Part 8

Odile’s heart leaped up and she was about to address him when suddenly he vanished, and the angel of the austere visage took his place, holding out a cross of ebony on which hung an ivory Christ. The next night, and many after, the young lord returned. At last he came carrying in his hands a crown of gold. Odile was about to grasp it, when the angel, graver and sterner than before, stepped between them and presented to Odile a jeweled chalice. Thinking she was to partake of the Saving Host, Odile pressed it to her lips. What was her horror when she found it filled with blood still hot and throbbing. So great was her trouble that on awakening she recounted her dream to the abbess, who then revealed to her the secret of her birth. How her gentle mother, worn by the harsh tempers of the duke, was long since dead, and her father had sworn never to look upon her face. The image in the dream was that of her young brother, Adalbert, born after her, and heir to the duchy. “But,” added the abbess, “beware of seeking out thy fierce father; thy mother is no longer there to defend thee. Stay rather here, for thou art destined at my death to become abbess of this convent.”

But Odile was so deeply moved by this glimpse of the glory of her race and the promise of fraternal love that she could not resist the desire to contemplate with her earthly eyes the brother whose image had so enchanted her, to enfold him, if even for a single time, in her arms. By a faithful servitor she despatched a letter to him, saying in it: “I am Odile, thine unknown sister. If thou lovest me as I thee, obtain from my father that I enter into my daughterly estate. I salute thee tenderly. At thought of thee my heart blossoms like a lily in the desert.”

This letter acted as a charm upon Adalbert, awaking in his youthful heart all generous and romantic sentiments. He cried, “Who is this sister whose words are sweeter than those of a betrothed?”

A tender desire seized him to make her his companion and coheir and to give her back her rank and family estate. He answered, “Trust but in me. I will arrange all things for the best.”

Shortly after, while his father was absent at the chase, he sent to Baume-les-Dames a splendid chariot drawn by six richly caparisoned horses. With it went a numerous retinue, that Odile might return to her father’s house in a way befitting her estate. And now begins the tragedy.

Atalric is in the banquet-hall of his castle of Obernay, where his birthday is being celebrated with great pomp and circumstance. It is the day, too, that he has chosen to present his son and heir to his vassals. About the tables, groaning under the weight of gold and silver dishes, his many courtiers are sitting, drinking from great horns of aurochs or clanking their burnished hanaps. Atalric, happening to go to the window, espies in the plain a chariot approaching, drawn by six horses; banners are flying and palms waving. Above it float the ducal colors.

He cries out in surprise, “Who is it that approaches?”

Adalbert answers with all the valiance of his young and trusting heart, “It is thy daughter Odile come to beg thy mercy.”

“Who is the dolt that counseled her return?”

“It is I who called her, and on this day of thy feast I beg thy grace for her.”

“How has she, who desires my death, been able to bewitch you?” cries Atalric, pale and stiff with anger.

Adalbert protests, invoking his father’s pity, the honor of the family, and his own brotherly love, but Atalric, beside himself, commands the youth to cast his sister from the threshold. Adalbert refuses.

“If it must be done, do it thyself,” he answers, proudly. Upon this the duke menaces his son with disinheritance if he does not immediately obey. But Adalbert, drawing his sword, lays it at his father’s feet, telling him that rather than fail in fraternal love he will give up his heritage. This fills his father with so blind a fury that he gives his son a great blow upon the temple with the hilt of his sword.

The stroke is mortal, and Adalbert falls to the ground. The vassals crowd in fear at one end of the great hall, while Atalric stands alone, petrified by the horror of his crime.

At this moment in the fullness of her young beauty, dressed as a bride for her nuptials, Odile enters the hall. A single look suffices. She gives a great cry and throws herself on her knees by her dying brother. She clasps his bleeding head, she kisses his glazing eyes, and in that single kiss, that one despairing embrace, the pain of the whole world transpierces her gentle breast. It is the chalice of blood the angel once put to her lips. The dreadful crime of her father, the loss of her adored brother, to whom she had been mystically united by a more than fraternal bond, turn all her desires to the other world; the first young innocent love of family is changed into solicitude for all who are suffering in that barbarian world. Her novitiate begins.

