M. Hamel began to talk to us about the
French language, saying that it was the most beautiful language in the
world, the clearest, the most forceful; that we must guard it among us
and never forget it, because when a people falls into slavery, as long
as it holds firmly to its own tongue, it holds the key of its prison.
Then he took a grammar and gave us our lesson. I was astonished to
find how well I understood. All he said seemed to me so easy, so easy.
I think, too, that I never listened so hard, and that he had never
taken such pains to explain. One would have said that before going
away the poor man wished to give us all his knowledge, to ram it all
into our heads at one blow.

That lesson finished, we passed to writing. For that day M. Hamel had
prepared for us some quite fresh copies, on which was written in
beautiful round hand: _France, Alsace, France, Alsace_. They looked
like little banners floating round the class room on the rail of our
desks. To see how hard every one tried! And what a silence there was!
One could hear nothing but the scraping of the pens on the paper. Once
some cock-chafers flew in; but nobody took any heed, not even the
little ones, who worked away at their pothooks with such enthusiasm and
conscientiousness as if feeling there was something French about them.
On the roof of the school the pigeons cooed softly, and I thought to
myself, hearing them:--

"Are they to be forced to sing in German too?"

From time to time, when I raised my eyes from the page, I saw M. Hamel
motionless in his chair, looking fixedly at everything round him, as if
he would like to carry away in his eyes all his little schoolhouse.
Think of it! For forty years he had been in the same place, in his
court outside or with his class before him. Only the benches and the
desks had grown polished by the constant rubbing; the walnut trees in
the courtyard had grown up, and the honeysuckle, which he had planted
himself, now garlanded the windows up to the roof. What a heart-break
it must be for this poor man to leave all these things, and to hear his
sister coming and going in the room above, packing up their boxes, for
they were to go the next day--to leave the country forever.

All the same, what courage he had to carry out the class to the end!
After the writing we had our history lesson; then the little ones sang
all together their Ba, Be, Bi, Bo, Bu. There at the end of the room,
old Hansor put on his