ome with me and give
my son an escort."

I now perceived that his only son had fallen, and that the father
desired him to be buried in the Jewish cemetery here.

As he divined my thoughts, he said, "It is true, I could not allow them
to bury my son out there with the others; but it is, perhaps, well if
there is some sign here of our having fairly and joyfully taken our
part in the fight. Perhaps it will have a mollifying effect upon our
new countrymen of the Jewish faith, who were particularly
contumacious."

I was astounded to find the man so placid. But, as if guessing my
thoughts, he said he had no more strength for complaints and tears, and
that a fact must at last be accepted.

I thought of the handsome, spirited lad, that had one time come to me
with Wolfgang. But I greatly desired to find a favorable opportunity
for addressing the Jewish inhabitants of the village. They had an
especial fear of the Germans, and were proud of French equality.

The advocate's son was buried with all the ceremonies of his church.
Two slightly wounded South German officers, who were lying in the
village, acted as the escort. They recognized in me the Colonel's
father-in-law, and had much to tell me in his praise.

"He shows that we are not inferior to the Prussians." Such appeared to
be the highest compliment they could bestow upon him.

Upon our return from the cemetery, to which the Jews here in Alsace
give the peculiar name of the "good place,"[6] the advocate leaned upon
my arm, and, as I sat next to him in the little room, after quietly
meditating for a long while, he exclaimed, "In my youth I had willingly
died for the true Fatherland; now, my son has been permitted to die for
it."

For years had I been in constant intercourse with this man; now, in his
grief and in the hour of civil commotion, I first learned to know him;
and to learn to know an upright man is to learn to love him.

I have, like suffering Odysseus, participated in the experiences of
many men; Rautenkron, the Colonel, and Arven have revealed to me their
life-secrets. Now I was to hear still another's: the history of a
step-child in his step-fatherland, who still longed for affection, for
the closest friendship, and who, though repulsed and oppressed by the
laws and his fellow-men, had not yet lost his love for them.

As Offenheimer recounted the grievances he had suffered in the schools,
and the incivilities and insults of later years, it seemed to m