Atalric, devoured by remorse, though still impenitent, did not dare cast his daughter out, but he spoke no word to her, harboring always in his heart the prediction of the Irish monk, “The dove will overcome the lion.”

In order to avoid him, Odile spent her days mostly in the great forests that surrounded the castle, often climbing to the heights of Altitona. Under the shadow of those great trees, high as the nave of some cathedral, she no longer heard the striking of the hours of human time. All things appeared to her under the guise of eternity. Her beautiful brother, her unique love, was dead, almost as a martyr. Why should she not in turn gather for herself a palm like to that he carried as he roamed the heavenly fields?

One day, as she was deeply meditating these things, she found herself midway up the great hill, when, enveloped in a blinding light, the angel of her dreams in the convent of Burgundy suddenly appeared. His wings, touched with glory, were widely unfolded, and his face shone like the sun. With an imperious yet protecting gesture he pointed to the top of the mountain, where were seen the crumbling remains of a Roman camp, saying to her soul, “There, Odile, is thy home; there shalt thou dwell and gather to thee others whose thoughts are holy and whose wills are bent to service.”

Odile remained long in ecstasy. When she had recovered her fleshly sight the angel was gone, but she had understood. On the heights of Altitona she was to build a sanctuary which should be a refuge of peace, a fortress of prayer, a citadel of God. It was vocation.

Strangely increased in beauty, she returned at night-fall to the castle, and this added beauty was observed by all.

Shortly after Atalric, through pride and also to get rid of her, conceived the design of marrying her to a great Austrasian lord from Metz, then his guest, who had been struck by love for her. He called her to him, and told her his intention. She answered gently:

“Father, thou canst not give me to any man. Thou knowest I am vowed to Christ alone.”

The duke, enraged at her resistance, but grown somewhat wary by experience, sought out a docile monk and commanded him to impress upon Odile the wisdom of obedience, by which she might placate him and even win his heart. But all was in vain. Then he conceived the black idea of delivering his daughter by force into the arms of the Austrasian lord, thinking, once she had been embraced by the lover, she would consent to marriage. He sent two armed men to seize her in a grotto where she was accustomed to pray. Hardened by the fierce design that filled his heart, he cried out when she was brought before him, “The Lord of Austrasia awaits thee for betrothal; willingly or unwillingly thou shalt be his.”

Odile, knowing the supreme moment had come, answered: “Thou hast already killed thy son. Wouldst thou also cause the death of thy daughter? If thou bindest me to the arms of this man I will not survive my shame, but I will kill myself. Thus thou wilt be the cause not only of the death of my body, but of my soul as well, and thou wilt thyself be destined to eternal damnation.”

“Little care I for the other world. In this I am and will remain the master.”

“That in truth thou art,” she answered, gently, “but listen to me and recognize the goodness of my God. Allow me instead to build a sanctuary upon the heights of Altitona; thou wilt thus be delivered from me for all time. There I, and those gathered with me, will pray for thee. I feel a strange power within me.”

Atalric made a violent gesture, but she continued without flinching, “Menace me, trample me under-foot, but tremble before this image,” and she took from her bosom the ivory Christ hanging from the ebon cross.

In that moment, as father and daughter faced each other, the powers of heaven and hell, of spiritual promise and unregenerate will, were arrayed in combat. But Atalric did not at first give way. Suddenly, however, the countenance of Odile became more terrible than that of a warrior, and her whole mien was wrapped in an angelic majesty. In her dilated eyes Atalric thought for an instant that he saw the bleeding image of his murdered son. An intolerable pain filled his heart, and he cried out under the irresistible pressure of the heavenly will: “Thou hast conquered. Do as thou wilt, but never let me look upon thy face.”

“Thou wilt see me in the other life,” answered his child.

