"And what will you do?" The youthful smile reappeared on the lips of Jean Oberlé. "I shall cut wood, as he does, as my grandfather Phillipe does; I shall settle among you here. When I travelled in Germany and in Austria, after my examination, it was chiefly that I might study the forests, the saw-mills, and the factories like our own. You are weeping?" "Not quite." M. Ulrich was not weeping, but he was obliged to dry his wet eyelids with the tip of his finger. "It would be for joy, in any case, my dear boy. Oh, for a true and great joy. To see you faithful to what I love best in the world. To keep you with us--to see you determined not to accept appointments and honours from those who have violated your country.... Yes, it was the dream I dared no longer dream.... Only, quite frankly, I cannot understand it. I am surprised. Why are you not like your father, or like Lucienne, who have so openly rallied to the enemy? You studied law in Munich, in Bonn, in Heidelberg, in Berlin; you have just passed four years in Germany, without speaking of your college years. How did you avoid becoming German?" "I am less so than you." "That is hardly possible." "Less than you, because I know them better. I have judged them by comparison. Well, they are our inferiors." "Well, I _am_ pleased. We hear nothing but the opposite of this. In France, above all, the praise of the conquerors of 1870 continues without intermission." The young man, touched by M. Ulrich's emotion, leaned no longer on the sofa, but bending forwards, his face lit up by the lamp, which made his green eyes appear more brilliant, said: "Do not mistake me, Uncle Ulrich. I do not hate the Germans, and in that I differ from you. I even admire them, for in some things they are admirable. Among them I have friends I esteem greatly. I shall have others. I belong to a generation which has not seen what you have seen, and which has lived differently--I have not been conquered!" "Happily, not!" "Only the more I know them, the more I feel myself different from them; I feel I am of another race, with another category of ideals into which they do not enter, which I find superior, and which, without knowing why, I call 'France.'" "Bravo, Jean, bravo!" The old dragoon officer bent forward--he also was quite pale--and the two men were only separated by the width of the table. "What I call France, uncle, what I have in my heart, like a dream, is a country where there is a greater facility for thought." "Yes----" "For speech----" "That's it!" "For laughter." "How right you are!" "Where souls have infinite shades of colour! A country that has the charm of a woman one loves, as it were a still more beautiful Alsace." Both had risen, and M. Ulrich drew his nephew towards him, and pressed that fervent head against his breast. "Frenchman!" said he, "Frenchman to the marrow of your bones, and in every drop of blood in your veins! My poor boy!"