Flemish manufactures, Florentine art, the triumphs
in art of Rome and Antwerp! No! all that is laid aside; people now-a-days
pride themselves upon their ignorance of those glorious days; above all,
they neglect our dear old Alsace. Now, candidly, Theodore, don't all
those tourists remind you of husbands leaving their fair sweet lawful
wives to run after ugly coquettes?"

And Bernard Hertzog shook his learned head, his eyes rounded with wonder
and excitement, just as if he had been standing before the ruins of
Babylon.

His partiality to the usages and customs of old times accounted for his
having, for forty years past, worn the full-skirted plush coat, the
velvet breeches, the black silk stockings, and the silver shoe-buckles of
our grandfathers. He would have thought himself disgraced had he put on
trousers; and to cut off his pigtail would have been a profane deed.

So the worthy chronicler was going to Haslach on the 3rd of July, 1835,
to examine with his own eyes a little bronze Mercury recently unearthed
in the old cloister of the Augustins.

He trotted on with a tolerably elastic stop under a burning sun.
Mountains succeeded mountains, valleys sank into other valleys, the
footpath went up, then went down again, turned, now to the right, now to
the left, until Maitre Hertzog began to wonder how it was that he had not
caught sight of the village spire an hour ago.

The fact was that after leaving Saverne he had inclined to the right, and
was now penetrating into the Dagsberg woods with juvenile energy. At the
rate he was going, in five or six hours he would have reached Phramond,
eight leagues from his destination. But night was coming on apace, and
the path was now becoming fainter, and under the tall trees only an
indistinct track appeared.

The approach of night among the mountains is a melancholy sight; the
shadows lengthen in the valleys, the sun withdraws, one by one, his rays
from the darkening foliage, the silence deepens every minute. You look
behind you; the groups and clumps of trees assume colossal proportions;
a blackbird at the summit of a tree bids farewell to the parting day,
then silence covers all like a funeral pall. You can only hear now the
last year's dead leaves crisping under foot, and far, far, away a
waterfall filling the valley with its monotonous hum. Bernard Hertzog
began to pant a little; his clothes adhered to his skin with the running
perspiration. His legs were beginning to gi