The legend adds that Atalric, regretting his moment of weakness, did not immediately renounce his evil designs. Odile was obliged to flee before his increasing wrath and was pursued by him and the Austrasian lord, accompanied by many armed men, even beyond the Rhine.

But at the moment when they were about to seize her, at the foot of a mountain where there seemed no issue, the rock parted suddenly and received her. A few minutes later it again opened and Odile appeared enveloped in a supernatural light, declaring to her awestruck pursuers that she belonged forever to Christ alone. Then Atalric and the Austrasian lord turned silently and left the spot. The dove had conquered the lion.

The legend has transformed her father’s momentary conversion to her will into the physical image of the suddenly sundered rock. But in the end it is all the same, for Odile, _Vierge Candide et Forte_, represents forever the victory of the transfigured soul over brute force, the incalculable power of faith sealed by sacrifice, the saving breath of the invisible world breathed into the visible.

During centuries the great Benedictine Convent of Mount Saint-Odile (Odilienberg) performed its works of faith and mansuetude in that barbarian and ruthless world; the voices of Taran, the God of War, and of Rosmertha, the Goddess of Life and Love, according to the pagan ways, were replaced by another, promising eternal felicities to those born again in Christ.

From a wall of _grès rose_, this same _grès rose_ that I have found as building-stone for temple and home and fountain all over Alsace, Odile, needing one day to give instant refreshment to an old man spent with fatigue, caused the spring of crystal water to gush forth from which pilgrims still drink. And in the Chapel, called that of Tears, is a deeply indented stone, worn, it is said, by the knees of the saint as she knelt there praying for the release of the soul of her father (long dead and unpenitent) from the pains of purgatory. The legend has it that only toward the end of her life was she able to accomplish this, when at last the chalice of blood the angel once gave her was transmuted into an elixir of eternal life.

The redemption of the soul of Atalric signifies, too, the conversion of the Merovingian world to Christianity, and to a new will to give up life that it might be found again—and many other things that it is difficult to tell of in words, but the soul can perceive them.

And on the Odilienberg has beat for centuries the very heart, as it were, of Alsace; above its throb being laid, passionately, now a hand from the West, now one from the East....

To this day, they who at evening ascend its heights and wander under the lindens of the terrace built above the old pagan wall, looking out upon the splendid panorama of the Vosges, breathe the mystical fragrance of the lily and the rose that perfumed the last sigh of Saint-Odile.

These things I am not able to know of myself, for the Odilienberg is still in German hands.

IX

THE “FIELD OF LIES” AND LAIMBACH

_Faro come colui che piange._—DANTE

_November 6th._—And to-morrow I am to pass into the sweet, broad valley of the Thur and there dwell. I ask neither how nor why, knowing it will be vastly pleasant, though a somewhat startled feeling overtakes me at the thought of leaving Masevaux, _tout ce qui finit est si court_. For a fleeting, nostalgic moment I think, too, “What am I about, binding sheaves in this rich corner of the earth that is not mine?”

As we gather for lunch, some one reads the sweeping clauses of the conditions of the armistice with Austria-Hungary. Nothing is left save hunger and disorder. I wonder if those to whom one of the “first aims of the war is the dismemberment of the Dual Monarchy” see, in their passion, what it will mean to surround the centripetal force of Germany with floating, unsteady bits, that inevitably will be drawn to it. Some one hazarded the remark, evidently not so trite as we once thought it, that “if Austria didn’t exist, she would have to be invented.” Passion seems more than ever to be its own blind end, and, looking at those men, I thought, have we not fought and died the good death for other and further ends?

Then Laferrière began reading the American _communiqué_. We are but five miles from the Sedan-Metz line, one of the principal lines of communication of the Germans!

As in a dream I listen to the deeds of _my_ soldiers, recited in the most beautiful of French, as many deeds of many men have been recited to many women through the ages.

“_Ce matin la Ière Armée a repris son attaque. En dépit d’une résistance désespérée nos troupes [américaines] ont forcé le passage de la Meuse à Brieulles et à Cléry-le-Petit._” ...

