"When I was seated at my own desk, I had time to notice that the master had on his handsome green coat, his finely-embroidered shirt-front, and his black silk skull-cap, all of which he wore in school only on examination days and at the distribution of prizes. But what surprised me most was to see the benches at the end of the room, which were usually unoccupied, filled by the old people of the town, all sitting silent like ourselves. "Mr. Hamel took his seat, and in a grave, sweet voice he said, 'My children, this is the last time I shall teach you. The order has come from Berlin that nothing but German is to be taught in the schools of Alsace. The new master will come to-morrow. To-day is your last lesson in French. Be very attentive, I pray you.' "Now I understood why he had put on his fine Sunday clothes, and why the old men were seated at the end of the room. My last French lesson! Why, I could hardly write. How I regretted the time I had wasted in bird-nesting and in sliding on the Saar! My books, that I had found so wearisome, now seemed old friends that were about to leave me. [Illustration: Alsace. (_From the picture by Henriette Browne._)] "I heard my name called. What would I not have given to be able to recite all those rules of the participles without a blunder! But I could only stand silent, with a swelling heart, not daring to look up. "'I will not scold you, my little Franz,' said Mr. Hamel, in a sad tone; 'you are punished enough. Every day you have said, 'I have time enough--I will learn to-morrow;' and now what has happened? This putting off instruction till to-morrow has been the fault of us all in Alsace. Now the invaders say to us, 'How can you pretend to be French, when you cannot read and write your own language?' "Mr. Hamel went on to speak of the French language, saying that it was the most beautiful, the most polished, and the richest language in the world, and that we must now watch over each other and see that we never forgot it; for even when a people become slaves, while they keep their own language it is as if they held the key to their prison. "Then he took up a grammar, and went over our lesson with us. I was astonished to find that I could understand it quite easily. I had never listened so eagerly, and the master had never explained so patiently. It seemed as if he wished to make all his knowledge enter our heads at once. "Next we passed to writing. He had prepared an entirely new exercise for us, to be written in round hand: 'France, Alsace; France, Alsace.' How eagerly each one applied himself! Nothing could be heard but the scratching of the pens upon the paper. A butterfly entered, but no one stopped to watch it. "Mr. Hamel sat silent in the chair he had occupied for forty years. To-morrow he would leave the country for ever; even now we could hear his sister in the room above packing the trunks. Yet he had the courage to go through the school work to the end.