"I was here with the women and girls from yonder villages, who had come up here because the noise of the cannons had redoubled. We heard the cannons as we now hear the bells. The bombs burst like rockets. Our women were weeping here where you stand. That was the night when the library caught fire, that the new church caught fire, and the picture gallery, and ten houses in Broglie. Then a yellow-and-red smoke rose, and the clouds looked like these we now see. Strasburg was burning. They had fired one hundred and ninety-three shells against the city. One of the students, the younger one, shook his fist. "Down with them!" muttered the other. The peasant took his cap off and kept it under his arm, without saying a word. The bells were still ringing, but not so many of them. They could no longer hear the bells of Obernai, nor of Saint Nabor, nor some of the others they thought they had heard. They were like lights going out. Night was coming. Jean saw that the two women were almost weeping, and that every one was silent. "Please say one prayer for Alsace," he said to the priest, "while the bells are still ringing for the resurrection." "Right! that's right, my boy!" said the old peasant standing by the priest; "you belong to the country!" The heavy, weary face of the priest brightened at the same time. His voice, which was slightly broken, was not steady. An old and enduring sorrow, yet always new, spoke through his lips, and while they were all looking, as he was himself, towards Strasburg, the city which night was hiding, he prayed: "My God, here, now we can see from your Sainte Odile nearly all the beloved land, our towns, our villages, and our fields. But some of our land lies also on the other side of the mountains, and yet that is also our country. You permitted us to be separated. My heart breaks to think of it. For on the other side of the mountains is the nation we love, and which you still love. It is the oldest of the Christian nations; it is the nearest to Godlike things. It has more angels in its skies because it has more churches and chapels on earth, more holy tombs to defend, more sacred dust mixed with its fields, with its grass, with the waters which permeate the land and nourish it. Oh God, we have suffered in our bodies, in our goods; we still suffer in our memories. Nevertheless, make our memories last. Grant that France also will not forget. Make her more worthy to lead nations. Give her back her lost sister, who may also return. Amen!" "As the Easter bells return." "Amen!" said the voices of two men. "Amen! Amen!" The others wept in silence. There was only the hollow sound of one single bell in the cold air that came up from the depths. The ringers had left the towers, already lost in the shadow that covered the plain.