“_Beaumont, nœud de routes important, est tombé devant nos troupes victorieuses qui se sont avancées jusqu’au Bois de l’Hospice à deux milles au nord de Beaumont. Au cours de leur avance elles se sont emparées de Létanne. A Beaumont, nous avons délivré 500 citoyens français qui ont salué nos soldats comme leurs libérateurs...._

“_L’avance des deux derniers jours a amené en certains points notre ligne à cinq milles de la voie ferrée Sedan-Metz, une des principales lignes de communication des armées allemandes._”[14]

As we sit down the commandant tells me they had been picking all sorts of strange things out of the air that morning, the ether stamped with unaccustomed names. He had just got a message, not meant for French ears, bearing a new signature, Ebert; the day before he had got one bearing that of Scheidemann. It is like a further dream of a dream, these things that are borne “upon the sightless couriers of the air.”

At two o’clock I started out with Bernard and Laferrière, the latter on the errand of rounding up an actor in one of those obscure yet deadly village dramas.

“Generally I have little to do; they know they are well off,” he said, and we agreed that it was indeed a pity to be pursued by original sin even unto these pleasant valleys.

We descend at Rammersmatt, a quite unsinful-looking place, and while he is gone Bernard and I visit the old church, beautifully held in the cleft of the hill, lying against another hill, looking down on the plain of Cernay, toward the German lines. It is this same plain of Cernay, which I mentioned before, that was known in the old days as the “_Champ de Mensonges_.” There Ariovistus was defeated by Caæsar. There, too, Louis le Débonnaire was attacked by his three sons and betrayed by his army, and ever since it has been justly known as the “Field of Lies.” Centuries later the Swedes vanquished the imperial armies there under a Duke of Lorraine. To-day it is that thing known as “No Man’s Land,” brown with barbed-wire entanglements and rough with shell-holes—and other things besides.

Back of it are the zigzagging German lines. It is, too, the place of the century-old legend of the Niedecker’s young Thierry who, wandering there one night, saw strange sights. He had not drained a single glass of the _Rang de Thann_, nor of the red wine of Turckheim, called “_Sang des Turcs_,” but was dreaming, as an adolescent does, of everything and nothing, when suddenly the very stones of the valley began to move, and great fissures showed in the earth. From them issued thousands upon thousands of warriors of bygone times, striking against their shields and crying out in strange, hoarse voices, “_Hodeīdah! Hodeīdah!_”

Finally a man taller than all the others, Louis le Débonnaire, son of Charlemagne it was, his long, silvery hair surmounted by a gold and jeweled crown, jumped on a white horse and called by name, one after the other, the chiefs of his cohorts, who answered, “Here.”

Then the king, groaning with great groans, spoke beseechingly the names of the sons he had begotten, Lothaire, Louis, and Pépin.

But Lothaire, Louis, and Pépin mocked him and to further wound him caused to be brought on the battlefield his nephew, Bernard, he who had taken arms against him and whose eyes the king had caused to be put out (and for this the king knew little sleep).

Then as the battle begins the sightless Bernard jumps up behind the king’s saddle, paralyzing his every movement. But at the very height of the combat, above its clash and shoutings, the third hour of morning sounds from a church tower, and suddenly the earth receives again the ancient host and all is as before. Only Thierry from the Niedeckers lay as if dead.

And the Field of Lies, _le Champ de Mensonges_, is said to be the spot where the children of earth will be assembled at the Day of Judgment, for what crime can equal that of the sons of Louis, who conquered, imprisoned, and caused to die of grief a father whose only fault was that he loved them too well? It is even said that it is the troops of Louis who will sound the brazen trumps to awaken the dead for their last accounting.

Now I see it as “No Man’s Land,” rusty and brown with patches of barbed wire, rough with great shell-holes, but they say that even in intervals of peace it is never so luxuriantly fertile as are the fields that lie about it....

A white, very white afternoon heaven stretches above us. Very violent cannonading.

