and painting, the handsome Protestant church, the theatre, the Palais de
Justice, all shared the same fate, not to speak of buildings of lesser
importance, including four hundred private dwellings, and of the fifteen
hundred civilians, men, women and children, killed and wounded by the
shells. The fine church of St. Thomas suffered greatly. Nor was the
cathedral spared, and it would doubtless have perished altogether, too,
but for the enforced surrender of the heroic city. On my second visit
ten years later I found immense changes, new German architecture to be
seen everywhere.


Strasburg is said to contain a much larger German element than any other
city of Alsace-Lorraine, but the most casual observer soon finds out how
it stands with the bulk of the people. The first thing that attracted our
notice in a shop window was a coloured illustration representing the
funeral procession of Gambetta, as it wound slowly past the veiled statue
of Strasburg on the Place de la Concorde. These displays of patriotic
feeling are forbidden, but they come to the fore all the same. Here, as
elsewhere, the clinging to the old country is pathetically--sometimes
comically--apparent. A rough peasant girl, employed as chambermaid in the
hotel at which we stayed, amused me not a little by her tirades against
the Prussians, spoken in a language that was neither German nor French,
but a mixture of both--the delectable tongue of Alsace!

Strasburg is now a vast camp, with that perpetual noisy military parade
so wearisome in Berlin and other German cities, and, as I have said,
there was very little to see. It was a relief to get to Mulhouse, the
comparatively quiet and thoroughly French city of Mulhouse, in spite of
all attempts to make it German. But for the imperial eagle placed over
public offices and the sprinkling of Prussian helmets and Prussian