This enthusiastic traveller, still young in mind, was, however, not a young man. M. Ulrich Biehler, called M. Ulrich throughout the countryside, was sixty years old, and his hair and beard, almost white, proclaimed his age; but there had been more of the sap of youth in him than in most, just as some possess more bravery or more beauty, and something of this youthfulness he had retained. He lived in the middle of the mountain of Sainte Odile, exactly twelve hundred feet in the air, in a forest-house without any pretension to architecture, and without lands of any sort except the sloping meadow on which it stood, and at the back was a very small orchard, ravaged periodically by hard winters. He had remained faithful to this house, inherited from his father, who had bought it for a holiday residence only, and here he spent the whole year alone, although his friends, like his lands, were plentiful in the plains. He was not shy of men, but he did not like to give up his own way of living, consequently there were some fanciful stories told about him. They said that in 1870 he had gone through the whole campaign wearing a silver helmet, from the crest of which hung, instead of horsehair, the hair of a woman. No one could say if this legend were history. But twenty good people from the plains of Alsace could affirm that there was not among the French Dragoons a more indefatigable horseman, a bolder scout, a more tender companion in misery, or one more forgetful of his own suffering, than M. Ulrich, proprietor of Heidenbruch, in the mountain of Sainte Odile. He had remained French under German rule. That was at once his joy and the cause of the many difficulties which he tried to surmount or to endure as a set-off for the favour they showed him in allowing him to breathe the air of Alsace. He knew how to make himself respected in the rôle of a man vanquished, tolerated, and watched. There must be no concession which would show forgetfulness of the dear French country, but there must be no provocation; he had no taste for useless demonstration. M. Ulrich travelled much in the Vosges, where he possessed forests here and there, which he looked after himself. His woods had the reputation of being among the best managed in Lower Alsace. His house, shut up for thirty years because of mourning, had, however, a reputation for comfort and refinement. The few persons, French or Alsatians, who had crossed the threshold spoke of the graciousness of the host and the art with which he made his guests welcome. Above all, the peasants loved him, those who had gone through the war with him, and even their sons, who took off their hats when M. Ulrich appeared at the corner of their vineyard or of their lucerne-field.