“_C’est nous—c’est le Boche_,” Bernard repeats from time to time. Then his sharp eye distinguishes a group of German airplanes, and, looking where he points, I see five spots black, black in the white sky.

They, too, are immediately fired on. I hear over my head the great swish made by the shells from the guns placed on a hill behind us—or so sounding. My ear is not quick to distinguish directions in these echoing hills.

Little balls of snow-white shrapnel, like beautifully wound balls of fleecy wool, gently unloosen themselves about the black spots of the five airplanes, which, after a while, disappear to the east.

Though not so overcome as the Niedecker’s Thierry, I feel that my eyes, too, have looked on a strange spectacle.

Then Laferrière rejoins us. By the pleased look on his face we guess that he hasn’t made the wages of sin too high, and we continue on our way under the late, and still very white, afternoon sky. Suddenly the heavily plated, thickly enameled rust and gold and black of the hillsides seem to disappear and the earth is green again, young and tenderly green, like spring, but how and why? It lasted but a few minutes, for on the slopes toward Thann there was again the autumnal gleam of gold and rust, and spots of fathomless black.

Entering Laimbach, we stopped to get the mayor, who was to conduct us to the old Jesuit church, half-way between his village and the village of Otzwiller, or rather its site, for Otzwiller disappeared completely during the Thirty Years’ War, wherein each lovely Alsatian valley had been sacked and burned and destroyed, and friends of yesterday were enemies of to-day, and _vice versa_.

The mayor was a voluble, amiable mayor, who had conserved, during those many German years, a vast amount of creaking, noisy, unpleasant French.

His village was ancient, high-roofed, many-fountained, and had been much shelled. The streets were full of children playing, blue soldiers were walking about, girls were leaning out of the windows to give and get a greeting, or being pinched as they giggled about the streets, clicking their sabots in the mud. As we passed out the white sky darkened suddenly and a hard red began to burn in the west. We found ourselves nearing a half-demolished fifteenth-century church, placed strangely between the battered, living village and the ghostly village of the Thirty Years’ War. It was of _grès rose_ and had been built on the foundations of an even earlier one, and near it was a shell-shot, ancient, high, red-roofed presbytery. For generations the church had been a shrine of St.-Blaise, and on every 3d of February the mayor told us (but sadly, as one speaking of a pleasant past) there had been a great pilgrimage made by those suffering from throat maladies.

Now over all was hanging a penetrating atmosphere of bootless desolation, and I was suddenly seized with an anxious feeling that I should be about the secret lonely business of my soul. Life seemed unbearably sad and short, and “where was the place of eternal happiness, the place where the Barbarian need be feared no more?” ...[15]

In front of the church had been placed, somewhat indiscreetly, the officers thought, a big battery. And the mayor said, too, apologetically, “_Evitément z’édait mal joizi par écard à l’éclise_,” for the battery had soon been sighted. After the church had received many shells right in her pink and lovely bosom, it had been moved some forty meters away, but even so it had again been _repérée_, and the church had suffered the usual fate of churches near batteries. Some fine old columns were left in the apse, of the delicious _grès rose_. For a moment Laferrière and I stood scaling off bits of the disfiguring gray plaster and wondering why it had ever been put on, it and all the other gray stucco that a certain austere century had plastered over gorgeous building-stone everywhere in Europe.

The church, like the village of the Thirty Years’ War, will soon be but a name, for its walls are cracked and sagging, and with another winter’s frost they will crumble and fall. Through the roofless nave we walked over a mass of torn-up old mosaic flooring, and heaps of gaudy modern stained glass fallen from the lovely, ancient, pointed windows.

It was getting dark as we passed out into the disorderly cemetery, between the church and the battery (and even for a cemetery very uninviting, torn up as it was by recent shells). Ends of coffins were sticking out, shabby, twisted, bead wreaths and muddy, discolored tricolor badges lay about, while in the middle of a once tidy family plot, by name Hilz, was a huge new shell-hole of only the day before.