Lorraine, A Romance

"The bells!" said Jack; "can you hear them?"

"Yes," said Lorraine, listlessly.

She had been very silent during their dinner. He wondered that she had not shown any emotion at the sight of the invading soldiers. She had not--she had scarcely even shown curiosity. He thought that perhaps she did not realize what it meant, this swarm of Prussians pouring into France between the Moselle and the Rhine. He, American that he was, felt heartsick, humiliated, at the sight of the spiked casques and armoured horsemen, trampling the meadows of the province that he loved--the province of Lorraine. For those strangers to France who know France know two mothers; and though the native land is first and dearest, the new mother, France, generous, tender, lies next in the hearts of those whom she has sheltered.

So Jack felt the shame and humiliation as though a blow had been struck at his own home and kin, and he suffered the more thinking what his uncle must suffer. And Lorraine! His heart had bled for her when the harsh treble of the little, flat Prussian drums first broke out among the hills. He looked for the deep sorrow, the patience, the proud endurance, the prouder faith that he expected in her; he met with silence, even a distrait indifference.

Surely she could comprehend what this crushing disaster prophesied for France? Surely she of all women, sensitive, tender, and loyal, must know what love of kin and country meant?

Far away in the southwest the great heart of Paris throbbed in silence, for the beautiful, sinful city, confused by the din of the riffraff within her walls, blinded by lies and selfish counsels, crouched in mute agony, listening for the first ominous rumbling of a rotten, tottering Empire.

God alone knows why he gave to France, in the supreme moment of her need, the beings who filled heaven with the wind of their lungs and brought her to her knees in shame--not for brave men dead in vain, not for a wasted land, scourged and flame-shrunken from the Rhine to the Loire, not for provinces lost nor cities gone forever--but for the strange creatures that her agony brought forth, shapes simian and weird, all mouth and convulsive movement, little pigmy abortions mouthing and playing antics before high Heaven while the land ran blood in every furrow and the world was a hell of flame.

Gambetta, that incubus of bombastic flabbiness, roaring prophecy and platitude through the dismayed city, kept his eye on the balcony of the particular edifice where, later, he should pose as an animated Jericho trumpet. So, biding his time, he bellowed, but it was the Comédie Française that was the loser, not the people, when he sailed away in his balloon, posed, squatting majestically as the god of war above the clouds of battle. And little Thiers, furtive, timid, delighting in senile efforts to stir the ferment of chaos till it boiled, he, too, was there, owl-like, squeaky-voiced, a true "Bombyx à Lunettes." There, too, was Hugo--often ridiculous in his terrible moods, egotistical, sloppy, roaring. The Empire pinched Hugo, and he roared; and let the rest of the world judge whether, under such circumstances, there was majesty in the roar. The spectacle of Hugo, prancing on the ramparts and hurling bad names at the German armies, recalls the persistent but painful manoeuvres of a lion with a flea. Both are terribly in earnest--neither is sublime.