walking with a slow, grave step; they were driven by a little shepherd
about nine or ten years of age, who interrupted his song from time to
time to reassemble the members of his flock with heavy blows from his
whip, thus uniting temporal cares with those of a spiritual nature with a
coolness which the most important personages might have envied him.

"Which of these roads leads to Bergenheim?" called out the traveller
when they were near enough to speak to each other.

"Bergenheim!" repeated the child, taking off his cotton cap, which was
striped like a rainbow, and adding a few words in an unintelligible
Gallo-Germanic patois.

"You are not French, then?" asked the stranger, in a disappointed tone.

The shepherd raised his head proudly and replied:

"I am Alsatian, not French!"

The young man smiled at this trait of local patriotism so common then in
the beautiful province by the Rhine; then he thought that pantomime might
be necessary, so he pointed with his finger first at one road, then at
the other:

"There or there, Bergenheim?" asked he.

The child, in his turn, pointed silently with the tip of his whip to the
banks of the river, designating, at some distance on the other side, a
thicket of woods behind which a slight column of smoke was rising.