THE GOLDEN LION OF GRANPERE, BY ANTHONY TROLLOPE.




CHAPTER I.

Up among the Vosges mountains in Lorraine, but just outside the old
half-German province of Alsace, about thirty miles distant from the
new and thoroughly French baths of Plombieres, there lies the
village of Granpere. Whatever may be said or thought here in
England of the late imperial rule in France, it must at any rate be
admitted that good roads were made under the Empire. Alsace, which
twenty years ago seems to have been somewhat behindhand in this
respect, received her full share of Napoleon's attention, and
Granpere is now placed on an excellent road which runs from the town
of Remiremont on one line of railway, to Colmar on another. The
inhabitants of the Alsatian Ballon hills and the open valleys among
them seem to think that the civilisation of great cities has been
brought near enough to them, as there is already a diligence running
daily from Granpere to Remiremont;--and at Remiremont you are on the
railway, and, of course, in the middle of everything.

And indeed an observant traveller will be led to think that a great
deal of what may most truly be called civilisation has found its way
in among the Ballons, whether it travelled thither by the new-
fangled railways and imperial routes, or found its passage along the
valley streams before imperial favours had been showered upon the
district. We are told that when Pastor Oberlin was appointed to his
cure as Protestant clergyman in the Ban de la Roche a little more