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tasks till to-morrow. And--sometimes--to- morrow never comes. That is what it has been with us. We Alsatians have been always putting off our education till the morrow; and now they have a right, those people down there, to say to us, `What! You call yourselves French, and cannot even read and write the French language? Learn German, then!'"
And then the master spoke to them of the French language. He told them how beautiful it was, how clear and musical and reasonable, and he said that no people could be hopelessly conquered so long as it kept its language, for the language was the key to its prison-house. And then he said he was going to tell them a little about that beautiful language, and he explained the rule of participles.
And do you know, it was just as simple as A B C! Little Franz understood every word. It was just the same with the rest of the grammar lesson. I don't know whether little Franz listened harder, or whether the master explained better; but it was all quite clear, and simple.
But as they went on with it, and little Franz listened and looked, it seemed to him that the master was trying to put the whole French language into their heads in that one hour. It seemed as if he wanted to teach them all he knew, before he went,--to give them all he had, --in this last lesson.
From the grammar he went on to the writing lesson. And for this, quite new copies had been prepared. They were written on clean, new slips of paper, and they were:--
France: Alsace. France: Alsace.
All up and down the aisles they hung out from the desks like little banners, waving--
France: Alsace. France: Alsace.
And everybody worked with all his might,-- not a sound could you hear but the scratching of pens on the "France: Alsace."
Even the little ones bent over their up and down strokes with their tongues stuck out to help them work.
After the writing came the reading lesson, and the little ones sang their ba, be, bi, bo, bu.
Right in the midst of i