"Go on then, break, or finish breaking, three of us!"
They were getting more and more irritated, each trying to control himself.
The officer rose, threw away his cigar, and said haughtily:
"We are civilised barbarians--that is understood, less burdened than you with prejudices and pretensions to justice. That is why we shall conquer the world. But in the meantime, Oberlé, I am going to join your mother and talk to her, as amiably as an enemy possibly can. Will you accompany me?"
Jean Oberlé shook his head in the negative.
Farnow crossed the smoking-room, leaving Oberlé there.
Lucienne was anxiously awaiting him in the drawing-room. She saw him direct his steps towards Madame Oberlé, and, forcing himself to smile, place a chair near the arm-chair in which the fragile Alsatian lady in black was sitting. At the same time the Geheimrath called out, "Oberlé! You have smoked a cigar without even drinking one glass of beer. But that is a crime! Come. Professor Knäpple is explaining the measures the Government is taking to prevent the Russianising of the eastern provinces of Germany."
Late that night, a landau bore away to Alsheim three travellers; it had fetched them from the station at Molsheim.
The way there was a long one, and Lucienne soon went to sleep in the carriage. Her mother, who had hardly said anything up to then, bent towards her son, and, pointing to the beautiful creature sound asleep, asked him:
"I guessed it. There was no need to tell me much. I have seen her look at him. Oh, Jean, this trial that I hoped to escape!--the fear of which has made me accept so many, many things! I have only you left, my Jean! But you remain to me!"
As things do not usually happen as we foresee, the visit of Herr von Kassewitz to Alsheim did not take place on the date Farnow said it would. Towards the end of June--at the moment when the prefect, returned from taking the waters, was getting ready to go to ask for Lucienne's hand, a telegram had asked him to put off the visit. The condition of M. Philippe Oberlé had suddenly become worse.
The old man, whom it was necessary to inform of what was going on in the house, had just learned the truth. His son had gone up one morning to the sick man's room. "With circumlocution and in ways that he took out of respect and consideration for him, he let it be seen that Lucienne was not indifferent to the advances of a cavalry officer belonging to a high German family; he had said that the liking was spontaneous; that he, Joseph Oberlé, in spite of certain regrets, did not believe that he had the right to thwart the freedom of his children, and that he hoped that his father, in the interests of peace, would be resigned.