oked up--grew white--and said slowly--"Monsieur--you are
right! I am at your service. What is your business?"

I asked about the amount of inter-marriage that had taken place during
the forty years. Dr. Bucher thought it had been inconsiderable--and
that the marriages, contracted generally between German subalterns and
girls of the inn-keeping or small farming class, had been rarely
happy. The Alsatian strain was the stronger, and the wife's relations
despised the German intruder. "Not long before the war I came upon two
small boys fighting in a back street." The boy that was getting the
worst of it was abusing the other, and Dr. Bucher caught the
words--"dirty Prussian!" (_sale Prussien!_) The boy at whom this was
hurled, stopped suddenly, with a troubled face, as though he were
going to cry. "No--no!--not me!--not me! _my father!_" Strange, tragic
little tale!

As to the Church, a curious situation existed at that moment in
Strasbourg. The Archbishop, a good man, of distinguished German birth,
was respected and liked by his clergy, who were, however, French in
sympathies almost to a man. The Archbishop, who had naturally excused
himself from singing the victors' Te Deum in the Cathedral, felt that
it would be wiser for him to go, and proposed to Rome that he should
resign his see. His clergy, though personally attached to him, were
anxious that there should be no complications with the French
Government, and supported his wish to resign. But Rome had refused.
Why? No doubt because the whole position of the Church and of
Catholicism in these very Catholic provinces represents an important
card in the hand of the Vatican, supposing the Papacy should desire at
any time to reopen the Church and State question with Republican
France. What is practically the regime of the Napoleonic Concordat
still obtains in the recovered provinces. The clergy have always been
paid by the State, and will be still paid, I understand, in spite of
the Combes laws, by a special subvention, for the distribution of
which the bishops will be responsible. And M. Clemenceau, as the
French Prime Minister, has already nominated one or more bishops, as
was the case throughout France itself up to 1905.

Everything indeed will be done to satisfy the recovered provinces that
can be done. They are at present the spoiled children of France; and
the poor devastated North looks on half enviously, inclined to think
that "Paris forgets us!"--in the joy of t