LAND AND W: A T E B 
August 28, 1915. 
STORY OF A LITTLE ALSATIAN. 
By Alphonse Daudet.^ 
THAT morning I was very late for school, and I 
was dreadfully afraid of being scolded, all the 
more so as Monsieur Ilamel had told us he 
was going to examine us on the participles, 
and I didn't know the first tiling about them. 
For a moment I had a good mind to play truant and take 
a cross-country walk. 
It was such a bright, warm day. 
You could hear the blackbirds whistling on the edge 
of the woods and the Prussians drilling in Rippert's 
meadow behind the saw-mill. All that tempted me more 
than participle rules, but I was strong enough to resist 
and 1 ran on to school as fast as I could. 
When I was going by the Mayor's office I saw there 
was a crowd in front of the little public notice board. It 
was from there that for two years we had got all our bad 
news, battles lost, conscriptions, orders from head- 
quarters, and I wondered without stopping : 
" What's up now? " 
Then as I ran across the square Wachter, the 
blacksmith, who was standing there with his apprentice 
busy reading the notice, cried out to me : 
"What's your hurry, youngster? You'll get to 
school soon enough." 
I thought he was making fun of me, and I ran into 
Monsieur Hamel's little yard all out of breath. 
Usually when class was beginning there was a 
terrible racket that could be heard out in the street, desks 
opening and shutting, lessons being repeated all 
together at the pitch of our voices with our fingers in our 
ears to learn all the better, and teacher's heavy ruler 
banging on the desks : 
" Less noise there ! " 
I reckoned on all this noise to get to my seat without 
being spied, but that day it so happened everything was 
quiet as a Sunday morning. Through the open window 
I could see my school mates all in their places, and 
Monsieur Hamel stalking up and down with his terrible 
iron ruler under his arm. I had to open the door and enter 
in this dead silence. You can imagine if I wasn't red 
and afraid. 
No need to worry. Monsieur Hamel looked at me 
without anger and said very gently : 
" Go to your place quickly, Frantz, my boy; we 
were going to begin without you." 
I threw my leg over my bench and sat down at my 
desk right away. It was only then that, having lost a 
bit of my fear, I noticed that teacher was wearing his 
fine green coat, his frilled shirt, and the black silk em- 
broidered cap he only wore on inspection days or when 
the prizes were distributed. What surprised me most of 
all, however, was to see some of the village folk as silent 
as ourselves sitting at the back of the room on the 
benches that were usually empty; old Hauser with his 
three-cornered hat, our late Mayor, the ex-postman, and 
some others. They all looked sad, and Hauser had 
broug-ht an old primer, all gnawed at the edges, whicli 
he held open on his knees with his great big%ectacles 
laid across the pages. 
Pom^J^K^V r^ ^T''^ '" '^°"^^'' ^^ ^" ''"s, Monsieur 
Hamel had stepped up on to his platform, and in the 
SS'to^ST' ^ '°''' "''^ ^^'"^ ^' ^^^ S'^^''^ "^^. 
♦ot 'l^^,^'"''^''!"' ^^'^ '^ ^h« '^t time I am goine to 
take the class Orders have come from Befr^tlm 
AlS'/andS^"''""" 'Vf ^^ '^"^^^ '" ^he schools o 
Al-.. and Lorraine. 1 he new teacher is coming to- 
L I '^ ^°"'' '^* ^^•''^°" '" French, so I want 
Alsace 
morrow. 
you to be specially a'ttentive. 
♦h. ^^^K ^T T'"^^ "P'^' '"e- So that was the 
the wretches had posted up at the Mayor's. 
My last lesson in French I 
notice 
• Jraiulated by Robert W. Sneddon. 
And here was I who hardly knew how to write. I 
should never learn now. I would have to stick there. 
How I regretted now the lessons I had skipped to go 
hunting birds' nests and sliding on the Saar 1 My booka 
I had found so tiresome a moment ago, so heavy to 
carry, my grammar, my sacred history, seemed just then; 
like old friends I'd be sorry to part from. And the same 
with Monsieur Hamel. I forgot his punishments, the 
whacks from his ruler, when I realised he was going 
away and that I'd never see him again. 
Poor man ! 
It was in honour of this last class that he had put on 
his Sunday best. Now I understood why these old folk 
from the village had come to sit at the back of the school- 
room. It was as much as to say they were sorry they 
hadn't come oftener to the school. It was also one way 
they had of thanking our teacher for his forty years of 
faithful service, and of paying their respects to the 
fatherland which was passing from them. 
I had just come to that point in my thinking when 
I heard my name called. It was my turn to recite. I 
would have given the world if only I had been able to 
reel ofif that famous rule about the participles loudly and 
distinctly without making a blunder. But I got twisted 
up at the start, and I stood there swaying against my 
bench, my heart full, not daring to lift my head. I 
heard Monsieur Hamel speaking to me : 
I'm not going to scold you, Frantz, my boy; you 
must be punished enough. That's the way it goes. 
Every day we've said to ourselves — Bother ! Lots of 
time left, we'll learn to-morrow. And see what happens. 
Ah ! It has always been the greatest misfortune of our 
Alsace to keep putting off its lesson till to-morrow. And 
now those people are quite justified in saying to us : 
' What ! You claim to be French, and you neither know 
how to speak or write }'our own language ! ' Anyway, 
my poor Frantz, you're not most to blame. We all have 
to take our fair share of reproaches. 
" Your parents haven't paid enough attention to 
seeing you educated. Tliey preferred to send you to 
work in the fields or the mills so as to have a few more 
coppers. And have I nothing to reproach myself with ? 
Haven't I made you water my garden instead of study- 
ing ? And have I ever hesitated about dismissing school 
when I wanted to go trout fishing? " 
Then from one thing to another, Monsieur Hamel 
went on to speak about the French language, saving it 
was the soundest, clearest, most beautiful language in 
the world : that we must keep it alive amongst ourselves 
and never forget it because, when a people falls into 
slavery, so long as it keeps hold of its language it was 
as if it held the key to open its prison. Then he took a 
grammar and read us out our lesson. 1 was astonished 
to see how well I understood it. All tiiat he .said seemed 
so easy to me, so easy. I believed, too, that I had never 
listened so attentively and that he had never shown such 
patience in explaining things to us. You would have 
said that before he went away the poor man wanted to 
give us all liis knowledge, to drive it into our skulls wiih 
a single blow. 
When the lesson was over, we went on to the writing 
lesson. For that day Monsieur I lamel had got ready 
some entirely new copy books, on which he had written 
in a fine round hand: "France, Alsace, France, 
Alsace." They were like little flags floating all around 
the room as they luing on the rails of our desks. You 
should have seen how busy we all were, and how quiet 
it was. You could hear nothing but pens scraping on 
the paper. Once some cockchafers flew in. but nobody 
paid any attention to them, not even the littlest kids wli'o 
were labouring to make their straight strokes as earnestly 
and seriously as if even tlie strokes were French. On the 
roof of the school pigeons were cooing softly, and I 
thought to myself when I heard them : 
J6 
