great was the soreness of feeling excited by certain allegorical
bas-reliefs decorating the facade that for many days after the opening
of the station police-officers in plain clothes carefully watched the
crowd of spectators, carrying off the more seditious to prison. To say
the least of it, these mural decorations are not in the best of taste,
and at any rate it would have been better to have withheld them for a
time. The two small bas-reliefs in question bear respectively the
inscription, "_Im alten, und im neuen Reich_" ("In the old and new
Empire"), improved by a stander-by, to the great relish of others, thus,
"_Im alten, reich, im neuen, arm_" ("In the old, rich, in the new,
poor"). They give a somewhat ideal representation of the surrender of
Strasburg to the German Emperor. But the bombardment of their city, the
destruction of public monuments and the loss of life and property
thereby occasioned, were as yet fresh in the memories of the
inhabitants, and they needed no such reminder of the new state of
things. Their better feelings towards Germany had been bombarded out of
them, as an Alsacienne wittily observed to the Duchess of Baden after
the surrender. The duchess, daughter to the Emperor William, made the
round of the hospitals, and not a single Alsatian soldier but turned his
face to the wall, whereupon she expressed her astonishment at not
finding a better sentiment. Nor can the lover of art help drawing a
painful contrast between the Strasburg of the old and the new _regime_.
There was very little to see at Strasburg except the cathedral at this
time. The Library, with its 300,000 volumes and 1,500 manuscripts--the
priceless _Hortus Deliciarium_ of the twelfth century, richly
illuminated and ornamented with miniatures invaluable to the student of
men and manners of the Middle Ages, the missal of Louis XII., bearing
his arms, the _Recueil de Prieres_ of the eighth century--all these had
been completely destroyed by the ruthless Prussian bombardment. The
Museum, rich in _chefs d'oeuvre_ of the French school, both of sculpture