wn language!'
Of all who are here, my poor little Franz, you are not the only one at
fault. We all must reproach ourselves."

Then the school-master told them of his longing to still teach the
children the French language. He said that it would always be the most
beautiful language of the world. He said that he wanted it treasured
in Alsace and never forgotten, because, when a people fall into
slavery it is almost like holding the key to their prison if they can
speak to each other in the same tongue. Afterward he took a grammar
and went over the lesson with the children. All that he read seemed
suddenly quite easy to Franz; he had never attended so well, and never
before had he understood how patient the school-master was in his
explanations.

When the lesson was finished, writing was begun. For this last day,
the master had prepared fresh copies.

_France, Alsace. France, Alsace_.

The copies were like little flags, floating all over the schoolroom
from the tops of the desks. Nothing broke the great silence but the
scratching of the pens upon the paper. Suddenly some May bugs flew in
through the window, but no one noticed them. On the roof of the school
some pigeons began to coo, and Franz thought to himself, "Will it be
commanded that the birds, too, speak to us in a foreign language?"

From time to time, as Franz lifted his eyes from his paper, he saw the
school-master sitting quietly in his chair, and looking all about him,
as if he wanted to remember always every child and every bit of
furniture in his little schoolroom. Only think, for forty years, he
had been there in his place, with the playground facing him, and his
class always as full! Only the benches and the desks which had once
been polished were worn from usage now; the walnut trees in the yard
had grown very large, and the hop vine that he, himself, had planted
twined now above the window and as far as the roof. It was breaking
the heart of the school-master to leave all these things.

But he had the courage to carry on the class to the very end. After
the writing lesson, he began the lesson in history. Afterward, the
little ones sang their A. B. C.'s all together and at the end of the
room the old soldier took off his spectacles and, holding his spelling
book in his two hands, he read off the letters with them.

Suddenly the clock in the tower of the village church sounded the hour
of noon. Instantly, the trumpet call of the Prussians, returnin