land, fine
dwelling houses, barns and stables, a very fine park, summer houses, a
coach house, etc." ... "of the Villa Huber, with a fine park,
servants' quarters, garden, surrounded by twenty-eight hectares of
fields."

The same paper for the fourth of October announces the sale of the
famous chateau of Robertsau, the property of Mme. Loys-Chandieu, nee
Pourtales, with two hundred and thirty hectares of farm land and one
hundred and thirty hectares of forest.

The _Metzer Zeitung_ for the twentieth of October announced the
liquidation of twenty properties in the Moyeuvre Grande district, and
of eleven in that of Sierek.

Many people have obviously been covetous of these French possessions.

On this subject curious letters and unceasing polemics appeared in the
Alsatian newspapers.

Certain interested persons complained (_Strassburger Post_ for the
third of November) that the time was so short that only the
inhabitants of the country and their immediate neighbors had any
opportunity of profiting by these occasions. They remarked with all
justice that to get the highest prices for these sales there ought to
be a large number of bidders.

For the farm lands, the neighbors would suffice to bring up the bids
to a high enough sum, but when it was a matter of a magnificent
chateau, like that at Osthofen, with a garden and a park, bidders for
this luxury would scarcely be found among the peasants. The
speculators alone would step in and would acquire for a mere nothing
properties of great value. And the plaintiffs added, "Is that
desirable?"

The following considerations advanced by one of the plaintiffs are not
without interest. "Sufficient means of communication still remain
between France and Germany. Do you not see the danger of feigned
sales, to third persons, who will buy in the goods at small cost and
will hand them over later on to their former proprietors? In this way
the French influence over the ownership of the land will be
reestablished in the future."

To these complaints and wrongs the _Strassburger Post_ for the eighth
of November replied in detail.

It assured that the list of goods to be disposed of had not only been
placed by the authorities in the several states of the empire, to give
buyers time to take advantage of possible bargains, but also a
catalogue of stationary objects had been published in fifteen hundred
copies by Schultz & Co. of Strassburg.

This catalogue was quickly used up and