Above the high platform in the garden the darkened clouds, flying to the west, left a border of purple on the crest of the mountains. Stars came out, in the black depths of the night, as the first primroses were coming out, at the same time under the pines. Only three persons were left on the terrace. The others had gone when the secret of their Alsatian souls had been revealed. The old priest, seeing before him two young people close to each other, and Odile's head near Jean's shoulder, asked: "Betrothed?" "Alas!" answered Jean. "Wish that it may become true." "I do wish it. What you just said is right. I wish that you, who are young, may see Alsace once more French." He went away. "Good-bye," said Odile quickly, "Good-bye, Jean!" She held out her hand, and went away without turning to look back. Jean remained near the terrace wall. The night birds--owls, sea-eagles, eagle-owls, and horned owls--mingling their cries, flew from wood to wood. For a quarter of an hour, the time of their passage, which they made in sweeping flights, their calls resounded over the mountain sides. Then complete silence settled down. Peace arose with the perfumes of the sleeping forests. CHAPTER VIII AT CAROLIS At the beginning of the rue de Zurich, facing the Quay des Bateliers, one of the relics of old Strasburg, there is a narrow house, much lower than its neighbours, with a roof of two stories like a Chinese pagoda. The front, formerly adorned with the pattern of its painted beams, is now covered with whitewash, on which is this inscription: "JEAN, CALLED CAROLIS, _WEINSTUBE_." This wine-shop, whose exterior has nothing about it to arouse the curiosity of the passer-by, is not a nondescript place, nor is it an ordinary public-house. The place is historical. The inhabitants of Zurich came here in 1576, or, at least, the best shots among them, to take part in the grand shooting competition to which Strasburg had summoned the Empire and the confederated States. They had brought with them a pot of boiled millet, and scarcely were they out of the boat than they made the Strasburg people understand that the pudding was still warm. "We could easily come to your aid, neighbours," they said; "by the Rhine and the Ill, the distance between our cities is very short." The word given in 1576 was kept in 1870, as is testified to by an engraved inscription just near by on the Zurich Fountain. At the moment when besieged Strasburg was in the most distressed condition the people of Zurich intervened, and obtained from General Werder permission to allow the old men and children to leave the city. This house was noted for something else--thanks to the Southerner who in 1860 established a shop there for wines of the South.