the truth, and I am going to explain my reasons."

"I have profited by them to study the forest industry wherever I could – in Germany, in Austria, in the Caucasus. I have given more thought and consideration to those questions than you might suppose. And I wish to live in Alsheim. Will you allow me to?"

The father did not answer at first. He was trying on his son an experiment to which he deliberately submitted other men who came to treat with him about some important affair. He was silent at the moment when decisive words were to be expected from him. If the questioner, disturbed, turned away to escape the look which seemed to be oppressive, or if he renewed the explanation already made, M. Joseph Oberlé classed him among weak men, his inferiors. Jean bore his father's look, and did not open his mouth. M. Oberlé was secretly flattered. He understood that he found himself in the presence of a man completely formed, of a very resolute, and probably inflexible spirit. He knew others like him in the neighbourhood. He secretly appreciated their independence of temper, and feared it. With the quickness of combination and organisation habitual to him, he perceived very clearly the industry of Alsheim directed by Jean, and the father of Jean, Joseph Oberlé, sitting in the Reichstag, admitted among the financiers, the administrators, and the powerful men of Germany. He was one of those who know how to turn his mistakes to some advantage, just as he managed to get something from the factory waste. This new vision softened him. Far from being angry, he let the ironical expression relax which he had put on while speaking of his son's project. With a movement of his hand he pointed to the immense workshop, where, without ceasing, with a roar which slightly shook the double windows, the steel blades entered into the heart of the old trees of the Vosges, and said, in a tone of affectionate scolding:

"So be it, my son. It will give joy to my father, to your mother, and to Ulrich. I agree that you put me in the wrong on one point with regard to them, but in one point only. Some years ago I should not have allowed you to refuse the career which seemed to me the best for you, and which would have saved us all from difficulties which you could not take the measure of. At that moment you were not able to judge for yourself. And further, I found my work, my position, too precarious and too dangerous to pass it on to you. That has changed. My business has increased. Life has become possible for me and for you all, thanks to the efforts, and perhaps to the sacrifices, for which those about me are not sufficiently grateful. To-day I admit that the business has a future. You wish to succeed me? I open the door for you immediately! You will go through the practical part of your apprenticeship in the seven months which remain before you join your regiment. Yes, I consent, but on one condition."

"Which?"

"You will not mix yourself up with politics."